Spring/Summer 2012 Beta-Rho Bulletin

BETA-RHO!BULLETIN!

Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity

California State University, Northridge

Volume 40, Issue 2

Spring / Summer 2012

Alumni Win Again: Film at 11 FOR A FEW OF THE EIGHT innings of play, it looked like Beta-Rho’s undergrads would finally obliterate the alumni’s softball game winning streak on Sept. 30 at Shoup Park in Woodland Hills. Nah. It didn’t happen, but it was close.

Despite a one-run deficit in the fifth inning, the alumni fought back and extended their winning streak by a score of 21-18. The game might’ve stretched to nine innings, but at 4:30 the teams had played on the diamond for a half hour past their allotted two-hour field reservation and called it a day.

The temperature at game time was a sunny 99 degrees, part of an early fall heat wave that attracted a blue ABC7 news van to the parking lot off of right field. A female news reporter holed up in the van’s front passenger seat revealed that they shot footage of the game to use with the local news station’s

AM Installation page 4

The homerun derby continues. John Leynes dashes for home plate past catcher John Sager during one of the actives’ numerous multi-run innings on Sept. 30 at Shoup Park in Woodland Hills.

evening weather forecast.

Sometime around the bottom of the fifth inning, Spencer

Schmerling (BP 288) brought out one of the alumni’s secret weapons. He passed around

Chapter Highlights pages 5-7

Alumni Grads Honored, page 8 1

some Otter Pops to the actives and some of the fans in the grandstands.

“That ruined us,” High Alpha Alex Samovitz (BP 568) quipped at the October 10 corp. board meeting.

“We went downhill after that,” added another brother.

Another secret weapon that added to the alumni’s advantage was John Sager (BP 93) who played catcher and batted in three runners. He had recently moved to Riverside from Nebraska and said he hadn’t attended a softball game since 1995.

Unlike some previous years, the undergrads had no trouble Next Page >>>

Alumni-Active Softball Game Jessie Strobel

<<< Softball Game finding enough players to fill out the team roster. Eight undergrads and three associate members rounded out the actives’ list. Not to be outdone, 17 alumni showed up, and 15 took at-bats. Twenty additional spectators, among them family, relatives and (unofficial) little sisters—not including the news van crew— rounded out the crowd to 48.

The rivalry heated up unexpectedly this year on Facebook where memes began to appear on the chapter’s alumni page a week prior to the game. It started when one of the actives posted a meme displaying a picture of actor Gene Wilder posing in his purple Willy Wonka costume. The picture’s inscription read, “Oh, so you’ve

Playing for keeps. Clockwise from the top: the 2012 alumni-active softball game roster - front row (l-r): Arturo Olvera, Cesar Ayllon, Luis Canton, Steven Zavala, Christian Cruz, John Leynes and Rick Childs. Standing: Rob Press, Scott Press, Jeff Friedman, Rich Ohlberg’s son, Rich Ohlberg, Gio Pernudi, Steven Shapiro, John Sager, Rick Trevino, Howard Sapper, Mike Press, Mark Widawer, Tim Pena, Spencer Schmerling, Brinton Marsden, Chris Burgos, Mike Davis, Tony Ball, Matt Rice, John Bonilla and Alex Samovitz. Secret weapons deployed. Arturo Olvera, Steven Zavala and Christian Cruz took advantage of the Otter Pops Spencer Schmerling handed out just about the time that the undergrads’ slim lead began to evaporate. John Sager winds up for another shot to left field.

Alumni-active fan switch hitters. Depending on whether it was the top or bottom of the inning (alumni were up first), Brittany Tanner, seated next to Matt Ahmadi, would flip her green posterboard to root for either the alumni or the actives.

won the alumni/active softball game since ’04. Too bad the actives are going to whoop ass this year.” Within hours, team captain and catcher John Bonilla (BP 593) and several of the other undergrads started using the Wonka meme as their profile

pictures. About a day later, Rick Trevino (BP 451) countered with a meme of Jonathan Goldsmith, Dos Equis’ Beer’s Most Interesting Man in the World model and spokesperson. His post ratcheted the antics up a notch with the inscription 2

“Beta-Rho alumni. We don’t always play baseball, but when we do, we beat the undergrads.”

Not long after the game ended, the undergrads’ meme and smack talk commentaries on Facebook became harder to find than a Wonka chocolate bar with Spring / Summer 2012

Volume 40, Issue 2

Version 2.4

Editor, reporter, designer & photographer: Rick Childs The Beta-Rho Bulletin is the official publication of Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha, Inc. at California State University, Northridge and is distributed at no charge to all of its members and affiliates whose mailing addresses are current. Articles, directory revisions, weddings, bir ths and professional info should be snail mailed or e-mailed to the editor at 44044 Engle Way Apt. 65, Lancaster, CA; 93536-6660 or rc4x4profit@verizon.net, respectively. MS Word, Excel, JPG, PDF, TIFF files, press releases and photos are accepted. All other correspondence to the corporation should be sent to P.O. Box 280311, Northridge, CA 91328-0311. Made on a Mac Mini with iWork Pages ’09 v.4.1. Last revised on Feb. 28, 2013.

Editor’s phone number: (661) 948-3260

Spring/Summer 2012 House Corporation Board of Directors: Spencer Schmerling Rick Childs Scott Press Rob Press Chris Dyer Steven Shapiro Eric Gonzalez Alex Samovitz Andrés Dominguez Michael Jackson Eric Roberts

On the Web: Headquarters

Chapter Website

Fraternity Journal

Facebook

www.lambdachi.org www.lambdachicsun.com www.crossandcrescent.com Fan Page: CSUN Lambda Chi Alpha; get added to BP Alumni, CSUN Beta-Rho Zeta

a golden ticket.

Despite the 99° weather, Rich Ohlberg (BP 356) and his son could be seen returning to the outfield with a football after the teams posed for a group picture and dispersed. When asked about it, Brother Ohlberg paused for a moment and said that “the game was just a warm-up” before he started playing catch.

Alumni team captain Tim Pena (BP 264) submitted a roster of teammates in initiation order that listed umpire Scott Press (BP 55), Rick Childs (BP 83), Brother Sager, Jeff Friedman (BP 154), Mark Widawer (BP 220), Brother Ohlberg, himself, pitcher Howard Sapper (BP 257), Brother Schmerling, Brother Trevino, Cesar Ayllon (BP 453), Mike Press (BP 455), Rob Press (BP 495), Matt Rice (BP 567) and Steven Shapiro (BP 575). Matt Ahmadi (BP 551) and Gio Pernudi (BP 473) did not play; the latter showed off his walking cast due to ankle surgery.

Actives in batting rotation,

We don’t always play baseball, but when we do, we beat the undergrads. Rich Ohlberg plots his next move from first base (top) as Tim Pena listens intently. The throw is too late for catcher John Bonilla as Rick Trevino rapidly approaches home plate.

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

President

VP, Communications

VP, Activities

Secretary

Treasurer

Alumni Director

Chapter Adviser

High Alpha

High Tau

High Rho

House Manager

3

alphabetically, were Tony Ball (BP 605), Brother Bonilla, Luis Canton (BP 615), Christian Cruz (BP 614), John Leynes (BP 590), Arturo Olvera (BP 599), Brother Samovitz and Steven Zavala (BP 581). Also playing with the undergrads were associate members Chris Burgos, Mychal Davis and pitcher Brinton Marsden.

Getting into the batting rotation was something that Brother Sager had been looking forward to all summer. Sitting in his backyard that night in Riverside after the game, he remembered that the last time he played, the teams had met at Northridge Park and he’d brought along two of his children.

“Ashley was about a year-anda-half to two years old,” he recalled. “And we were waiting in line to get a hot dog. We went back to the house [Halsted II] after the game. My son was swimming in the pool, and [I said] ‘the prettiest girl at the party wants a hot dog!’ All the undergrads turned around, and it was my daughter.”

He was quite pleased with his playing earlier in the day.

“I had a good time,” Brother Sager continued. “On first ups I hit a single and had a pinch runner. He scored. Second up I hit that line drive straight back to the pitcher. Then I hit the triple... three for four, scored three runs.”

Scott Press, the housing corporation’s vice president of activities, enthused about the game during the board’s October meeting. It was also his swan song as the event’s chairman.

“This alumni baseball game was a wonderful event,” he told the brothers and associate members. After four years, he gave notice that he was no longer taking charge of it.

“I turned over all the equipment [to the actives] because we are not running this anymore,” he said. “It’s going to be a chapter event, so they’re going to be running this next year.”

Chapter News Fall 2012 Associate Members.

Meeting on the Sierra Hall’s southeast steps after the AM ceremony were, front row, l-r: Devin De Leon, John DeVaughn, Cody Raschella, Daniel Chukhman and Jason London. Second row: William Medina and Michael Hilliard. Third row: Zareh Baboomian, Can “John” Ergen, Mychal Davis, Brinton Marsden, Eric Planas, Chris Burgos, Richard Strobel, Adrian Morales Jr. and Max Eberle. Eric Planas and Zareh Baboomian (below) take copies of the Paedegogus during the Sept.

23 fraternity education meeting while Luis Canton prepares to place packets of yarn on the table for a special presentation conducted by Joey Solano.

AM Installation Ceremony Completes Fall Rush IN A NEARLY PACKED MEETING room, five members of the High Zeta inducted 16 of the 21 associate members announced during an installation ceremony on Sept. 23 at Sierra Hall 182.

About 50 brothers, family and guests observed as Chapter President Alex Samovitz (BP 568) began the formal proceedings.

Ritualist John Leynes (BP 590) had tried to move the event to a larger classroom like the Nobbs Auditorium in Sequoia Hall, but they opted for their regular chapter meeting location when it appeared unlikely they could switch locations. Overall, he was quite happy with the way things turned out. He also liked it better than the spring AM ceremony since the presenters were not reading from scripts.

“We went back to memorizing the whole ceremony,” he said.

“That provided an authentic

feeling to it. In addition to that there were a lot of family members that showed up to it, which is always a good thing.”

Brother Leynes emphasized

that he wanted to “expose our AM ceremony for families to see what we actually do within the fraternity, and how we exemplify some of our core values.”

Starting the journey. High Alpha Alex Samovitz–along with High Beta Justyn De Leon, High Phi John Leynes, High Delta Nick Volkov and High Kappa Joey Solano– conducted the Fall 2012 Associate Member Ceremony. Parents, siblings and friends packed the Sierra Hall classroom for the occasion.

4

He added that whoever succeeds him as High Phi in the spring would be able to take advantage of his ritual experience these past two semesters. That would be his last semester since he is planning to graduate in May. Fraternity Education Officer Joey Solano worked closely with Brother Leynes to coordinate the ceremony with his program. He also helped to run the rehearsals.

AMs were asked to take a small bundle of white yarn with them at the end of the Kappa meeting that same evening.

“Over a year ago Justyn De Leon, our Beta, heard a story about another chapter using strands,” he said. “That gave me an idea.”

When the week leading up to initiation arrived, Brother Solano revealed a deeper, more symbolic meaning for the yarn bundles to the AMs. Spring / Summer 2012

Jamison Keller Courtesy of Jessie Strobel

Chapter’s Academics, Brothers Recognized Justyn De Leon

NEW BROTHERS WERE ADDED TO the chapter while some graduated in May. Several members took part in the Relay for Life charity event on campus over the weekend of March 24-25 that benefited the American Cancer Society. There were also a few brothers who became members of honor societies.

Dedicated to the memory of Duke Anderson and Matt Frerer, Beta-Rho held a pancake breakfast on March 18. The funds collected then went toward the Relay for Life.

Beta-Rho welcomed three new initiates during the early morning hours of May 5: Oliver Grau, Glen Probst and Andrés Dominguez. In observance of a tradition that dates back several years, the new initiates were given hoodies by their big brothers Ladi Saka, Luis Canton and Steve Shapiro, respectively, and became BP 626, 627 and 628.

The chapter co-hosted the Pacific Southwest Conclave with the UCLA chapter, Epsilon-Sigma, over the weekend of March 2-4

Spring 2012 milestones. Erwin Avendano and Yesai Fstkchyan (clockwise from upper left, pictured in the second row, fourth and fifth from left) were inducted into the Order of Omega in April. Oliver Grau, Andrés Dominguez and Glen Probst became initiates on May 5. Daniel Ramos and Corey Davis celebrated their induction into Gamma Alpha Sigma on Aug. 28. Several undergrads helped raise $27,000 for Alpha Xi Delta’s Xi Champs charity, Autism Speaks, in April. Vahan Khodanian, pictured on the front page, was recognized as CSUN’s Greek Man of the Year by the Order of Omega.

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

5

in Hawthorne Hall on the North Campus. The chapter was also a frontrunner for hosting the 2013 conclave, Brother Samovitz said at the Dec. 2 chapter meeting.

For the spring Greek Week, the chapter took first place for the second year running. Vahan Khodanian also earned the title of Greek Man of the Year.

Two brothers were inducted into the Order of Omega Honor Society this year. Yesai Fstkchyan and Erwin Avendano were among its newest initiates on April 26 at a ceremony in the University Student Union. They also singled out our chapter for having attained the highest spring GPA among men’s fraternities as well as most improved GPA. Gamma Sigma Alpha, another honor society, added Corey Davis and Daniel Ramos to their list of initiates on Aug. 28 at a ceremony in the University Student Union’s Grand Salon.

To get in, they were required to earn Upper Division GPAs of 3.5.

—REPORTED BY ALEX SAMOVITZ

Chapter News Courtesy of Steven Zavala (2)

Three Beta-Rho Initiates Attend 54th General Assembly REPRESENTATIVES FROM MORE than 100 chapters converged on the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Ariz. over the week of July 26-29 for the 54th General Assembly and Stead Leadership Seminar.

Among them were Justyn De Leon (BP 602), Steven Zavala (BP 581) and Corey Davis (BP 596). Brothers De Leon and Davis were the High Beta and Theta, respectively.

This was the third consecutive General Assembly to be held at the Arizona Biltmore since 2008.

Four new brothers were elected to serve on the Grand High Zeta’s nine seats. Two undergraduate Council of Presidents positions, the Grand High Nu and Grand High Psi, were also chosen by chapter presidents attending the conference.

Many chapters and individuals were recognized for outstanding achievements.

Arizona State (Zeta-Psi) from the Pacific Southwest Conclave was singled out for the highest overall grade point average of any chapter during the previous two semesters: 3.53.

Delegates worked their way through Constitution and Statutory Code amendments and resolutions. As it has done for many decades, the fraternity’s legislative process continued to be shouldered by the active membership’s delegates from each chapter.

Brother De Leon took on added responsibility as the chapter’s official delegate, and he participated in the legislative sessions each day.

One of the most contentious votes concerned UC Berkeley’s colony status. Mu Zeta needed to gain acceptance from the

General Fraternity’s legislative body to continue its pursuit of reinstatement as a chapter.

Brother De Leon recalled, “There was a controversy over whether UC Berkeley should remain a colony because they had been unable to meet minimum standards in order to become chartered, so we gave them one more year.”

Of the nine bills that were brought up during the legislative sessions, the second one concerning an increase of minimum chapter GPA over two years drew a lot of deliberations before its passage.

“The biggest issue,” Brother De Leon said, “was the raising of the [overall chapter] grades each year.”

Each chapter was looking at a tenth of a point increase in the minimum GPA to meet the General Fraternity’s minimum academic standards after the end of the fall 2012 semester. In a September, 2012 Cross & Crescent article by Justin Fisher (North Carolina-Greensboro), as of January, 2013, the new minimum chapter GPA would be raised to 2.3 (on a 4.0 scale).

The GPA minimum after August 1, 2013 was set to rise to 2.4 and 2.5 as of August 1, 2014.

Brother De Leon took great pleasure in serving as the chapter’s delegate.

“It was great being able to vote on behalf of our chapter,” he said. “I liked the fact that all of the delegates were put into committees. I was put on the Status of Chapters 3 Committee, which is a committee for finance issues. I was able to see that we aren’t in as much trouble as most fraternity [chapters].

Due to his long legislative

Spending some quality time at the Arizona Biltmore and a Diamondbacks game. Justyn De Leon, Steven Zavala and Corey Davis (above, from left) were among the brothers who took advantage of a Diamondbacks baseball game at Chase Park during an afternoon break from the General Assembly. The three representatives from Beta-Rho also took a moment to pose on the lawn in front of the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Ariz.

sessions, Brother De Leon could not participate in the Stead Leadership educational sessions that the other undergrads attended. He did, however, attend banquets and special events with his fellow Beta-Rho brothers, plus a major league baseball game.

“While we were there, the 6

Fraternity paid for us to go to a Diamondbacks game,” he noted.

“One of the nights me and Corey and Steven went to Arizona State University and got to hang out with some of the brothers of ASU. It was great being with brothers from all over the United States—and Canada.”

Spring / Summer 2012

First Alumni of 2012 Honored at Chapter Graduation Event IN A MANNER STRIKINGLY similar to the ones conducted for associate member installations, seven of ten brothers were honored during a graduation ceremony before a chapter meeting on May 6. The ceremony took place on campus in Sierra South 182.

Six members of the High Zeta wore ceremonial collars and proceeded with a formal meeting

setup, and about 40 members and guests viewed the ceremony.

Standing before the newest alumni were John Leynes (BP 590), High Phi; Luis Canton (BP 615), High Gamma; Justyn De Leon (BP 602), High Beta: Alex Samovitz (BP 568), High Alpha; Joey Solano (BP 598), High Kappa; and Corey Davis (BP 596), High Theta.

Brother Samovitz spoke briefly and then deferred the introduction to presenter Neil Sanchez (BP 535). Brother Sanchez read the names of the ten brothers who were scheduled to graduate later in the month.

“Brother High Alpha, I bring with me the graduating brothers of Beta-Rho Zeta who seek further knowledge in preparations for the challenges that await them beyond this hall. They are Matt Rice (BP 567), Jaryd Tashiro (BP 594), Yesai Fstkchyan (BP 598), Nestor Mendez (BP 600), Erwin Avendano (BP 591), Michael Paris (BP 607), Steven Shapiro (BP 575), Vahan Khodanian (BP 562), Arthur [A. J.] Jaegle (BP 543), and Tomas Gallegos (BP 561),” he said.

The graduation ceremony was the first one of its kind done at Beta-Rho. Afterwards, some of the sorority guests left trays of cupcakes and a cookie the size of a small pizza for the new alumni. Several other sorority guests also congratulated them.

A tribute to the new graduates.

(Clockwise from top): Alex Samovitz reaches to shake hands with Nestor Mendez. Members of the High Zeta conduct the ceremony. Neil Sanchez places a collar around Matt Rice’s neck. Yesai Fstkchyan is hugged by Sharene Kassab of Alpha Omicron Pi.

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

7

Alumni News

Beta-Rho’s Newest Grads Leave the Stage The active roster contracted once again in late May as a dozen brothers wrapped up their bachelor’s degree programs. They participated during various Commencement ceremonies and some others completed their postgraduate work.

The ceremonies took place during the week of May 21.

Not surprisingly, the biggest segment of Beta-Rho’s Bachelor of Science recipients emanated from the School of Business and Economics. The school’s 8 a.m.

Commencement ceremony took place on May 24 at the Oviatt Lawn. Steven Shapiro (BP 575) majored in accounting. Vahan Khodanian (BP 562), a Business Honors Association member, and Jaryd Tashiro (BP 594) studied finance. A. J. Jaegle (BP

543) and Nestor Mendez (BP 600) majored in marketing. A Matador Mentor, Brother Mendez served as a New Student Orientation Leader from 2009-11 and took part in TAKE 23. Matt Rice (BP 567) studied Management Information Systems. He competed on the Men’s Volleyball Team for four years, was on the Dean’s List, and belonged to the Management Information Systems Association.

Three of the grads were majoring in School of Social and Behavioral Sciences subjects.

Alessandro “Alex” Roncagliolo (BP 606) and Johnny Prado (BP 595) were political science majors.

Brother Roncagliolo’s emphasis was on law & society, and he served for two years as the Italian Club’s president. Erwin Avendano (BP 591) majored in sociology.

Dean’s List member Yesai Fstkchyan (BP 598) was the chapter’s lone School of Science and Math representative. Brother Fstkchyan majored in cell & molecular biology. He attended his Commencement on May 22 and was recognized at the Honors Convocation on May 21 for leadership. Aside from his involvement in the NSO for two years, Brother Fstkchyan helped as a Matador Mentor and was a guest cast member of TAKE 23.

Michael Paris (BP 607), who graduated with honors on May 23, completed the four-year Integrated English program in the School of Humanities, and picked up his teaching credential in secondary education along with his BA. He was also inducted into the Gamma Sigma Alpha Honor Society.

Music with an emphasis in media composition kept Tomas Gallegos (BP 561) preoccupied in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media and Communication.

In the postgraduate degree program spectrum former chapter adviser Rob Press (BP 495) finished off his CSUN Master of Arts degree in history.

Todd Baker (BP 199) found time when he wasn’t producing radio personality Howard Stern’s Howard TV program to complete a Master of Science degree in journalism on May 17 at New York’s Columbia University.

Across the Atlantic, Thomas Nirmark (BP 566) graduated from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2011. His degree program combined a Bachelor and Master of Science in physics.

Torrie Goodson

Russell Paris

Courtesy of Todd Baker Courtesy of Alex Roncagliolo

8

Courtesy of Nestor Mendez

Courtesy of Vahan Khodanian

Mission accomplished. (Clockwise from top): Todd Baker (third from left pointing finger) pals around during his Commencement at Columbia University. Michael Paris had his dad do the photography. New alumni after the chapter graduation ceremony were, from left, Vahan Khodanian, Jaryd Tashiro, Nestor Mendez, Matt Rice, Steven Shapiro, Michael Paris and Yesai Fstkchyan. In front of them were Jessie Strobel and Brittany Tanner. Brother Mendez struck a pose with his sister, Edith. Brother Khodanian was joined at his Commencement ceremony by Neil Sanchez (on the left) and Eric Gonzalez. A former Associated Students director of finance and chief justice, Brother Khodanian noted that they were High Alpha and High Beta when he was an associate member, “so it was a fitting picture” of them, he noted. Alex Roncagliolo is surrounded by friends at his Commencement.

Spring / Summer 2012

Stephanie Klein Photography

Alumni Rites of Passage

Courtesy of Geoff & Rena Robles

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

9

McMinnville, Ore. They spent their honeymoon on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Chris Dyer (BP 500) was at the wedding.

Dustin Mirochnick (BP 461) happened to also select BetaRho’s Charter Day, Sept. 2, to marry Thara Samatra (shown below). Their wedding took place at the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village. They honeymooned at the Hilton Lagoon Resort & Spa on the Tahitian island of Moorea.

Amanda Press’s husband Mike’s (BP 455) Facebook page post on Sept. 10 read: “It’s a boy!

Jackson Press; 6 lbs. 15 oz. :) Love this li’l guy!” Jackson (with Dad, lower left) made his debut at 7:51 a.m. Coincidentally, he was born at the same hospital where Grayson Robles checked in.

Phillip Kocurek / Phillip’s Photography

Charise Proctor Photography

Courtesy of Mike & Amanda Press

Geoff (BP 419) and Rena Lane Robles’ son Grayson Joseph (below right) took his first breath of Conejo Valley air on June 27 at 7:47 a.m. at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. He weighed in at 8 lbs. even.

On June 30 Rick (BP 83) and Debbie Childs (shown below right) celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary with 50 friends and family including Terry Lucero (BP 149) and John Gezelius (M 1082). Celebrants ducked into the Del Webb Sun City Mountain View Clubhouse’s Ventana Room in Palm Desert to beat the 109° heat.

Shawn Fancy (BP 505) married Amy Glickman (shown at left) on Sept. 2 at the Youngberg Hill Vineyards and Inn located in

Interview

John Gezelius: High Pi on the Road

O

some studies at the Defense Intelligence College. I was hired by a law firm in Washington, D.C. that was representing General Dynamics [McKenna & Cuneo]. The case was General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas vs. the Navy. The Navy was going to buy a stealth fighter and the program was cancelled by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

And the span between what the contractors said they were due and what the Navy said they wanted back was $5.8 billion. That was in 1994 or ’95. They hired me because I spoke airplane. I knew government contracts and I had a security clearance. It was a great case to work on.

There were a lot of very technical issues.

The lawyers were smart lawyers on both sides of the equation. It was a lot of fun, but I also took from that I didn’t want to work in an 800-pound gorilla law firm. We had 200 attorneys in the Washington, D.C. office. Although it was a good paying job, [it was] a mill. You must bill 200 2,200 hours a year, which works out to 50 hours a week non-stop. It went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but it convinced me I didn’t want to be in one of those huge law firms. So that was my takeaway from that.

Can you give a recap about your career and time as a High Pi? Well, it’s been a wondrous journey.

I’m an initiate of Mu Zeta at the University of California [Berkeley]. I graduated in 1978.

The Air Force saw fit to not only pay for college: they made me a lieutenant and sent me to Grand Forks, North Dakota. While I was at Grand Forks, I was an ICBM launch officer during the day, and sometimes at night. When I was not on alert I was either a Master’s degree student in business, or the High Pi at the University of North Dakota.

When I went in to North Dakota we had, I think, twelve actives and we owed the university $10,000 in back rent on the house. When I finished, the house was running at close to 40 members and we had money in the bank, so I had a marvelous three years there.

When I left North Dakota, I was looking for a job. I wound up being offered a job by Texas Instruments in Lubbock, Texas. Right before I left to go to Lubbock to start work, I had lunch with Brother Mark Bauer from the Educational Foundation [its president] and Brother Joe Hayes. They had both been ELCs. What year would this be?

This would be December ’82.

I knew Mark Bauer when he was the High Alpha at Cal State Fullerton.

As did I – because I’d hang with the guys at Fullerton during the summers.

Interestingly enough, Mark had come up to North Dakota as an ELC while I was the Pi up there as had Joe Hayes. I was going to have dinner with Mark and Joe and they had a current ELC who had just Phillip Kocurek / Phillip’s Photography

rder of Merit recipient John Gezelius (M 1082) and the editor first met at a Los Angeles area regional alumni reception held at the home of Emmy and Academy Award-winning make-up designer Michael Westmore in 2007. (An article about the event was featured in the Spring, 2007 Beta-Rho Bulletin.) Their paths crossed again at other regional alumni receptions, and the plot thickened. Career-wise, Brother Gezelius’ has specialized in contract law and in recent years has focused on elder law issues. However, his background in international immigration matters has taken him to the Far East where he has kept an office in Shanghai. Thanks to his expertise as a High Pi, Brother Gezelius has helped to rejuvenate and even re-establish some chapters, but he also closed down one or two when necessary. It also turns out that Brother Gezelius holds the distinction of being part of an investigative team that discovered the burial site of the fraternity’s founder, Warren A. Cole, on June 13, 2006 a few miles outside of Swansea, Mass. (An article about the search appeared in the December, 2006 Cross & Crescent on page 8.) He also revealed the conflict that has festered for forty years with the Lambda Chi alumni at the UC Berkeley chapter. The day after Brother Gezelius attended the editor’s 25th wedding anniversary party on June 30, they chatted at Brother Childs’ mother-in-law’s home in the Del Webb Sun City retirement community of Palm Desert. He is 56.

Could you describe what it is you do professionally? You have what I would consider a rarefied experience as an attorney.

Well, in real life I am a lawyer, and I have a practice that’s evolving from estate planning where we argued about who gets the teapots, and what do we do with the cat. From that I had some work develop in the international area. I’m starting to do some work now dealing with international business immigration. It is possible to invest money in the United States to create jobs and obtain a visa, which leads to a green card. There are some attorneys that are doing it with varying degrees of success. I like the work. It’s interesting. I get to travel a little bit. And given that I’m only doing that type of immigration work, I can focus my energies on it, and I can do a better job of taking care of the clients that way. I will be traveling to India it looks like in late August or early September and do some client development work, and it could prove to be a lot of fun over the next few years. Life’s too short to spend it cooped up in an office in a building with a desk and a terminal, and a cup of cold coffee.

What would be considered a standout case of something you’ve done in this arena in the last few years?

It wouldn’t be that sort of work; it’s very mundane. I was a part, about twenty years ago, of the largest single contract dispute in history. I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time and I’d completed 10

Spring / Summer 2012

been at North Dakota and I wanted to find out how the guys did. His name was Bob Current. So all four of us had dinner over in Fullerton and somebody asked about my job search. I replied that I had received an offer from Texas Instruments and I was going to take it. Somebody asked where, and I said Lubbock. Well, all three of them started looking at each other, kind of like gophers with their heads on swivels. There had been a membership review at Lubbock that had cut the number of Sigma-Nu Zeta from 35, 36 members down to three actives and three associates, and they were going to fire the High Pi. In today’s world they would’ve just closed the chapter. In the world as it existed then they kept the chapter open, and they went looking for a Pi. I had just finished four years as the High Pi at North Dakota, and I was available. We discussed it briefly. When I walked

candidly, I think, they may have been taking some steroids. I can’t prove that, but it got to the point where we had to close the chapter.

Subsequently, I was on the housing corporation for [UC] Riverside, which closed because of risk management problems.

When did Riverside close?

Riverside closed about eighteen months ago. What happened at Riverside: they had a couple of non-official chapter houses. It’s not a chapter house, but the charter hangs on the wall.

A house of unrelated live-ins that functions like a fraternity house?

Yeah. And one of them was located next door to an individual who was a very close friend with the University President for UC Riverside. They continually had some loud parties that were not sanctioned, and they got closed for being a nuisance. I was on their housing corporation at the time. Bob Koch was their High Pi. Are you currently a High Pi anywhere?

While I’m on the housing corporation at Cal, I suppose you could refer to me as a minister without portfolio. I’m a trained High Pi with no chapter.

What’s going on now that is so much fun—and it’s one of the neat things that you can do without a formal assignment—we have a colony starting this fall at Texas Tech University. As you recall I was the Pi there for a while. And it was a challenge because I am not a West Texan. I’m a Californian and it didn’t go over well.

It turns out though that we have a group of men that appeared out of nowhere at Texas Tech University: a group that started at about 30.

Now it’s around 21, and these are men that were looking for something in a fraternity, and didn’t like what they saw. Some of them pledged other fraternities and either got cut, or they voluntarily left because they figured out that this was not what they were looking for. And they started doing some research and got on the Internet. Then they came across Lambda Chi Alpha and the True Brother Program.

Apparently, they liked what they saw. This group sort of self-selected itself. They have some common ideals; they have some common goals. They uniformly have got good grades. They’re about evenly split between the DFW—Dallas-Ft. Worth area— and Houston. They are all bright men. Now what they did, after they looked up Lambda Chi Alpha on the Internet, they found out we did not have a chapter at Texas Tech. But somebody found out that we had a chapter there in the past. So this is perhaps an example of social media at its best.

They went onto Facebook and they searched around, wandered around Facebook and found a small alumni group of Texas Tech Lambda Chi Alpha alumni. And they said, “You don’t know us, but we are a group, and we are interested in Lambda Chi Alpha. Tell us something about them.” And the people on the Facebook group did.

And then the guy from the interest group said, “There are 21 of us.

Who should we call?” Then somebody said, “Well, our headquarters is in Indianapolis.” And the second reply was, “There’s a guy in California named John. Why don’t you get a hold of him?” And they did. I got a message from somebody I had never heard of which was immediately followed by a flurry of messages from the Texas Tech alumni that I did know, or at least knew of me. And they said, “We’ve had somebody in Lubbock who lives there meet these kids, and he thinks they’re pretty good. What do we do now?” This was our alumni asking. And I replied, “Well, I have to be in Albuquerque next week. I’ll add two days to the trip, and I’ll drive over to Lubbock and I’ll meet these kids.” And I did. I flew to Albuquerque and did what I had to do. Then I set sail across the New Mexico plains, got to Lubbock, and had dinner with a couple of the local Lambda Chi alumni—one of whom was an undergrad when I was there—and three

John Gezelius with Mark Bauer in 2007.

out of that restaurant in Fullerton, I was the new High Pi at Texas Tech, but they didn’t know about it. I showed up three days later and went to a chapter meeting, and the undergraduates didn’t know I was the new High Pi. But the transition was made, and I spent four years, from December ’82 ‘til the spring of ’86 as Pi at Texas Tech. And we went from three actives and three associates, again, to close to 40 men.

That chapter operated up until ’99 when it closed for low numbers.

At that point, I went to law school, wound up on the East Coast, was on a couple of the alumni advisory boards, did a little bit of work with George Washington [University].

Upon my return to California, I became the High Pi at Cal State Fullerton. Unfortunately, we had to close that chapter. They did not get along well or play well with others.

What year was that?

We closed them in 2006.

That’s too bad.

Yeah. They had recruited a number of men who were not the types we would want within the bond. And they were not going to play by our rules.

It sounds like my chapter in the early ‘80s and late ‘90s.

Mm hmm. It happens. You get one or two poor recruiting classes.

Poor as in not necessarily numbers but poor as in the quality of men that you recruited. A year later, they’re the ones running the place, and it just drives it into the ground. These were guys that wanted to fight for the frat. By that I don’t mean defend the values, but square off with the TKEs in the middle of the street.

It happens to just about everybody at one point or another.

Yeah, this was particularly violent. We had some people who, quite Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

11

John Gezelius Interview of the kids from the interest group. After dinner, when handshakes, thank yous and goodbyes were said, I turned to a guy I knew, a brother by the name of John Hilton, who had been an undergrad when I was the Pi. I said, “John, these guys are the real deal.”

Following that I wrote a note to Drew Hunter, the Grand High Alpha, and a note to Bill Farkas, our executive vice president, and said, “There is an interest group at Tech. I don’t know much about them, but from the three guys I met, I think they are the real deal. If we don’t do something now, we are going to lose them, and we don’t want to do that.”

Apparently Headquarters agreed, because they sent Nick Zuniga, who is now the director of chapter services who at that time was, I believe, the assistant for Greek Life at Texas A&M. They sent him to Lubbock with one of the student members of the Grand High Zeta.

They in turn met the interest group and agreed with me that these guys were, in fact, the real deal. At that point Nick was transitioning into the position of director of chapter services. And with everyone in agreement, apparently the question became, “Okay, they’re the real deal, they’re good guys, we like them. Now what do we do?” Because Texas Tech had gone from not existing on anybody’s radar to “we need to go and we need to go now.” And Headquarters made a decision to not just put the Texas Tech group into the expansion queue, but to move them to position #2, so that they will be taken care of this fall. We have gone from absolutely nothing to look out, we’re coming in three months.

As a corollary to that, the interest group would like to send some people to the General Assembly. The Texas Tech alumni came to the conclusion that it would be a sign of affirmation if the alumni helped defray the expense of the kids going to the General Assembly. So we started raising the money. We have had to scrub the membership list for Texas Tech because our hard copy mailing list hasn’t been looked at since the chapter closed. As you recall, the Cross & Crescent goes out electronically now, so we don’t have the returned copies to update the mailing list. And if we send out one mailing from the Foundation a year, they only forward mail for six months. So, unless we have the timing right, we lose people.

Since I’m the Beta-Rho communications guy, I scrub the list pretty frequently.

Yeah, we are doing the first scrub on that list in ten years. My office in California became a newsletter mailing facility. My goal was I’d send 50 a day. We prepared a letter and enclosed a sheet so that you could write down any changes to your address, and it was a plea for money with a self-addressed stamped envelope. We know that there are, give or take, 220 Texas Tech alumni that we can find out of their precisely 300 initiates. And of that we’ve raised about $1,500 to help defray the costs to these kids. From an absolute dead stop you haven’t heard of us to you want to send some money. And the generosity of those brothers from Texas Tech that have contributed is astounding to me. The General Fraternity may be kicking in some money to get them there. And now three Texas Tech alumni have decided they want to go to GA, and they haven’t had a presence at General Assembly since they were closed in 1999.

Are you going to the General Assembly?

Well, I’ll be at General Assembly. I’m on the Constitution Committee, so I’ve kinda gotta be there.

The exciting thing about these guys from Texas Tech is that these guys have gone from nowhere to, as Casey Kasim would say, “No. 2 with a bullet.”

The big challenge they have right now at Tech is a tug between

what I want to call the progressive alumni that realize the fraternity has changed since 1985, and the ones that don’t. The West Texas guys that want to relive what they did, and the guys that say, this has changed and we have to move forward. And that’s a big challenge.

That’s going to be the cat herding part of this. I’m not worried about the undergrads. I think that they’ve got their act together. It’s the alumni that we have to throw a net around. We’ll see.

They’re having their organizing meeting for their alumni association on Homecoming. Ideally, they will all be sober. We have one of their alumni who can handle their incorporation paperwork for their alumni association because they will be in the fundraising business to help support the undergraduates. So they need to be able to get a bank account, and in order to do that they’ll need tax I.D. numbers. To get that, you need to be an entity.

So that’s taken care of, and we’ll be working on that. But Texas Tech is exciting. It’s an old campus, but Texas has decided to spend a lot of money there. And they’re going to increase the campus enrollment to 40,000 full-time.

The university administration was a little standoffish at first when the interest group approached them. But when our staff members approached them and said, “These guys are the real deal,” they said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do, Lambda Chi Alpha. We allow two people [chapters] to come on per semester. We will tell one of the chapters that we had told that they could come on in the fall—we’ll tell them to wait ‘til the spring.” So we’re not just jumping our queue, we’re jumping the university’s queue. So Texas Tech wants us there, and that’s cool.

You mentioned earlier about finding something at Headquarters that was quite valuable.

What happened… because I was not a High Pi, and was looking for something to do, I wound up on one of the standing committees.

We have a couple of standing committees that are specified in the constitution and stat code. One of them is emblems and rituals. The second is the committee on the constitution. And it exists, of course, between General Assemblies to take care of those matters that are going to have to be addressed with respect to legislation and rules and proposals and that kind of stuff.

12

Spring / Summer 2012

I had some questions on the constitution and how it became the document that it is. Our governing documents are twice as large as anybody else’s. I wanted to find the story that everybody can get by with ten pages and we need twenty. Or if they get by with fifty, why do we need 110 to do the same thing? So I went back to Headquarters and was researching old copies of the constitution, old minutes from General Assemblies because they do keep minutes from the meetings.

I spent a couple of days, and it was actually during Hurricane Katrina, and although Indianapolis is a long way from New Orleans, it was raining cats and dogs the whole time. So it kept me in the building from about 9 in the morning ‘til 4 in the afternoon, and I was back there for two or three days. I was down in an area they call the mezzanine, which is really an area beneath the staircase that was sort of the fraternity’s attic. If they didn’t know where to put it, they’d stuff it in the mezzanine. And they had filing cabinets down in the mezzanine. Well, I was looking around for notes from General Assemblies so that I could get a feel on how we evolved and developed this document. And the filing system is not really very good. And down in the basement, in the mezzanine, underneath the stairs—kind of like where Harry Potter lived in the cupboard—I was looking through a filing cabinet and in some records dating from 1964, and they were questions about reimbursement for postage, I found a black lab notebook, one of those bound lab notebooks you might see if you’re a science guy. And on the front of it, written in crayon, was “LCA Const.” And it caught my eye because whatever it was, it shouldn’t be filed in with expense reports from 1964. And I opened it, and the pages were very fragile and very yellowed. And on the front page, it read as I recall correctly, “Constitution of the LCA”, and it was dated 1909. It was the original handwritten constitution.

I took it upstairs and I showed it to “Biff” Holloway and I said, “Biff, would you please get Bill?” And I was holding it behind my back. “I think Bill wants to see something. Get him up here.” So John Holloway [the former director of chapter services] called Bill Farkas, and Bill came upstairs. I took it from behind my back and said, “Guys, I found this in the basement,” and I held it out. They looked at it and said, “What is it?” I said, “Well, it appears to be the constitution from Lambda Chi Alpha written in 1909 by Warren Cole.” We all looked over it, and, if you recall when you were a child, looking at a cartoon, occasionally they would have something called an “ahooga moment.” And the character who was surprised, his head would go up and down like a Jack-in-the-box, his eyes would come out on springs, and a horn would go ahooga! That’s kind of what we had in Holloway’s office when we saw this. It was the constitution, the first one that Cole did. It’s now in the library at Headquarters under glass.

Biff joked that I would get a permanent mezzanine pass after that.

It’s amazing what we have at Headquarters. They have a set of Theta Kappa Nu ritual robes. They have the Theta Kappa Nu ritual that you may read at any time. Part of the deal with the merger was that we would never perform it, but you may read it. We’ve got charters, we have a fez just as they have in the old photo taken in Pennsylvania. Two of them are known to exist. I found one on Ebay and gave it to the fraternity. But we have all sorts of stuff in the mezzanine, and we’re all welcome to look at it because it’s not their stuff—it’s our stuff! And how can they keep us from looking at our stuff? And the answer is, they can’t. All you have to do is give them a call and say, “I’m going to be here. I’d like to look at some of the artifacts. And they will assign an intern to you. Odds are he’s an undergraduate at Butler who will be your den mother and your host.

And they will let you look and paw and sniff and feel and taste to Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

your heart’s content.

What was the divisive issue that alienated many of the UC Berkeley alumni concerning the chapter house on the north side of campus?

In our conversation with dealing with alumni, we have a challenge at Cal, and it stems from our leaving the house on the north side of campus in 1972. Forty years later the wound is still there and it’s still raw. The back story: at one time the University of California chapter houses were located on both the north and south sides of campus. In the sixties fraternities started to move to smaller quarters on the south side of campus. The houses on the north side were considerably larger. For example, our house would sleep 60, and we had a dining room for 60—and a grand piano. It’s a Baldwin. Finally, it reached the point where there was one fraternity left on the north side of campus, and it was Lambda Chi Alpha. We had to arrange a trade with the Cal Band. We needed a chapter house, but we could not fill a 60-man house. So we traded property with the Cal Band and got some cash out of the deal. We have alumni who have refused to have anything to do with the fraternity until we return to the true home of Lambda Chi Alpha, which is the home on North Side. The fact that it is a mile-and-a-half from anybody else and we cannot fill it with 60 men doesn’t seem to faze them. They are still caught up in the fifties when, if you had less than 60 people, you just weren’t a fraternity.

And their standard answer is, “If you only move back to North Side, all of your problems will be gone.”

The (UC Berkeley, or Cal) chapter went through a period where it didn’t exist. What period are we talking about, and what kind of a house does the chapter have now?

Right now there is nothing at Cal. Cal was closed for low numbers at the General Assembly in Orlando in 2006. They re-colonized a couple of years ago, and the colony failed to meet two of the 14 chartering standards. They had 32 men instead of 40, and their GPA was two-tenths or three-tenths of a point too low. The Grand High Zeta voted in April to close the colony. They are going to do an appeal at the General Assembly later this month in Arizona, and that will determine whether we have any presence on the Berkeley campus at all. If the undergraduates are unsuccessful in their appeal, I foresee that we will not be on the Cal campus for at least a decade. That’s based on information that I have received that I consider to be reliable that we will be gone, effectively, for ten years.

The Grand High Zeta’s decision on Cal: was it just based on low numbers, or a combination of things?

It was not meeting the colony standard for chartering, which required 40 men, and the GPA [issue]. I think there were some extrinsic factors, which we can’t control. The University is not displaying the typical Midwestern goodwill towards fraternities.

It sounds like (some of the same problems we’ve had with the administration over the years at) my school…

Well, this is a personal thought. I think that the Fraternity over the past ten years has become very Midwestern and Southerncentered. If it isn’t Midwestern or if it isn’t Southern, they don’t understand it, and they would just rather not deal with it. We may see some changes in the next year or two [in their thinking about chapter expansion] based on recent personnel changes at Headquarters.

Postscript: Texas Tech sent three undergrads and three alumni to the GA in July. They are having their first initiation in the spring. They currently have 27 members. Cal won their appeal and was given another year to attract enough members to re-charter, but problems persist. Neither China nor India were fertile grounds for his law practice in 2012.

13

30 Years Ago: Road Trip to the 39th General Assembly

Departure time at the Merridy House. Front row, from left: Noel Saenz, Jim Emmerson, Gary Thomas, Rick Childs. Standing: Jeff Gardner, Roger Marte, Mark Green, Bob Meadows, Jeff Friedman, Jerry Herskowitz and Mark Lichen.

There and Back Again

J

“

ourney with us to the back roads of America, if you will. Let’s go!” —Jim Emmerson, on an audio recording somewhere in Wyoming north of Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1982.

Thirty years ago this summer, 11 brothers from Beta-Rho signed on to travel for 17 days around the U.S. in an RV. Each participant paid about $85 for gas and the rental costs, plus General Assembly registration fees and accommodations for three nights in Nashville, Tenn.

It was probably the cheapest two-and-a-half week 5,500-mile sightseeing trip any of them could have ever taken.

Everyone was pleasantly shocked when Brother Emmerson was able to procure his parents’ motorhome for the trip. The rental fee for the RV was next to nothing.

“I was amazed they said ‘yes’ when I asked them,” Brother Emmerson recalled.

It was the largest delegation that Beta-Rho had ever sent to a General Assembly, although the previous year’s attendance at the Leadership Seminar and the 36th General Assembly in Roanoke, Va. in 1976 came close.

Aside from Brothers Emmerson and Meadows, the group consisted of then-High Alpha Jeff Friedman, Rick Childs, Jeff Gardner, Mark Green, Jerry Herskovitz, Mark Lichen, Roger Marte, Noel Saenz and Gary Thomas.

Some of the brothers were veterans of previous road trips. This had been Brother Meadows’ third summer embarking on a road trip with fraternity brothers. He had driven back from the 38th General Assembly in 1980 that was held in Denver, Colo. with Brothers Childs and Thomas. The previous summer’s trip to the Leadership Seminar at Ball State in Muncie, Ind. (also by motorhome) had been undertaken by Brothers Meadows, Thomas, Emmerson, Green, and Herskovitz, plus Mike Bennett, George Raquel and Dave Stonefield.

Brothers remembered how much they appreciated getting the chance to travel to Nashville together. As Brother Herskovitz observed, “It was a great experience to see the country.”

The delegation left the Merridy House, the chapter’s rented private residence that year, after dinner on Friday evening, Aug. 6. They drove non-stop and arrived at Carlsbad Caverns, N.M. the next day, but not before getting lost after having breakfast in Tucson, Ariz.

“One of the amazing things [about the trip] was that we drove all the way to Carlsbad Caverns and got there so late that we sat outside [in an amphitheater] and watched the bats 14

come out [of the cave],” Brother Meadows said.

The cave tour had closed two hours earlier.

Another overnight drive later, they wound up in San Antonio, Texas. Tours of the Lone Star Brewery and the Alamo ensued. Several hours later they stopped over at Gilley’s in Pasadena just east of Houston, a huge honky tonk (which burned down in 1989) that had been immortalized in the John Travolta film Urban Cowboy. After several braved mechanical bull rides and managed to find a way to sleep in an RV built for six, they continued on Interstate 10 to New Orleans, La. where they listened in on a Preservation Hall Jazz Band session in the French Quarter on Aug. 9 and relaxed at Pat O’Brien’s tavern until well past midnight.

The next day it was on to Knoxville, Tenn. where the World’s Fair awaited. The fair’s theme that year was “Energy in Motion.”

Considering that there has not been a World’s Fair held in the U.S. since 1984, the guys weren’t enticed that much by the pavilions.

The entourage took “this once in a lifetime chance to visit a World’s Fair, and we pretty much spent our entire time there in the beer garden singing songs,” Brother Meadows said.

On Aug. 12 the brothers checked in at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville for the 39th General Assembly and Leadership Seminar.

Brother Meadows went to the legislative sessions as the chapter’s delegate while the others attended various educational seminars.

Brother Childs set up a display of 11x14 photographs of fraternity life that had been shown earlier that year at CSUN’s student union called 24 by Beta-Rho 83. The chapter picked up awards for its publications and alumni program.

After the closing banquet, several of the group took advantage of the free tickets that were offered for the night’s live radio performance of the Grand Ole Opry at the resort complex’s theater.

While none of the Beta-Rho group could recall who performed at the Grand Ole Opry on Aug. 14, Fayfare’s Opry Blog reported that country legend Ernest Tubb emceed the program for the last time that night. He had been hosting shows for the Opry since 1943.

Other country icons hosting and performing were singer and fiddler Roy Acuff and reputed “father of bluegrass music” Bill Monroe.

Each driver had memorable experiences at the wheel of the motorhome, and Brother Marte recalled a sight that was his alone. It Spring / Summer 2012

Gary Thomas

However, the RV inexplicably conked out just over the pass north of the park entrance.

“That was the place where our vehicle was having the altitude problem,” Brother Emmerson said. “It was just freezing where we were.”

Just about everyone became unnerved until Brother Meadows resolved the problem by sticking a pencil in the RV carburetor’s butterfly valve so it could take in more air.

A little under an hour of the journey’s random conversations was recorded during the trip, Brother Meadows recalled, including the incident with the carburetor problem. They were taped on one of the two Sony Walkmans (cassette players) that had been brought along, the iPods of their day. He had converted his cassette to an mp3 recording, and it captured some of the audio while the group was stranded on Highway 89 and camping at Yellowstone.

“A lot of it was just driving along [with us] trying to write our version of the theme song to ‘Gilligan’s Island,’” Brother Meadows mentioned.

With so much time to kill watching the scenery while driving along the interstates and highways, listening to music on the Walkmans took on a special significance. The RV had a radio, but no one ever played it. Tapes and headphones were preferred. Brother Meadows was particularly enamored with a cassette of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Live in Central Park” album.

A two-day layover in Yellowstone afforded the brothers time to hike on the trails and watch geysers like Old Faithful. On the way out of the park on Aug. 20, several of them ventured out of the RV onto a field to photograph a herd of bison. Just after sunset, the group pulled over for a view of the Grand Tetons after stopping for dinner in Jackson Hole.

En route to Bryce Canyon National Park, a couple of the passengers happened to awaken and notice that a deputy sheriff had pulled over the RV at around 2 a.m. in a small town while Brother Marte, the delegation’s official designated driver, was at the wheel.

“The funny thing was, it was in [Evanston], Wyoming,” he recalled. “I lived there for a summer when I was working for a lumber camp. When I was getting off the freeway, there wasn’t a stop sign when I lived there [the one that got him a ticket]. It wasn’t a big thing.”

No one seemed to mind that the last stopover before heading home was Las Vegas. A couple of the little sisters drove out to meet the group at Circus Circus, and several enjoyed a dip in the hotel’s pool before disappearing into the casino for several hours. Homeward bound and practically broke, the group pulled out of the hotel’s parking lot before 1 a.m. and headed back to Northridge just as a thunderstorm descended on the city from the southeast.

Retracing such a trip has eluded everyone who took part in this journey.

“To this day I always think about this,” Brother Thomas confessed. “That was a time in our lives when we could actually do that. We could hop in a motorhome and see the country.

Think about how many states we went through. None of us can do that today.”

Courtesy of Jeff Friedman

was the night after the GA in Kentucky or Tennessee.

“The one thing that I remember the most that just awed me: we’re driving down the interstate, and everyone else was asleep but me,” he said. “On one side of the highway was this beautiful sunrise... and on the other side of the highway was this raging storm. It was like looking down the highway with a dividing line. Beauty and just violent.”

The group’s longest commute took place after checkout on the 15th: Nashville to Mt. Rushmore, Black Hills, S.D., with stops at the tourist trap Wall Drug and a crystal cave tour south of Rapid City. At the visitors’ viewing area on Aug. 17, Brother Childs came up with a stunt to mimic the faces of Mt. Rushmore’s four presidents and took the position of George Washington on the left flank. Brothers Meadows, Marte and Saenz played along as Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, respectively.

An unscheduled stopover at the remote national monument Little Big Horn in Montana on Aug. 18 resulted when Brothers Childs and Thomas decided to change the route after the rest of the group had called it a night.

(Brother Meadows revisited the site two years ago.) Although that rankled most of the guys (and took them a hundred miles out of the way), once everyone toured the battlefield and museum, there were few complaints.

“I could remember next morning with everyone waking up and saying, ‘Where are we?’” Brother Marte said.

“It was very cool, very Twilight-Zoney,” Brother Emmerson added. “We were the only people there.”

After Little Big Horn, Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park beckoned.

Thirsting for adventure. Front row, from left: Jeff Gardner, Rick Childs, Gary Thomas, Jim Emmerson and Jeff Friedman. The Mt. Rushmore stunt, from left: Brothers Childs, Meadows, Marte and Saenz.

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha International Fraternity

15

B BETA ETA-R -RHO HO B BULLETIN ULLETIN Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity P.O. Box 280311 Northridge, CA 91328-0311

Address Service Requested

Editor’s Journal One of the more amusing mysteries of Lambda Chi Alpha is the enduring popularity of the song “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf.

If there were a contender for chapter theme song, MCR would probably take top honors by a landslide vote.

As far as the chapter goes, “Magic Carpet Ride’s” popularity started to become particularly noticeable at parties and formals sometime around the chapter’s early 21st century reincarnation.

There it was again on Sept. 14: it was playing during a Netflix movie that was being shown at the tail end of the last official rush event of the fall semester in the Lindley House TV room.

I first came into contact with the song in 1968. After hearing it played on the radio, I splurged and bought Steppenwolf’s first two albums at a Moby Disc record store on Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys and played them almost nonstop for a month.

Whenever “Magic Carpet Ride” is played at chapter occasions, heads will bob to Goldy McJohn’s three-chord keyboard riff and someone will nearly always sing along with some of John Kay’s whimsical lyrics.

When I posted a draft of an earlier version of this article on the Facebook Beta-Rho alumni page, a couple of brothers weighed in with their assessments on the fraternity’s obsession with the song.

Neil Sanchez wrote that MCR is “also used by other chapters.

Both the Stead Leadership Seminar and General Assembly I attended in the summers of 2007 and 2008 used the song at the culminating banquet. I’m sure that it has been used subsequently at [later] times.

I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos posted from events such as the Centennial Gala and from other chapters I have Facebook affiliations with. “[I] haven’t heard of the GA passing a resolution or appropriate motion to adopt it as our song in our annals.”

About an hour after Brother Sanchez commented about the song on Facebook, Tim Pena added his two cents worth.

“MCR is about the most ‘official unofficial’ fraternity song out there. Neil, you’re right about it being used at other chapters, conclaves, general assemblies and the like. Whenever Lambda Chis gather, it’s played. I remember it being played in my earliest days as an AM in 1985. But I do recall (I think) from the GA in Memphis when I was on the IRT the first time back in 1987 that they (the general fraternity bigwigs) made a point of telling the entire group that John Kay of Steppenwolf was not a Lambda Chi and that the song had nothing to do with the fraternity. That was over 25 years ago, and my guess is that the general fraternity gave up and left it at what it should have been—a non-issue, and the tune’s been used ever since.”

Official song or not, it still baffles me as to why “Magic Carpet Ride” maintains such a mystique with the brothers at Beta-Rho, but there it was playing again while a grizzled looking guy riding on a motorcycle was being projected on a giant sheet. Only this time it wasn’t one of the Harley-riding anti-heroes of my youth. It was a mock Thunderbirds-style marionette chasing bad guys in the gross-out comedy Team America.

Last night I held Aladdin’s lamp So I wished that I could stay Before the thing could answer me Well, someone came and took the lamp away...

“Magic Carpet Ride” first hit the airwaves after the band’s sophomore album was released. Despite its close approximation in feel to their classic (and best known) counter-culture anthem “Born to Be Wild” from their self-titled debut album that attained cult immortality in the Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper biker classic film Easy Rider in 1969, it didn’t find a home in a movie soundtrack until Doug Limon’s 1999 film Go. 

B BETA ETA-R -RHO HO B BULLETIN ULLETIN Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity Spring / Summer 2012 edition

Beta-Rho Zeta of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity 2012 Alumni Loyalty Fund

The chapter’s alumni loyalty fund could use your first-time or continuing help! Newsletters are a vital part of keeping in touch with what’s going on with the chapter and our alumni. Efforts to discontinue a printed version of this newsletter and make it into an e-zine on a web page has made printed copies of these publications an endangered species due to the difficulty we have had sustaining it with alumni donations. Digital PDF file copies of nearly every Beta-Rho newsletter since 1973 are already posted at Dropbox.com where they can be downloaded. If you would like to gain access to this members-only website’s user list, contact the editor, Rick Childs, at (661) 948-3260 or rc4x4profit@verizon.net. Any financial support you could provide in these fiscally restrictive times would help.

Use the P.O. box address at the top of this page. Thank you in advance for any support that you can offer. And please, send your email address!

$25

$50

$ _____

16

$75

Name:

Address:

I’ve moved - new address New email address:

___________________________ Find me on Facebook ______________________________________ ______________________________________

City, State, Zip ______________________________________ Telephone

______________________________________