5 minute read
Ever In Our Hearts
Remembering Past International President Katherine Doepke
By Kurt-Alexander Zeller, International President
Katherine Guldberg Doepke (Phi Beta, Minneapolis/ St. Paul Alumni) was one of the treasures of Mu Phi Epsilon, and her loss is deeply felt by all members of the Fraternity.
After a strong career of leadership at the local level in Minnesota, she joined the International Executive Board as International 3rd Vice President, serving under International President Lee Clements Meyer (Phi Xi, Austin Alumni) from 1989 to 1992. Lee held Katherine in high regard and remembered that she “was a loyal, hard-working member that I could depend would do her work very well and on time.
I appreciated her decision to establish the Doepke Award for Creative Programming, a much-needed encouragement and enhancement for chapter gatherings. She truly loved Mu Phi Epsilon.” At the end of Lee’s second term as International President, Katherine was elected to succeed her.
Katherine was International President from 1992 to 1995, which was a triennium of challenge and change for the fraternity, and she met both with a clear head, an optimistic smile and a steely glint of determination in her eye that one overlooked at one’s own risk. Katherine valued our Fraternity’s traditions, but she knew that it’s impossible to live in the golden past if you want to get to a rosy future, and during her tenure she tirelessly nudged the Fraternity to embrace change for the better.
As she presided over the 1995 convention, the Fraternity and its members began a national conversation about who we wanted to be and where we wanted to go, and she set in motion a process that led to a complete revision of the Fraternity’s bylaws and moved the Fraternity forward toward the 21st century.
Past International President Rosemary Ames (Omega, Boston Alumni) remembers that Katherine always especially valued the young people who would take Mu Phi Epsilon into the future, saying, “Hanging out with our Collegiates at conventions, one could see her joy and support shining through. I doubt any Collegiate that ever met her didn’t have a touch more pride in their Mu Phi membership after being with Katherine.” Katherine cultivated new ideas, new goals, new initiatives and new leaders.
I know this firsthand. It was Katherine and her 1st Vice President, Wilma Sheridan (Phi Lambda, Portland Alumni), who came up with the idea that the Fraternity needed standing rules as part of the bylaws overhaul Katherine started — and they decided they knew just who should be in charge of writing them: me.
I had quite enough to do as Pacific NW 3 District Director and had no intention of taking on another job. But I am not the only person who firmly made up his mind to say “no” to Katherine, only to have his voice somehow come out with “yes.”
Over time one thing led to another, from standing rule chair to bylaws chair to parliamentarian to International Executive Board to now Mu Phi Epsilon’s first male international president, and each step of the way, Katherine always gave me a big smile and said, “You’re going to be great!”
Which brings us to Katherine’s greatest superpower: encouragement. After she left office and joined the Fraternity’s Honorary Advisory Board as a past international president, all of Katherine’s successors could count on her encouragement. True, she would tell you exactly what she thought if you asked for advice, but once a course of action was determined and set in motion, she was always at the forefront of the cheerleaders; whether you’d taken her advice or not, she had a way of making you feel that the right thing had been done and that it was all going to be great.
Appropriately for someone who always embraced innovation and creativity and who embodied the Mu Phi Epsilon ideal of “Mu Phi for Life,” remaining active in her local alumni chapter in Minneapolis and hosting them at her retirement home just the week before her passing, Katherine for many years funded a Fraternity-wide award, named in her honor, for creativity in chapter programming; chapters all across the country have been touched by her generosity, and their members have been inspired by the programming and ideas that, but for the impetus of her foresight, might not have been part of their local experience. This is another of the ways that Katherine blessed and encouraged Mu Phi Epsilon members across the whole nation.
Katherine will be mourned and missed throughout the entire Fraternity, but most importantly, she will be remembered with love, admiration and gratitude. How fortunate we all have been to have enjoyed her leadership and her friendship!
Mu Phi Epsilon is a better and stronger organization because of the legacy of Katherine Doepke, and we hope that we will continue to live up to the confidence she had in us. In turn, we are confident that, as this sweet singer who liked to give her voice type as “fallen soprano” takes her place in the heavenly choir, she’s going to be great.
