Non-coincidence newly recognized:
Here is the flag of Romania, my beloved Fulbright home:
And here is the Royal Standard of Scotland:
And here is the McDougall Coat of Arms:
And finally, here is the flag of my fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, which I joined at Amherst College, in 1964.
Interpretation: my coming to Romania was long in The Plan. Anyone have a better explanation?
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Note: I discovered this connection today, when I received an e-mail from DKE which used this background image:
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Duncan,
ReplyDeleteFor the 60th anniversary banquet of our DKE Chapter (Phi Alpha - British Columbia) in February 2009 I had 100 DKE flags made to decorate the banquet hall. The image you show above was taken at that banquet.
I too noticed that the flag of Romania and the flag of DKE differed only in that the Deke flag has a rampant lion in black.
So I located an importer of inexpensive nylon flags and bought 100 of them.
Then I had a silkscreen company print a bitmap image of the lion onto the Romanian flags and - presto! A hundred Deke flags. We sold those flags to our Active Chapter members following the event for $10 each (which actually created a small profit!) and noww there are many dorm rooms decorated with these flags.
ITB
Brent Tynan
Phi Alpha '76
Hi Duncan,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post... your family's background and the similarities with DKE regalia.
The connection with the Romanian flag is something we have noticed before. There is a story behind the clip you show in your blog... the one with dozens of DKE flags flying...
That was for a banquet, and in order to save costs, the event planners purchased a couple hundred Romanian flags from a Chinese producer, and had the lion printed onto them.
Other than that, the Romanian colors being the same as DKE colors is just coincidence. One other thing we think is cool about our flag is that most if not all the other fraternities' flags have their Greek letters on them, whereas the DKE flag is just our colors and the rampant lion.
One final note, my wife graduated from Plymouth State in 1977!
Thank you for sending this to us.
In the Bonds,
Doug Lanpher
Executive Director
P.S. Cc'd here is Grant Burnyeat, Chairman of the DKE History and Archives committee, and member of the Board of Directors. If he has any other info on the flag, perhaps he'll share it with you.
Among other things, these are the 3 primary, indivisible colors.
ReplyDeleteI thank all three of the above for their comments, and I take exception to but one item. As faithful readers of my blogs know, I have come to believe that there are no coincidences. I believe that everything that happens to us has meaning. Hence, the introduction to above post. ;-)
ReplyDelete