WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

There was a full moon out at 1:30 in the morning on May 1, 2011. It belonged to Marshall University student and Alpha Tau Omega member Travis Hughes.

He is destined to be remembered as the Greek baring gifts, the genius who put the omega in ATO, the cheeky frat boy who chucked his chinos on the front porch of the frat house in Huntington to shock and awe his fraternity brothers with a display of anal aeronautics.

The effort was fundamentally flawed. Whether due to mechanical failure or human error, the launch of a bottle rocket from his tuches did not go as planned – assuming there was cognition associated with the ignition.

Hughes was bummed out, but that wasn’t the end of it.

Frat brother Louis Helmburg III had to rear his ugly head and butt in, claiming that he’d been injured in the abortive launch. It seems he didn’t find it funny when he fell on his fanny - a landing that was tough on his duff.

Hoping to assuage his deep-seated grief, make a big asset for himself, and shake down some booty, the third Louis Helmburg filed suit in Cabell Circuit Court against Hughes, the ATO chapter, the company that owns the frat house, and the university (later dismissed from the suit).

He dared to air details of the rumpus in a court of law and risk further public ridicule as a judge gets to the bottom of it?

In hindsight, Helmburg must have had second thoughts, for he apparently has decided to abandon the whole thing, put the matter behind him, and can the suit. It was settled and dismissed with prejudice early last month.

So, no more cracks about Louis Helmburg III and the early morning incident on May 1, 2011 on the front porch of the Alpha Tau Omega frat house at Marshall University in Huntington. Presumably he wouldn’t want these annals to be remembered for posterior-ity.