FULLERTON : Filling in the Blanks, 53 Years Later

Bruce Bender was a college freshman in Pennsylvania, all set to become a fraternity brother, when Pearl Harbor was attacked and he immediately joined the Marine Corps.

Now, more than 53 years later, the 72-year-old Bender has become a full-fledged Tau Kappa Epsilon member. Cal State Fullerton’s national TKE chapter recently gave Bender the oath of brotherhood, making him the oldest member of the 37-man fraternity.

Bender, who graduated from USC in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in business, now attends fraternity meetings, parties and dances, and participates in community events and charity functions, wearing his pin and, sometimes, a TKE sweat shirt.

“This is one of the greatest honors of my life,” Bender said after his first Sunday night fraternity meeting this week. “It’s kind of a fulfillment of one of those dreams I had as a 17-year-old, which was interrupted by the war, and as you get older, you kind of like to fill in all those blank spaces that you weren’t able to accomplish.”

In 1941, Bender had gone through hell week and all other pledge formalities when World War II began, cutting short his college career.

Bender’s long wait for initiation makes the record books, topping another active member who waited 20 years to join the fraternity.

Ronald (Doc) Rietveld, 57, a Cal State Fullerton history professor, was accepted in 1975 after the fraternity found out he missed out on initiation when he transferred from a university in Iowa to a college in Illinois, where there were no fraternities.

“They found out that I had pledged and they made me a deal,” Rietveld said. “I became a member and the fraternity’s chapter adviser.”

Rietveld and Bender “are our biggest resources,” said TKE historian Rudolph Ouzounian, 25. “This is what the fraternity is all about. Though they waited 20 and 54 years ago, the brotherhood is so tight that time has no meaning, and they bring all the values we look for in members--love, charity and esteem.”