Our 175th Anniversary

The Founders first met in John T. McCarty's upstairs corner room in the boarding house known as "Fort Armstrong." The building was torn down in 1916 despite the Fraternity's efforts to purchase it.

Our 175th Anniversary

A Look Back to 1848 & Two Notable Anniversaries

The Founding

By Towner Blackstock (Davidson 1994), Historian

Happy birthday to Phi Gamma Delta! We celebrated 175 years on Monday, May 1. Transport yourself back for a moment to what it was like to live in 1848. Our Founders' fathers and grandfathers could recall the War of 1812, and perhaps the American Revolution, which concluded 65 years earlier. The U.S. had only 29 states (Wisconsin became #30 in May) and just in February had acquired a huge territory at the conclusion of the war with Mexico. About that time gold was found in the part of that territory called California. News wouldn't reach the States until August, setting the stage for 1849's Gold Rush. One of the millions who headed west for fortune and fame was Founder John T. McCarty. But that's for next year. Remarkably, May 1, 1848, also fell on a Monday night, at "precisely 9 PM" according to the time set at the Founders’ preliminary meeting of Saturday, April 22. We recognize May 1 as Founders Day because it was then that the constitution was adopted and signed, and the Fraternity was truly born. You can read these minutes in my new book, Alpha: The Minutes of Phi Gamma Delta's First Chapter. They tell us a lot about what happened and when, but perhaps don't tell us why. Why found a fraternity, when five of you are about to graduate in seven weeks?

The Founders were students, aged between 19 and 24, at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, PA. Presbyterians established Jefferson in 1802. It was tiny to us, just 200 students, but in 1848 it was among the ten largest colleges in the nation. Like all colleges of the day, the curriculum was classical: Greek and Latin, translating ancient authors and the Bible, plus some mathematics, Christianity, philosophy, and practical science. There were no organized athletics. The real heart of student activity and recognition (besides commencement) were the two literary societies: Franklin and Philo. Everyone joined one or the other. They functioned as student government, debate societies, had their own libraries (each exceeding the college's in size), and brought speakers to campus. The biggest event of the year next to commencement, the homecoming of the time, was the "Annual Contest" where champions from Franklin and Philo gave competing speeches, papers, and debate before judges. Each wanted his society to win.

And therein the stage is set. When the Founders met on April 22, it was after that night's Franklin Literary Society meeting. The Society was preparing to elect a new president, and a valedictorian to address the society before graduation. Now, our Founders were deeply involved in Franklin. They served in practically every committee or effort of note. They had ambitions for Franklin. They wanted the most capable students on that contest stage. You can imagine the turn of their conversations, determining to establish "a Society into which none but men of distinguished talents and acquirements, endued with a high sense of Honor and possessed of a laudable ambition... should be admitted...." Indeed! The best of the best.

A sub-plot to this: Jefferson didn't allow student organizations without the permission of the faculty on pain of expulsion. One fraternity existed there: Beta Theta Pi. Its members were secret, until they wore badges at commencement. This led to conspiracy theories and cloak-and-dagger antics. Wrote a Beta, "Every occurrence in college is blamed on a freak of the Betas." Some saw them as a manipulative cabal, unchristian and undemocratic, just as the "Know Nothings" characterized Freemasonry in the previous generation. The sentiment against secrecy was strong in the American mind of that time.

The day following the Founders’ first meeting was Sunday, the only day classes were not held at Jefferson College, and thus the chance for Sam Wilson and James Elliot to work on their constitution... in between attending the two church services required of every student.

Their idea was already being applied. Friday, April 28, Franklin Literary Society elected McCarty as its president and Elliot as Valedictorian. Three weeks later, in their election for next year's Contest debaters, declaimers, and essayists, the slate backed by our heroes carried the day. As McCarty wrote, "three cheers, result of union!"

The achievement of the Founders goes beyond just political control of Franklin Literary Society. It is hard to overstate its magnitude. In seven weeks, six men built a fraternity from scratch: Identified values, created a name, wrote a constitution, designed and produced a badge, recruited twelve other men (double their number!), and even established a second chapter, at Washington College, about ten miles away. What more could anyone have asked for?

This is not to say the Founders built perfectly. Sam Wilson himself admitted they had no experience in writing a constitution, having only the Franklin Literary Society constitution as a model. And that wasn't designed for a national, multi-chapter organization.

Thus in 1852, the Fraternity faced two crises: In the spring, the chapter at the University of North Carolina withdrew in a dispute over the constitution, probably over the fact that the Grand Chapter (Alpha at Jefferson) held all power. That fall, the Grand Chapter itself was near death, with just three members. Imagine how low and lonely those three felt. What kept them afloat? What saved the chapter? The graduate brothers. They provided the leadership to redesign the constitution over the course of several years. They provided support to help rebuild the chapter's membership. They provided guidance that kept the chapter hewn to the values, and not compromising for the sake of survival. In two years membership had recovered to twenty, large for that decade.

Therein are lessons for the ages. In correspondence and recollections, brothers from the early decades of Alpha Chapter agree: “We sought the best men we could get. Evidence of future prospect was our aim.” And was it then any surprise that men of ambition, capability, and talent returned to support and build the Fraternity?

Consider then the constitution by the Founders on May 1, 1848. In its preamble, they wrote of friendship among men "of like inclinations, pursuits, habits, and education." They wrote how aspiration led to the development and maturation of man's "noblest faculties," and led to "high station" in life. "Association brings into action all the finer feelings of the heart: Love, friendship, benevolence, and likewise calls forth the noble aspirations of the soul, and urges man onward to improvement, to fame, and to glory." What words!

And here is the crux of it: "We believe that a select and chosen union of honor, talent, and energy... is the surest means of calling forth all the powers of the mind, directing their application to the most useful and worthy objects, of accomplishing great and important results, of elevating the condition of man, and of forming the most enduring, lasting, and binding attachments." To this purpose we remain true today.

Brothers, together, we fulfil our Founders’ vision to build a stronger fraternity, university, and society. That is how we get to the next 175 years. And so a toast: Philotes, Glukutate, Dunasteia: Friendship the Sweetest Influence, not for college days alone!

100 Years Ago - 75th Anniversary

1923 was a landmark year for Phi Gamma Delta, and the 75th Ekklesia in Pittsburgh, called "that soul-satisfying event" by one brother, was its epicenter. More brothers registered than any previous convention, perhaps buoyed by the promise of Calvin Coolidge's attendance (see sidebar). They gathered at Hotel Schenley, site of the 1898 Ekklesia. Besides the usual receptions, ball, banquet, luncheons, and a baseball game (Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Cincinnati Reds), the brothers made a pilgrimage to Canonsburg and then Washington, Pennsylvania, where the model initiation was held along with a buffet dinner.

The Ekklesia's standout accomplishments still reverberate: Expansion to Canada with the approval of Toronto's petition for a charter, and the re-adoption of the Founders' badge, which we still wear as the single official badge of Phi Gamma Delta membership. The installation at Toronto occurred that December. With it, Phi Gamma Delta reached 66 chapters and some 22,000 initiates.

In August 1898, 159 brothers gathered at the Hotel Schenley in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for an historic convention. The 50th General Convention enacted sweeping legislative changes, creating the Ekklesia form of government and the Archonate.

Calvin Coolidge (Amherst 1895) did not ascend to the American presidency in the usual way. The Vice President was at his father's home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, when a messenger awoke the household early on the morning of August 3, 1923, with news that President Harding had died. At 2:47 a.m. Coolidge's father, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office. Vice-President Coolidge was scheduled to attend the Ekklesia one month later, but President Coolidge had to cancel. He still made time for visiting brothers. For example, en route to Pittsburgh, Elmer Mason (California 1923) gave his card to a White House secretary with the note "Delegate from Delta Xi Chapter to the 75th Ekklesia." Within minutes he was ushered in to visit with the President. The following year, the Archons came to the White House to present the President with a new Founders’ badge, as readopted by the 1923 Ekklesia. "I am very glad to have this badge," he said. "My wife wears mine most of the time." Grace Coolidge was a charter member of Vermont's Pi Beta Phi chapter and as deeply interested in fraternity as was her husband. That same month, four brothers joined Coolidge at the White House to found Sires and Sons, the organization for fathers and sons who are both members of the Fraternity.

President Coolidge allowed the Xi Graduate Chapter to commission this portrait shown above for the new building of our New York Club. A copy was painted by Joseph E. Burgess (Syracuse 1914) and was put in our Washington headquarters in 1957. When the New York Club was closed in 1965, the original came to the headquarters and the copy was given to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, where it hangs today, labeled as a gift of Phi Gamma Delta. The original remains at our headquarters.

50 Years Ago - 125th Anniversary

The most significant event in Phi Gamma Delta in 1973 was the relocation of the International Headquarters from Washington, DC, to Lexington in June. The Fraternity’s central office had been in Washington for over 50 years, and since 1956 the Fraternity and the Educational Foundation had been headquartered in a five-story townhouse owned by the Foundation at 1757 N Street NW.

For some time prior to the move, the Fraternity’s leaders had been concerned with rising costs and declining safety in Washington. Additionally, the building was not designed for efficient office operation and was becoming costly to maintain. Further, the idea of a location more accessible to the majority of chapters appealed to rank-and-file members.

The process leading to the move was in three phases: first, the 1970 Ekklesia authorized the Archons to appoint a committee to examine the feasibility of moving the headquarters; second, that committee studied the matter and recommended that the headquarters be moved from Washington, and finally, a second committee, after studying potential sites within the central U.S., recommended Lexington. The city was within one day’s drive of over half of the undergraduate chapters and approximately 68% of the U.S. population, sat at the intersection of interstate highways 64 and 75, and was served by three major airlines. Lexington’s population at the time was approximately 180,000.

In June 1973, the headquarters was moved to leased space (3,600 square feet) on the third floor of an office building at 343 Waller Avenue, centrally located within the city and a short distance from the University of Kentucky. The move and the transition to the new location had their challenges. Most significant, none of the administrative (non-brother) staff in Washington chose to move to Lexington, requiring the hiring and training of nine new employees.

In 1973, the Fraternity moved its headquarters from Washington, DC, to Lexington. The first Lexington location was a leased space on the third floor of this building at 343 Waller Avenue (left).

In 1985, IHQ moved to its current location at 1201 Red Mile Road.

Under the leadership of Executive Secretary Bill Zerman (Michigan 1949), the entire staff adapted quickly to prepare for the 13th Fiji Academy on August 12-15 at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, 25 miles from Lexington. For the 450 attendees from 104 chapters and colonies, the highlight of the Academy was the keynote speaker

at the Model Pig Dinner, astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Eugene Cernan (Purdue 1956), who told the assembled brothers of his experience walking on the Moon the previous December as commander of the Apollo 17 space flight. Apollo 17 is still the last manned flight to the Moon.

The highlight of the 1973 Fiji Academy was the attendance of astronaut Gene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. To date, Gene Cernan is the last person to have walked on the moon.

Turmoil, then Optimism

On May 4, 1973, brothers gathered in Pittsburgh, approximately 20 miles from Canonsburg, to celebrate the 125th anniversary. Speaking to the assembled brothers, Archon President David Bland (Texas 1938) said, “We have just come through a period of about five or six years during which there has been upheaval around the world among our youth, and from campus to campus a great deal of turmoil. Thank God those days are apparently in the past. They took a toll of some of our chapters, but we have learned from those chaotic times, and we find today that Phi Gamma Delta is in a stronger position than it has ever been.”

Brother Bland was referring to the period of campus unrest during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during which the Fraternity lost five chapters on the West Coast and three in the Ivy League. This was attrition not seen since the Civil War, but Brother Bland’s optimism was wellfounded. In the previous two years, the Fraternity had installed six chapters, exceeding 100 chapters for the first time, and would install six more chapters in the next two years. Further, in the 1973-74 academic year, initiations of new members would increase 12% over the previous year.

Today - A New Model for Building Courageous Leaders

On May 1, 2022, as Phi Gamma Delta began its 175th year, the undergraduate chapters were closing an academic year that saw a return to normal after the major disruption of fraternal and campus life that began in March 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Since fall 2019, undergraduate membership in the Fraternity had declined approximately 14%. This was partially due to the impact of the pandemic on fraternity life, especially recruitment and retention of members. That impact had largely, if not completely, subsided, and undergraduates could expect normal campus conditions in fall 2022.

A second significant factor in the decline of undergraduate membership between 2019 and 2022 was the loss of 11 chapters, most due to hazing. This development presented a testing point and an opportunity to the undergraduate delegates who gathered in August in Washington, DC, for the 174th Ekklesia. The testing point came with the realization that efforts to eliminate hazing – focused on education and accountability and stretching back over 60 years – had not been effective enough and, further, that the power dynamic between brothers and pledges inherent in the pledging model hinders the development of friendships and makes it more difficult to prevent hazing.

The opportunity was a proposal from the Archons to eliminate pledging and adopt a New Model for recruiting and assimilating members and building courageous leaders. The New Model included the Growth System, a new approach to recruitment allowing a chapter to make a full evaluation of a prospect before inviting him to join, and Built to Lead, a multi-year member development framework giving brothers the tools for courageous leadership and engaging them throughout their undergraduate experience.

After extended, respectful debate, the delegates voted to adopt the Archons’ proposal, eliminating pledging effective July 1, 2024, and allowing chapters wishing to adopt the New Model before the effective date to do so. As of spring 2023, over 40% of chapters have chosen to be Early Adopters, and by fall 2023, two-thirds are expected to do so.

As brothers celebrate 175 years, the Fraternity is represented on 141 campuses (134 chapters and seven provisional chapters) with an undergraduate membership of 9,900 and an average chapter size of 73. With this sturdy base and a New Model, Phi Gamma Delta is well prepared for the journey toward 2048.

Resources & Archives

Resources for the 175th Anniversary of Phi Gamma Delta can be accessed at www.phigam.org/175.

There are many historical artifacts online at www.phigamarchives.org. These include thousands of chapter newsletters, photographs, composites, chapter house pictures, books, over 700 editions of The Phi Gamma Delta magazine, audio and video clips.

Would you like to help build out your chapter's online collection? Contact the Curator of Archives, Joe Weist (Rose-Hulman 1987), at jweist@gmail.com.

Coming Soon! We are pleased to announce that in summer 2023, we will launch a new history website which will include many new features. We will emphasize additional history materials for our chapters. We are happy to partner with HistoryIT on this exciting project.