Earl Anzai has held many titles over the years: state attorney general, Gov. Ben Cayetano's director of Budget and Finance, OHA special counsel ...

Last summer, he added another long-overdue line to his resume: Sigma Chi brother.

In 1961, Anzai transferred from the University of Hawai'i to Emory University in Atlanta. Emory was a segregated school at the time. Anzai, an Asian-American who grew up in Ka'a'awa, doesn't remember seeing any other minority students on campus. "Emory was the best school I could get into in the South and I had always been fascinated by the South," Anzai said.

When rush week, the period when campus fraternities interview and select new members, came around, Anzai joined in. He hit it off with the brothers of Sigma Chi and was invited to become a pledge. It was quite an honor. Sigma Chi was the most popular fraternity on campus and one of the largest and best known nationally.

He began the pledge process — which he recalls wasn't anything demeaning or silly, as opposed to other fraternity pledging stories. But before he could be inducted as a brother of Sigma Chi, the house president, called Counsel, took him aside and gave him the crushing news: The national Sigma Chi organization would not allow the house to pledge him as a member because of the group's whites-only policy. If the members did, their national affiliation would be revoked and they would lose the house.

Anzai was hurt, but looking back, he says he should have known. During rush week, the president of another fraternity that had been interested in pledging him took him aside and, with tears in his eyes, told him the national chapter of their house wouldn't allow them to pledge a non-white. But when Sigma Chi offered him a pledge bid during rush week, he thought he was in the clear.

Still, he wasn't angry. He kept hanging around with his Sigma Chi friends. He ate meals at the house. He participated in Sigma Chi activities.

"The school was segregated yet these guys accepted me. Why should I be upset with these guys?"

He remained close to his Sigma Chi buddies even after he transferred from Emory to Oregon State and then later to the University of Hawai'i, where he got a degree in economics in 1964. He stayed in touch with many of them through the years.

Then last year, 47 years after he was told he couldn't pledge, Anzai got a telephone call from one of his old buddies. The "whites only" policy had been abolished decades ago by Sigma Chi and the brothers wanted to make amends by inducting Anzai as a lifetime brother. They wanted to make things right.

Anzai's reaction was something of a shrug. He never pushed for this. It hadn't bothered him over the years and didn't affect his friendships.

It was something the Sigma Chi brothers wanted.

A follow-up letter from the Beta Chi chapter of Sigma Chi organizing committee read:

"Through the years, many of us have been very upset about your depledging. We were wrong to grant National's request and wish to state this publicly to you."

The fraternity planned an entire weekend of activities surrounding Anzai's official induction, including a lunch and two dinners, and flew Anzai and his two daughters, both attorneys, to Georgia for the ceremony.

"My daughters were shocked," he said. "They wondered why they were doing it now, after all this time."

The fraternity member who had to tell him about the decision from the national chapter all those years ago wrote his thoughts in a letter:

"I was forced to do something that I did not believe in at all and it has been a sadness that has plagued me my entire life. If I had the maturity then that I have now, I certainly would have resigned my leadership position rather than enforce that terrible ruling."

Close to 50 of the Sigma Chi brothers came for the ceremony. They drove from Georgia and Florida and flew in from as far as San Francisco. They brought their wives. They gave speeches. They went through the whole induction ceremony, including the secret handshake and putting on the Sigma Chi pin.

They made a commemorative photo of their 1961 pledge class, with Anzai's picture inserted at the top. "I look different. Back then, I had hair," he said. "But you can pick me out because I'm the only guy who isn't white."

Anzai says the story has nothing to do with him being a victim.

"I've been discriminated against many times. So what? So have a lot of people. This wasn't even the worst that happened to me," Anzai said. "The real story is the goodness of man."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172.