S.P.A.N.--Student Project for Amity among Nations; an "acronym"

       I was one of those students at the University of Minnesota who went to England in 1950 to study the BBC and glean and understand what I could in my relationships with people from another country for the first time.  It was a wonderful experience.  A newsletter recently from SPAN informed me that my roommate from Minneosta during that English visit had died.  We had long since lost touch with one another, but I remember him and our time spent together fondly--usually in funny yet serious arguments, not disliking one another, while still disagreeing ardently.

       I don't know who thought up the acronym SPAN, but they had to use a not-often-employed word to get the meaningful shortening of the long organizational name--"amity"--friendliness--among nations.

       Didn't know "acronym" was coined only in 1943 to help identify abbreviations like radio detecting and ranging=radar.  Acronym signifies a word created by combining the initial letters or parts of a series of words.  "Acronym" is from Greek:  acro, "topmost" or "beginning of" + onoma, "name."