Page 50 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). On a lark, Freddy chose Sigma Alpha Mu, a historically Jewish fraternity. Whether it was a conscious rebuke of his father, who frequently used phrases such as “Jew me down,” Freddy’s fraternity brothers eventually became some of his best friends. Joining ROTC served another purpose entirely. Freddy craved discipline that made sense. He thrived in ROTC’s transparent system of achievement and reward. If you did what you were told, your obedience was recognized. If you met or exceeded expectations, you were rewarded. If you made a mistake or failed to follow an order, you received discipline that was commensurate with the infraction. He loved the hierarchy; he loved the uniforms; he loved the medals that were clear symbols of accomplishment. When you are wearing a uniform, other people can easily identify who you are and what you’ve accomplished, and you are acknowledged accordingly. It was the opposite of life with Fred Trump, by whom good work was expected but never acknowledged; only mistakes were called out and punished.
Getting his pilot’s license made sense in the same way ROTC did: you log a certain number of hours, you get certified on particular instruments, you get a license. His flying lessons eventually became his number one priority. Just as with boating, he took flying very seriously and began skipping card games with his fraternity brothers to study or log another hour at the flight school. But it wasn’t just the pleasure of finding something he excelled at, it was the joy of total freedom, which he’d never before experienced.
In the summer, Freddy worked for Fred, as usual, but on weekends he took his friends out east on a boat he’d bought in high school to fish and water-ski. On occasion Mary asked Freddy to take Donald with him. “Sorry, guys,” he’d say to his friends, “but I have to bring my pain-in-the-ass little brother along.” Donald was probably as enthusiastic as Freddy was reluctant. Whatever their father thought about his older brother, Freddy’s friends clearly loved him and always had a good time—a reality that contradicted what Donald had been brought up to believe.
In August 1958, before the beginning of his junior year, Freddy and Billy Drake flew down to Nassau in the Bahamas for a short vacation before school started up again. The two of them chartered a boat and spent their days fishing and exploring the island. One evening back at their hotel,