Paragon
April 2023 (Founders Day Editition)
This
Upcoming Events
Saturday, April 29 - Founder's Day
Saturday, October 14 - Homecoming Event at the House
Happy Founders Day
64 years ago today, on April 29, 1959, two national Catholic fraternities, Phi Kappa, and Theta Kappa Phi, merged together to form Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. Happy Founder's Day!
Among the local chapters involved in the merger was the Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa at the Case Institute of Technology. This chapter was originally founded in the late 1930s as a local fraternity called Theta Psi Kappa. This local chapter joined Phi Kappa on May 31, 1941, and after the merger became the Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta. We have been a part of the university community ever since.
On Friday, April 21, the Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter conducted initiation at Eldred Hall. We are pleased to welcome seven new brothers to our unbroken 82-year tradition on campus.
The newest members of Phi Kappa Theta are shown here:
From left to right, our newly initiated brothers are: Anders White, Adam Gousie, Rohan Kohli, Ryan Thompson, Arnav Reddy, Carter Adams, and Callum Curtis.
Welcome brothers!
In our April issue, we discussed the oral tradition of our acquisition of the Phi Kappa Theta house at 11016 Magnolia. To recap, in that issue we said that as best we knew:
- Our first chapter residence was a rented(?) space somewhere on Cornell Road which has since been torn down and replaced with something else.
- At some point in the 1950s(?), we purchased 11016 Magnolia.
- Brother Ernie Schmidt helped arrange the purchase of the house, or he helped make a lot of the mortgage payments for the house, or quite possibly both.
We then asked anyone who had more information to reach out to us. We got some very informative emails from three brothers:
- Tom Sweeney ‘58 was a freshman in the fall of 1954 and pledged in the spring semester of 1955.
- John Kobak ‘58 was a freshman in the fall of 1954 and pledged in the spring semester of 1955.
- Ross Hackel ‘57 was a freshman in the fall 1953 and pledged his freshman year. In addition to his email, he sent along images of pages about Phi Kappa fraternity from the yearbooks for 1954 through 1957.
The following history is based on the emails from Tom, John, and Ross. Thank you, brothers, for your contribution to our collective memory. Both Tom and Ross feature in this photo from the 1957 yearbook of the Phi Kappa chapter officers.
After the April work weekend, a group of alumni and actives swung by the Alumni Center on campus, and happened to find an assortment of old yearbooks from the 1940s and early 1950s. They took photos of all the Phi Kappa pages, which helped fill in some details about the Cornell House. Many thanks go to Ken Nagano, Steve DeBrosse, Eugene Choi, Dave Rowan, Tim Kill, Will Woodfint, Max Sun and Smyan Thota for finding this information.
If you have any additional information about our acquisition of the house, please send them along to secretary@ohioalphabeta.org! And watch for our next memory prompt in the next edition of the Paragon!
Our original location was a rented house located at 2077 Cornell Road, which was on the northeast corner of Cornell Road and East 115th St. This house is mentioned in the entry for Phi Kappa in the 1949 Case Yearbook, but it’s unclear when we originally moved or if we had another residence prior to the Cornell location. This photo of the Cornell house comes from the 1950 yearbook.
That house was torn down no later than 1995 and quite possibly much earlier. There is now a University Hospitals building on that site, albeit with a different street address.
The move to Magnolia was clearly being discussed in 1954, as shown from that via the 1954 yearbook provided by Ross. It also notes that the Cornell House had some significant limitations.
One assumes that if any bribes were passed around, the statute of limitations has long since passed.
Ross recalls that 11016 Magnolia was purchased in 1954 under the guidance of Tom Nilges, who was the president of the active chapter at the time. Ross enclosed this information from the 1955 yearbook.
John and Tom were the first pledges to join the fraternity after we acquired the house, and both remember that the chapter moved into the new location on Magnolia in the spring semester of 1955. In particular, as John has vivid memories of going through “Hell Week” at the end of the semester in the new house on Magnolia. John, Tom and their fellow pledges that semester (Gerry Karowski, Dick Dietz and Bob Rinehart) did a lot of cleaning and painting.
Ross says that when they first moved into the house, the electrical panel was extremely old and designed for fuse wire, with many circuits using a combination of pennies and regular wire. Shortly after moving in, he changed the panel to a more modern and much less dangerous breaker panel.
John recalls that when the chapter moved into Magnolia, there were two parts of the house that were being rented by non-members. One of these was the apartment over the garage, which we rent out to non-members to this day. The other was the large first floor bedroom in the corner by the garage, which many of you may remember as “The Bakery” as it has been labeled since at least the early 1990s. Back in 1955, that room had a separate exit to the driveway. In subsequent years that exit was blocked off by the construction of the room containing the equipment that connects the house to the network for CWRU. Ross says that the tenant was a salesman named Smith who often visited with the brothers.
As befitting the new chapter house for a traditionally Catholic fraternity, John states that the bishop of Cleveland blessed the house in either 1955 or 1956. Per the internet, that would likely have been Archbishop Edward Francis Hoban.
John shared some additional memories of the early years in the house on Magnolia. John is shown here in a clip from the 1957 yearbook’s group photo:
We had parties almost every weekend and I met my future wife Peggy in the fall of 1955. We were married in 1959. Peggy passed away in October 2021. Two other brothers (Bob Farling & Tony McNamara, both deceased) met their wives at that same party which was a rush mixer for future pledges.
I was the social chairman for two years and in those days we had beer on tap in a basement refrigerator all the time and hard liquor at every party, including the Purple Passion party where we used chemical apparatus to circulate a grape juice, grapefruit juice mixed with 190 proof lab alcohol.
I think the renters moved out in 1956 and Bob Rinehart (of John’s pledge class) moved to the garage apartment with his new wife.
Ross was also the house manager and I’ll bet he remembers when someone threw a cherry bomb into the bathroom above the living room, it broke in half and the water made a huge hole in the living room ceiling.
Neither Tom, nor John, nor Ross had any recollection of Ernie Schmidt or any role he may have had in acquiring the house. However, we did receive further information from A. Craig Griebel ‘75. Craig recalls that Ernie stepped in to make the occasional mortgage payment when the chapter’s funds were not up to the task and believes that we would not have kept the house without Ernie’s timely financial support. Craig also enclosed a copy of Ernie’s obituary in the late 1990s / early 2000's from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Per the obituary:
Ernest Schmidt was a charter member of the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity chapter and served on its board of directors for more than 30 years. He helped the group acquire and maintain its fraternity house on Magnolia Drive. Mr. Schmidt was given the chapter’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.
Ernie’s obituary also mentions that he graduated from Case in 1941. Given the timing, this means he almost certainly was a member of the original local chapter of Theta Psi Kappa that became a Phi Kappa chapter in May 1941. According to the internet, he helped incorporate our predecessor alumni group the Phi Kappa Theta Alumni Association of Cleveland in 1952.
When Ross was reviewing an early draft of this article, he recalled that he had saved an old alumni newsletter from 1972 which happened to include this information about Ernie’s involvement with the house.
It seems very likely that this is the mortgage that Craig and others recall Ernie making payments toward. As far as the $6000 that went to “even the score” with PKT Properties, it’s unclear if that refers to the original mortgage from purchasing the house in 1954/55 or if it was a debt from other repairs to the house.
If you know more about Ernie’s role in the house, we’d love to hear about it. Email us at secretary@ohioalphabeta.org with any additional information.
Brother Schmidt’s full obituary is pictured below. Thank you, Craig!
One quote from that 1972 newsletter is as true today as it was back then:"We like this chapter house and expect to remain indefinitely."
Help maintain the house for future generations of Phi Kaps by donating today.