Alumni Profiles
Alfred W. Moellering
Alfred W. Moellering
Degree: BS`51, LLB`53, Life Member
Longtime Lifetime
There are few people for whom “lifetime membership” in the IU Alumni Association can have greater — and a more apt — meaning than Judge Alfred Moellering.
After transferring to the Bloomington campus from IU’s Fort Wayne extension in 1949, Judge Moellering learned that students could enroll in law school after their junior year, completing their undergraduate degree while in their first year of law school.
“In 1951, when I received my BS, I went to Claude Rich, BA’29, who was then secretary of the Alumni Association, and plopped down $50 for a lifetime membership in the Alumni Association,” Judge Moellering recounts. “It was literally the last $50 I had left over after my undergraduate degree. At the time all we got was a paper membership card to signify a lifetime membership. I used to needle Rich about this, so he went out one day and had a membership card laminated in plastic for me so I would shut up about it!”
While at IU, Judge Moellering — who went on to serve as a U.S. District Attorney and an Allen County (Ind.) Superior Court judge — walked in a social circle that reads like a historical Who’s Who of IU and the Alumni Association: Herman B Wells, BS’24, MA’27, LHD’62, George “Dixie” Heighway, LLB’22, Howard “Howdy” Wilcox, BA’42, Claude Rich, Frank Jones, BS’48, MS’51.
“My ties to the Alumni Association go back to knowing all those people,” Judge Moellering says. “As a result, I wound up getting really involved. And my connection has continued. I’ve known every secretary and director of the Alumni Association since George “Dixie” Heighway. I served as vice president and president of my local chapter, and I ran for the national board of the Alumni Association in the late ’50s or early ’60s. That was a very enjoyable time. I’ve made a lot of lifetime friends from my association with the IUAA.”
