Why Pottsville still has them
A tradition most states banned
High-school fraternities and sororities — student societies named with Greek letters — were once everywhere, and then, suddenly, illegal: between about 1907 and 1912 most American states outlawed them. Pennsylvania never passed a statewide ban, and the clubs that survived elsewhere did so by a quiet maneuver — recasting themselves as school "societies" to fold into sanctioned school life. Pottsville is where that survival is still visible.
Two that lasted
Pottsville Area High School has kept two of them going. Tau Kappa Delta, the boys' fraternity, was instituted in 1925 and is the oldest club in the school. Alpha Iota Delta, the girls' service sorority, was chartered in 1950 as the school's first all-service group. A paired boys'-and-girls' system, both are still active today — a century, give or take, on the record.
Greek letters, not Greek heritage
One clarification, because this is a Greek family's restaurant telling the story: Tau Kappa Delta and Alpha Iota Delta are high-school fraternities and sororities — student service societies that happen to be named with Greek letters (ΤΚΔ, ΑΙΔ). They have nothing to do with the Greek heritage of the Coney's founding family, and they are not college "Greek life."
The unofficial tavern
The Coney Island has poured for Pottsville since 1917, and the family that runs it kept both societies in the house, across two generations: Menelaos "Mickey" Palles wore Tau Kappa Delta in 1972; his son Pete did in 2002, and his daughter Athena wore Alpha Iota Delta in 2004. The jacket below is Pete's. The Coney is the unofficial tavern of TKD and AID alumni — proudly, and as a matter of the family's own record.