Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in May 1940. He went to Cornell University that autumn. He studied Chemistry, but he was Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of the university newspaper called "The Cornell Daily Sun". He was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity just like his father. Vonnegut joined the U.S. Army while he was at Cornell. The Army transferred him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study Mechanical Engineering. On Mothers' Day in 1944, his mother committed suicide with sleeping pills.