Oxford Cup

Seth Rogers Brooks, St. Lawrence 1922 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number 01
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 16, 1984

When the Oxford Cup was established as recognition for living Betas of Achievement, there was simply no question that the first to be so recognized would be.

Dr. Seth R. Brooks. “Beta’s living legend,” he also ranked as one of the foremost spokesmen for the entire American fraternity system.

He was executive officer of Beta Theta Pi as General Secretary 1950-60, a decade when the Administrative Secretaries reporting to him from the Oxford office were Ralph Fey and Fred Brower. He was the Fraternity’s President for two terms, 1960-66.

Since 1951, each issue of The Beta Theta Pi magazine had carried an essay by Dr. Brooks under the heading “Inter Fratres.” These had been reprinted often in the magazines of other Greek societies. Many of these essays and some of his sermons and other addresses had been assembled in a 1967 volume, In Beta’s Broad Domain, published by the Fraternity.

He had been a perennially exciting speaker at Beta Conventions for many years, as recently as the previous August, attending his 50th Convention. This was more than any other living Beta had attended. Four of these had been at Miami, the Centenary in 1939, and other anniversary Conventions in 1954, 1964 and 1979.

At the 1979 Convention, a new dimension had been added to the Beta student aid program with the establishment of the Seth R. Brooks and Corinne H. Brooks Scholarship Fund. In contrast to other scholarships offering assistance to Beta undergraduates or Beta graduate students, this fund provides for sons or daughters of Betas, wherever they might attend college; membership in Beta Theta Pi is not a requisite. The first donor to this new fund was the outgoing president of the Fraternity, Dr. James G. Martin, former Davidson College chemistry professor, later a Congressman and Governor of North Carolina.

Dr. Brooks’ achievements had not been limited to Beta Theta Pi or any other aspect of collegiate life. One of his “Inter Fratres” essays titled “Freedom Within” had gained him a Freedoms Foundation Award in 1967. His alma mater, St. Lawrence University, which had awarded him an honorary degree in 1936, named him in 1979 recipient of its Sol Feinstone Award for “significant contributions to advance the freedom of man to pursue his individual religious beliefs.” He also had received the 1966 National Interfraternity Conference Gold Medal Award and the 1969 Lambda Chi Alpha Interfraternity Service Award.

Recollections and Reflections of Seth R. Brooks and Corinne H. Brooks, prepared as an oral history edited by William Lloyd Fox, St. Lawrence ’75, was published by the board of trustees of his church in 1977.

Dr. Brooks was born in New York City in 1901. He was graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1922, began preaching in churches near Canton before finishing theology school, and received St. Lawrence’s Bachelor of Divinity in 1924. He attended his first Beta Convention as a sophomore in 1919, served the Fraternity as a district chief and as alumni affairs commissioner for much of the next 20 years and went to Washington from a pastorate at Malden, Mass.

He was a member of the budget committee of the District of Columbia Community Chest 1942-45, member of the General Commission of the Army and Navy Chaplains 1940-46, chairman of the Committee on Religious Life in Washington longer than any other person, president of the 500-member Washington Ministerial Union 1954-55 and first minister to be a member of Planned Parenthood. When Congress established an Alcoholism Clinic for the District of Columbia in 1946, he was named on its first advisory board. He participated in the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth.

Seth passed away at age 86 on October 7, 1987. He would have protested any description of that passing as “unexpected,” for he had lived like a man ready for anything. The rest of us would never have been prepared to lose him.

Written by: Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Joseph Percival Allen IV, DePauw ’59
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 02
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 16, 1984

Most men gladly would accept even one of the traits which set Astronaut Joe Allen virtually in a class by himself. Modest as he is, there is one trait he proudly will acknowledge: he alone has had the honor of standing with Seth Brooks as a recipient of the first Oxford Cups, August 16, 1984, at the 145th General Convention at Lake of the Ozarks.

Others are unique, or nearly so. One gives him special pride because it is shared by his brother, Dr. David T. Allen, DePauw ’61, physician, president of the Kentucky Center for Health Education. Each was an excellent varsity wrestler in college who made Phi Beta Kappa and showed leadership.

Add to that their membership in a four-generation DePauw Beta family: their grandfather, Joseph P. Allen, Jr. 1897; a great-uncle, Dr. Percy Hypes Swahlen 1899; their father, J. P. (Perk) Allen III ’30; themselves, of course, and Timothy J. Allen ’92, Kentucky artist, son of David.

For good measure, Joe was vice president of the Delta chapter and the 1956 Beta General Convention floor manager.

Consider these along with Joe’s Fulbright Fellowship in Germany, his fluency in German, his Yale doctorate in nuclear physics, his extraordinary fluency in delighting an audience with a thorough yet casual discussion of the role of space travel in today’s world and tomorrow.

Furthermore, realize that as Washington-based president and CEO of Space Industries International, he has the exciting responsibility for coordinating that company’s effort to assist commercial business in taking advantage of space, partly through the development of an Industrial Space Facility. He has been called “an astronaut-turned-executive who is a chief salesman for building and launching the ISF.”

Joe Allen was an instructor and research associate in the nuclear physics laboratory of the University of Washington on a post-doctoral fellowship when he was selected for the astronaut program in 1967. He served in a wide variety of positions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration over the next four years. He achieved fame as the capsule communicator in Mission Control who talked directly to the astronauts during the Apollo 15 moon mission in 1971. He knew their problems, shared their hopes and spoke their language.

By the time he made his first space flight in 1982 as a member of the crew of Columbia, he had been designated and trained as one of the first of a new breed of astronauts called “mission specialists.” As a physicist, he was the fifth scientist to fly in space. The mission was the first commercial flight, with Joe given the assignment of launching one of the two communication satellites put into orbit.

There was one disappointment for him. He had been scheduled to be one of the first astronauts to walk in space since 1975, but faulty space suits nullified that.

He did get to go space-walking, to rescue a communications satellite, in two Discovery flights in Nov. 1984. These went into the records as “first satellite retrieval and repair,” thrilling millions of tense TV viewers. Furthermore, this was a scant three months after the Beta Convention when he received the Oxford Cup.

In 1984 and 1986, with Russell Martin, author of Cowboy: The Enduring Myth of the Wild West, Joe Allen produced successive editions of Exploring Space: An Astronaut’s Odyssey. This is a magnificent volume which in itself would have rated an Oxford Cup if earlier exploits had not already made that absolute. Some remarkable photographs by Allen and his crewmates have made this memorable. An autographed copy of the first edition is in the John Reily Knox Memorial Library.

“For more than two decades, the essential work of space travel focused on the technological refinement of the vehicles and support systems that could take us to space and back again, and on the study of the human response to those journeys,” says Allen in Exploring Space.

“Still in that era of experimentation, the first four missions of the shuttle orbiter Columbia were test flights designed to gauge the Space Transportation System’s capabilities. The flight of STS-5 launched on November 11, 1982, marked a fundamental shift in the goals of manned space flight from exploration to operation — from testing the means of getting into space to using the resources found there.

“When the crew members of the fifth shuttle mission — Vance Brand, Bob Overmyer, Bill Lenoir and Joe Allen, who dubbed themselves the Ace Moving Company: Fast and Courteous Service — deployed two communications satellites that had been carried to space in the orbiter’s cargo bay, they initiated a new era in which the business of space flight became business itself. Today each shuttle mission is devoted to a wide variety of operations — from satellite deployment and repair to manufacturing pharmaceutical compounds that are difficult to create on earth.

A recent survey indicates that more than 80 companies worldwide are interested in using the shuttle for a total of more than 200 commercial and experimental projects. By 1990 a fleet of five or more orbiters may be flying 20 missions a year to fulfill this need.

“The astronauts aboard each shuttle mission are no longer simply space explorers but, rather, a collection of skilled space workers — men and women whose jobs are to maneuver the craft in space, to unload new satellites being delivered to orbit, to pick up and repair or bring home satellites that have developed problems, to work outside the cabin in life-supporting pressure suits or to perform experiments in a large laboratory carried aloft by the orbiter. The pilot-astronauts of the first decades of space flight have been joined by engineers, scientists and technicians — known as mission and payload specialists — charged simply with getting the jobs done, with carrying out the crucial and often creative work of space.”

Written by: Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Sherman Cooper, Centre 1922, Yale 1922 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number 03
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 15, 1985

Athlete, Senator, Ambassador and diplomat, John Cooper received his Oxford Cup from his longtime friend in Congressional circles, John J. Rhodes, Kansas State ’38, then President of the Fraternity, at the 146th General Convention.

The Beta magazine’s account describes the recipient as “the dynamic, personable Kentuckian (who) was one of the best-known men in government and made the type of impact that will keep people talking of him for decades to come.”

Cooper spent only his freshman year at Centre. However, that saw him earn a varsity football letter among first- and second-year students who would gain notoriety in the 1921 season with a 6-0 victory over Harvard. Moreover, it brought initiation into Beta Theta Pi with a chapter roll number between two teammates who would become famous on that team: Bo McMillin and Ben Cregar. Cooper, however, transferred to Yale, where he switched to basketball and twice captained that team and was voted most popular and most likely to succeed.

After attending Harvard law school, he began law practice, spent a term in the state legislature and eight years as a county judge, ran for the Republican nomination for governor and in 1942 enlisted as an Army private. In Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe, he advanced to captain, won a Bronze Star and was a military government officer in Bavaria after V-E Day. Then, while still in Germany, he won the election to a circuit judgeship in Kentucky. He was elected Senator from Kentucky in 1946 and was later elected to fill two other unexpired Senate terms.

Named a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, he became a representative of the United States in forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Next, he was Ambassador-at-large to the NATO Conference on mutual defense. By 1950, Newsweek had called him “the ablest Republican in the Senate: and Time in a cover story praised his national and international leadership. He was named Ambassador to India and Nepal in 1955.

He returned to serve in the Senate until 1960. Then he was sent to Russia on a secret assignment to talk with Kremlin leaders; his conclusions became factors in President John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy. In 1965 he was named advisor to the United States Delegation to the Treaty Signing Conference in Manila, establishing the Asian Development Bank. In 1969 the Cooper-Church bill was said to have brought the Vietnam conflict into more precise focus and aided our military withdrawal from Vietnam. After a long time with the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling, he was named in 1974 by President Gerald Ford to be the first U.S. Ambassador to East Germany.

n recognition of his work on behalf of rural electrification in Kentucky as a Senator, the East Kentucky RECC has been named the John Sherman Cooper Power Plant. He died February 21, 1991, in Washington, D.C.

Written by: Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Napier Wyndan Turner, British Columbia ’49
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 04
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 3, 1986

John N. Turner would seem to have been marked as a winner even from boyhood. He has been a national champion athlete, a Rhodes Scholar, a member of a major law firm, Prime Minister of Canada and distinguished public speaker.

The fourth person to receive Beta’s Oxford Cup, he was the first Canadian so honored, as the guest of honor at the annual formal dinner of the Southern Ontario Beta Alumni Assn., gathered on May 24, 1986, at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of the British Columbia chapter’s charter.

It was considered fitting that he be honored guest and speaker on this occasion. He also had spoken at the 1981 Toronto banquet celebrating the 75th anniversary of the installation of Canada’s first Beta chapter at the University of Toronto.

Elected to the Canadian Parliament four times, he was Leader of the Opposition at the time. He succeeded Pierre Trudeau as Prime Minister in 1984 when Trudeau decided to retire. Both were Liberals. He called a general election within the time required under those circumstances and was defeated by Brian Mulroney, a Progressive Conservative.

Turner was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, so he returned to his native country when he was appointed to a Rhodes Scholarship. He was the second member of Gamma Omicron to be elected a Rhodes Scholar within four years. He did additional graduate study at the Sorbonne in Paris while abroad. On his return, he became a partner in the prestigious law firm of McMillan, Binch. He became highly visible in the 1960s and 1970s and held office as Register General, Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Solicitor General, Minister of Justice, Attorney General and Minister of Finance. For three years, he was the first chairman of the Interim Committee of the International Monetary Fund.

Known as Chick Turner through boyhood, he starred in football and hockey at St. Patrick’s College, Ottawa, and was on its hockey team, which reached the quarterfinal playoffs for the Memorial Cup three straight years.

He won four Canadian championship gold medals competing in track: the Canadian junior 100- and 220-yard sprints at Edmonton and the senior 220 at the 1947 Caledonian Games at Calgary. Also, he equaled the Northern Division Pacific Coast Conference record of 9.7 seconds for the 100. He ran on the winning Canadian mile relay team and had been on the university’s swim team.

In his final year at UBC, he was on Student Council and Big Block Club as an outstanding sprinter. He was a sports writer and editor on Ubyssey, the student paper.

He represented his chapter at the 108th Beta Convention in 1947. He was remembered as an excellent social chairman and a participant in six sports as Beta won the intramural championship two consecutive years.

Former president of the Junior Bar of Canada, he also is a member of the English Bar. He has been “called to the bar” of Quebec, Ontario, Barbados, the Yukon and Northwest Territories, Trinidad and British Columbia.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Arch Alfred Moore, Jr., West Virginia ’48 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 05
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 1986

Governor of West Virginia 1969-77 and 1984-88, Arch Moore is the only chief executive of his state to have held office for three terms.

He was 1971 chairman of the National Governors’ Conference, 1976 national chairman of the Republican Governors’ Conference, 1972 president of the council of State Governments, and 1974-76 president of the Education Commission of the United States. He co-chaired the Appalachian Regional Commission.

His three years as a vice president and trustee of Beta Theta Pi, 1986-89, capped an undergraduate career. He was president of the Beta Psi chapter and president of his University’s Council of Fraternity Presidents; wrote its student body constitution and founded Mountaineer Day.

His bachelor’s degree from the University of West Virginia was in political science. He received his law degree from the same institution in 1951 as president of his law school class and immediately began law practice in his hometown, Moundsville, Va. He was elected to a two-year term in the West Virginia legislature two years later. He represented his state in the First Congressional District of West Virginia for six consecutive terms beginning in 1957 at age 33.

He was one of six governors invited to visit the People’s Republic of China in May 1974 as special representatives of the United States. A year later, he was one of eight governors who visited the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to improve communications between Soviet and U.S. leaders. On that trip, as a Special Representative for President Gerald Ford, he opened the Bicentennial Exposition of the World of Franklin and Jefferson in Warsaw, Poland.

A member of the Republican National Committee from 1963, he has been a delegate to four Republican National Conventions and a platform speaker at two of them.

An Army infantryman in World War II, he was seriously wounded in action in Ger- many in 1944. He was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, a Combat Infantryman’s Badge and three battle stars on his European Campaign Ribbon.

Governor Moore was born April 16, 1923, at Moundsville, son of Arch A. and Genevieve Jones Moore. He attended Moundsville public schools and Lafayette College before entering the University. He maintains a permanent residence in Glen Dale, W. Va. He married Shelley Riley on August 11, 1949. They are parents of Arch A. Moore III, West Virginia ’73; Shelley Wellons Moore Capito and Lucy St. Clair Moore Durbin. They have six grandchildren.

He is past vice president of the West Virginia Bar Assn., past chairman of Mohawk District Boy Scouts of America, and a member of Rotary and the Board of Stewards of Simpson Methodist Church in Moundsville; Phi Delta Phi international legal fraternity and other civic, social and fraternal organizations.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Stephen Davison Bechtel, Sr., California 1923 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 06
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 28, 1987

A name with worldwide recognition in engineering and construction was added to the Beta Oxford Cup roster with the presentation to Stephen D. Bechtel, Sr., California ’23, by President John J. Rhodes, Kansas State ’38, on April 28, 1987, before some 100 Bay Area alumni at the San Francisco Olympic Club.

During the 40 years he was president, CEO and chairman of Bechtel Group, it expanded into seven operating companies. It experienced a tremendous expansion in the scope of projects and geographically. In the 1930s, it built the Hoover Dam and the seven-mile San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. In World War II, it modified hundreds of aircraft, built 500 ships and a pipeline through the sub-Arctic and was a joint venturer with the Pacific Naval Air Base Contractors in expanding airports and marine terminals in 28 Pacific islands. Since then, Bechtel Corp. has grown continually, both alone and in joint ventures.

Its international projects have included pipelines, terminals and oil refineries in the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, the South Pacific and Canada. Comparatively recent undertakings have included the building of Jubail, an entirely new industrial city for 275,000 people in Saudi Arabia; a synthetic fuel project in New Zealand convert- ing natural gas to gasoline; a 286-mile pipeline across the Andes in Colombia; two international airports in Saudi Arabia and a power plant in Egypt; decontamination of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor; the Deepwater Cogeneration project in Texas and the 3,810 megawatts Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona.

Bechtel Group, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, had three Betas at the helm. Stephen D. Bechtel, Sr., California ’23, son of Founder Warren A. Bechtel; top executive responsibilities are in the hands of Chairman Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., Colorado ’47, and President Alden P. Yates, Stanford ’51. Other Beta Bechtels include the late Kenneth K. Bechtel, California ’22, and the late Warren A. Bechtel, Jr., California ’23, Steven’s brothers.

Bechtel began as a modest construction company in 1898. While still in his teens, Stephen served in France with the 20th Engineers of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. After graduation, he joined the family business and was made vice president in 1925, president after his father’s death in 1935, chairman in 1960 and senior director upon retirement in 1965.

The firm is one of the largest of all privately-owned corporate groups. President Ronald Reagan chose two Bechtel men for his cabinet: George Schultz as Secretary of State and Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense.

Stephen Bechtel was placed in Fortune’s Hall of Fame for Business Leadership. The American Society of Civil Engineers included him in its Top Ten Construction Men of the Past Half-Century, and the American Academy of Achievement named him for its Golden Plate Award. He died March 14, 1989, in his hometown, Oakland, California. He was 88.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Dr. Yu-Chuen James Yen, Yale 1918 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 07
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 19, 1987

Respected worldwide as a leading humanitarian and educator, Dr. Yu-Chuen James Yen received the Oxford Cup at Beta’s 148th General Convention at the Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C., on August 20, 1987. He had become known for having set in motion forces that made possible the education of more than 60 million Chinese, bringing functional literacy to the common person for the first time.

Asked by the National War Work Council of the YMCA to go to France upon graduation from Yale to assist with the thousands of coolies in the Chinese Labor Corps recruited by the Allies in World War I, he began his literacy aid which turned out to be a “crusade” affecting millions.

Jimmy Yen founded the Chinese Mass Education Movement in 1923. He worked with the government to bring about primary health care to the villages and started an unprecedented program of “village scholars.” This program brought the most modern agriculture and animal husbandry techniques to the hinterlands by educating a chosen few and then educating the masses.

To carry this work to the world, he founded the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in 1960. His unique practical training assisted the people of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Philippines.

President Reagan in 1987 awarded him the Eisenhower Medallion of People to People International, recognizing his efforts toward world peace. A distinguished body of scholars and scientists, asked to pick “the ten greatest revolutionaries of our time” to receive Copernican Citations in 1943, marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Copernicus, listed him along with Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Orville Wright, Harvey Firestone and Thomas Edison. A 1987 Presidential End Hunger Award for lifetime achievement cited him for “developing and disseminating a sustained, integrated program to overcome the root causes of hunger and poverty in the Third World.

He was imaginative and aggressive in tapping some of his Beta contacts for help in his crusade. Among these were Stanley S. Kresge, Michigan ’24; Charles P. Taft, Yale ’18, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Whitman ’20. He told the Convention audience how such men helped him draft IRR by-laws, raised funds for IRR and served on its board at his request.

Jimmy Yen died of pneumonia in New York City on January 17, 1990, at age 96.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Arthur Starratt Torrey, St. Lawrence 1924 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 08
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 20, 1987

This longtime prominent Canadian investment executive was honored for civic and educational achievement and his position in the business world when he was awarded the Oxford Cup on August 19, 1987, at Beta’s 148th General Convention at Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C.

He was a trustee of St. Lawrence University for 29 years and was its board chairman 1968-78. A longtime major benefactor of the University, he provided for the 1979-80 expansion of its library, named for Owen D. Young, St. Lawrence ’94, and its Arthur Starratt Torrey Wing. An athletic field and a scholarship fund also have been named for him.

He received the honorary Doctor of Laws degree from St. Lawrence in 1969 and a University Citation in 1977. He was the University’s commencement speaker in 1978. His family connections with the University include a Beta son, David L. Torrey, St. Lawrence ’53.

Brother Torrey began his career in investment management in New York City. He later moved to Montreal. He became president and chairman of Pitfield, Mackay, Ross & Company, Ltd., Canada’s largest and most distinguished investment firm. Director of several Canadian firms, Montreal chairman of the Canadian National War Finance Commission in World War II.

He was president of The Investment Dealers Association of Canada for two years. He also was a director of many public companies, including B. C. Telephone Company, British Newfoundland Corporation and Churchill Falls Power, where he was instrumental in developing one of the world’s most significant hydroelectric projects.

He died September 9, 1994, in Brockville, Ontario, near his summer home in the Thousand Islands.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Robert Wooden, Purdue ’32 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 09
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 17, 1987

There will surely never be another match, the All-Everything-of-Every-Year UCLA Coach John Wooden. He seems universally accepted as the most respected man in basketball history.

His Oxford Cup was presented at a Greater Los Angeles Beta Alumni gathering on November 17, 1987, at the Bel-Air Country Club. It had been on Betas’ agenda for a long time, but Coach had been too busy, too much in demand, too friendly to put off people to whom he felt committed, to take time out for kudos.

John Wooden had announced his retirement from active basketball coaching in 1975 after 27 years with UCLA. His 40-year record of 905 wins and 203 losses is considered the winningest record in basketball history.

It is a record that brackets ten NCAA championships in his last 12 seasons, 38 straight NCAA tournament victories, an all-time NCAA consecutive-win streak of 88 in a row over four seasons, and 16 conference championships. All this was part of his years at UCLA. It came like this: the last 15 games of 1970-71, all 30 games in 1971-72, all 30 in 1972-73, and 13 games of 1973-74 before the spell was broken. Spell? Wasn’t he known as the Wizard of Westwood?

He remains the only person inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and as a coach. At Purdue, he was a three-year All-American, captain of the 1932 national championship team, 1932 Helms Foundation player of the year and a Helms All-Time All-American selection.

The National Association of Basketball Writers named him Coach of the Year six times. Sporting News named him “Man of the Year” in 1970. Sports Illustrated called him “Sportsman of the Year” for 1973.

He was named California Father of the Year in 1964 and again in 1975. He received the Whitney Young Award of the Urban League in 1973, was the first recipient of the annual Velvet Covered Brick Award of the Layman’s Leadership Institute in 1974 and was the first recipient of the annual Dr. Naismith Peach Basket Award in 1974. He received the Bellarmine College medal of excellence in 1987.

He published two books: Practical Modern Basketball (1966) and They Call Me Coach (1972). He regularly contributes to professional journals and maintains a heavy schedule of clinics, workshops and inspirational talks. They all stress teamwork, discipline, conditioning, fundamentals, respect and self-respect.

Wooden was born in Martinsville, Ind., on October 14, 1910.

Following graduation from Purdue, he was teacher and coach of all sports at Dayton (Ky.) High School. Two years later, he moved to South Bend (Ind.) Central to teach English and coach basketball, baseball and tennis. With a wartime break as a Navy lieutenant 1943-46, he became athletic director and basketball-baseball coach at Indiana State Teachers College, now Indiana State University. In his two years there, before moving on to UCLA, he completed a master’s degree.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Carl Adolph Kroch, Cornell ’35
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 10
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 29, 1988

Versatile as his achievements and eclectic in his tastes, Carl Kroch is a long way from being just the bookseller on whose acumen his fame is based.

One of this nation’s foremost dealers in fine books, he could have earned an Oxford Cup merely as a host to booklovers, and the booklovers you will find in his stores will have come from all over the world. With bookstores named Kroch’s or Kroch’s & Brentano’s since Cornell graduation, from a Lake Shore Drive address and a Wabash location in Chicago, he also manages interests as a partner in the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Team, as president of the Booksellers Catalogue Service, Inc., and as a member of the boards of directors of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Illinois Humane Society, Western-Southern Life Insurance Company and the USO. He is a presidential councilor of Cornell.

Born in Chicago on June 21, 1914, he joined Kroch’s Bookstores, Inc., founded by his father, in 1935 and became its president in 1949. He added presidency of Brentano’s Bookstores, Inc., in 1950 and from 1954 until 1986 was president and a director of the combined Kroch’s & Brentano’s, inc., Chicago. He then was chairman and CEO 1986-93 and became chairman emeritus in 1994. Along the way, the establishment grew from a fine store in Chicago’s Loop to sumptuous branches across the United States.

William Harrison Fetridge, Northwestern ’29, in an article in the Fall 1980 issue of The Beta Theta Pi, termed it a company with 18 stores and more to come. The store at 29 South Wabash was called the world’s largest bookstore, stocking 90,000 titles. It had been three stores when he assumed responsibility for expansion in 1935. It was listed for 30 outlets by 1987, a year after he committed one million dollars to endow the position of University Librarian at Cornell. Furthermore, in 1992, Cornell opened the Carl A. Kroch Library in honor of its benefactor. The three-story, 97,000 square-foot repository has room for 1.3 million volumes.

Brother Kroch had turned down a buyout offer because of the reshuffling and layoffs he felt would befall his loyal staff. To prevent takeovers, he and his wife Jeanette, who owned all of the Kroch’s and Brentano’s stock, sold half of it to a stock plan owned by the employees. The other half was scheduled to be sold to the plan over five years. He remained as chairman and trustee of the stock fund but relinquished day-to-day control to a long-time associate, William J. McCar- thy. Also, in 1986, he was recognized as “The Hero of the Book” by The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, the first bookseller so honored. Previous honorees included Ray Eames, Richard Rodgers, Margaret Mead, Archibald MacLeish, Charles A. Lindbergh and Alfred A. Knopf.

He is the author of American Booksellers and Publishers: A Personal Perspective published 1981. In World War II, he became a Naval Reserve lieutenant as an engineering officer aboard the destroyer Osterhaus for 23 months in the South Pacific. His memberships include the American Booksellers Association, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and the Wine and Food Society.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Josiah Robinette, Toronto ’26 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 11
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 3, 1988

General acknowledgment that John J. Robinette has been Canada’s premier legal authority may be the reason a rigid rule was broken, or at least significantly bent, when his Oxford Cup was presented at the 149th General Convention at Toronto’s Inn on the Park, August 4, 1988.

From the inauguration of this award, there was a policy that the Cup can be presented only if the recipient is present to receive it. The Cup has been taken to some site other than a General Convention a few times. Some dignitaries other than Beta’s President have been authorized to make the presentation for various reasons. But acceptance by proxy? Never! Well, so far, only this once.

J.J. had agreed to be present to receive the Cup. On the evening of the banquet, his daughter Dale was there in his place reporting that much as it disappointed him, he was too ill to attend. She regretted this, too, for she agreed that he met the spirit of the award, having won much acclaim, that he had received other awards of prestige and that he was considered Canada’s best-known lawyer. Too, this was Canadian ground, and this famed Canadian barrister seemed to be the logical guest of honor, only the third Canadian selected out of seven. So the law was circumvented for the sake of homage to the law.

Born in 1906 and raised in Toronto, J.J. entered the University of Toronto and was initiated into the Theta Zeta chapter the same year. He was selected as the Gold Medalist in political science on graduation in 1926. On to Osgoode Hall Law School, and at graduation in 1929, he was recognized with the Chancellor Van Koughnet Scholarship. He remained at Osgoode and was a full professor of law until 1932. Nevertheless, he determined to build a law career second to none.

He argued so many cases before the Canadian Supreme Court that on retirement, he was presented a set of printed case reports of the cases he had argued. Six large volumes! He was appointed King’s Counsel in 1944, elected Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1946, and 1958 appointed treasurer of the same Society, the highest office in the legal profession in Ontario.

Honorary degrees were conferred by Queens University and the Universities of Western Ontario, British Columbia and Toronto. In 1973 he received the Companion of the Order of Canada medal from the Governor-General. He founded the Advocate’s Society and was its first president. He represented Canada in one of the nation’s most important constitutional decisions: approving the repatriation of the Constitution from the Parliament of Great Britain. Moreover, he continued as a loyal and enthusiastic Beta.

When the Beta Board of Trustees notified him that he had been selected to receive the Oxford Cup, he had replied quickly in thanks. He was looking forward to receiving it before such an international gathering of Betas. Thus, no matter what constitutional rulings in those six fat volumes might have applied in the matter of a proxy, in this case, his daughter came to express his regrets and to speak eloquently on his life and work.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Donald Shelton Dawson, Missouri ’32 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 12
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 1, 1989

A prominent and popular Washington figure for five decades, General Donald S. Dawson received the Oxford Cup April 1, 1989, at a Beta reception at Tysons, Virginia, in connection with the installation of the new George Mason chapter. Making the presentation on behalf of the Board of Trustees was General Treasurer Bruce M. Lloyd, Brown ’69, Pennsylvania ’77.

Best known as an administrative personnel aid to President Harry S. Truman, the former Air Force general has headed a Bethesda law firm bearing his name and former president of the University of Missouri Alumni Association. He has also been identified prominently with many veterans’ activities and social organizations, notably the Washington Army and Navy Club, established in 1891 and recently refurbished.

A track star and senior honor society president at Missouri, Dawson went to George Washington University Law School, got his Juris Doctor degree in 1938, and served as assistant to Federal Loan Administrator Jesse H. Jones for the next five years. He then entered the Army. He has been the first Officer Candidate School graduate to become a general. He served in each war theatre in World War II, eventually retiring as a major general with decorations including the Distinguished Service Medal. He became director of security and law enforcement for the U.S. Air Force and later national president of the Reserve Officers Association.

From 1947 to 1953, he was Special Executive Assistant to President Truman, responsible for all Presidential appointments and in charge of all management personnel activities of the Executive Branch. Eventually, he became director of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute. The University of Missouri conferred its Faculty-Alumni Award upon him, plus an honorary degree. He had delivered a commencement address for the University.

In addition to being chairman of the board of trustees of the Reserve Officers Association and current president of the Army and Navy Club, Dawson is longtime executive vice president and chairman of the Washington P. T. Barnum tent of the Saints and Sinners Club.

He was president of the distinguished Washington Army and Navy Club following its four-year renovation, with rededication by President Ronald Reagan. Dawson is listed as the 77th president of the Military Town Club, founded in 1885 as the University Service Club but reincorporated under its present name in 1891. The clubhouse was initially dedicated in 1891 by President Benjamin Harrison, then re-dedicated by President William Howard Taft in 1912 when it moved across the street to its Farragut Square location. Rededication in 1989 by President Reagan thus was at least its third dedication ceremony.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Richard Green Lugar, Denison ’54 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 13
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 1989

Undoubtedly one of the foremost figures in American public life, Dick Lugar, also stands as the epitome of a man who early saw his role and began preparing for leadership. Consequently, as a United States Senator since 1977, he has been a world leader in international relations and an articulate spokesman for new ideas, with clear-cut concepts of what makes government work. He has been marked for achievement from boyhood with an unerring sense of where the power lies, frequently with a quiet and gentlemanly feel for being that power himself.

Almost by formula, he became an Eagle Scout, was first in the Class of 1950, voted the year’s Outstanding Male Graduate at Indianapolis Shortridge High School, first in the Class of 1954 at Denison University and a Rhodes Scholar in Pembroke College of Oxford University receiving its master’s degree with honors.

Each entry in the record virtually demands being recorded with “of course.” So when he moved on to Navy Reserve service after Oxford, of course, he drew assignment as intelligence briefing officer, and of course, that was on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke. Furthermore, of course, he became a member of the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners 1964-67, Mayor of Indianapolis 1968-75, with a revolutionary new city-county form of government as a result, and then a visiting professorship in political science at the University of Indianapolis while he got ducks in a row to run for the Senate.

It should be noted that Dick also was Denison’s student body co-president. He married the other co-president, Charlene Smeltzer, two years after graduation, and they have four sons: Mark, Robert, John and David.

Few were surprised by his announcement in 1995 that he was starting a bid for the 1996 Republican nomination for President and that he had some fresh ideas for a platform. Nor was it really news that some Washington Betas unveiled Betas for Lugar, complete with campaign buttons. When he had come out with a book in 1988, it had been Letters to the Next President.

He has been chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, member of the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, Banking and Housing & Urban Affairs Committee and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He was President of the National League of Cities, 1970-71; delegate and resolutions committee member at the 1968 National Republican Convention; keynote speaker, 1972; delegate and speaker, 1980; and a member of the Institute for International Studies, a Trustee of Denison University and the University of Indianapolis, and on the Boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, the American Running and Fitness Association and Youth for Understanding.

He has been the main speaker at several Beta events and shared a panel discussion of career selection at the Sesquicentennial Convention.

Dick’s undergraduate memberships included Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, Blue Key, Pi Delta Epsilon and Pi Sigma Alpha. He is a Methodist and a Rotarian.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Glen Arthur Holden, Oregon ’51 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 14
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 29, 1988

Hailed for achievements ranging from managing a $6 billion insurance group to a U.S. Ambassadorship, Glen Holden came from Jamaica to receive his Oxford Cup at the 1990 General Convention at Palm Desert, Calif.

Aside from business and government roles, he was cited for having headed his chapter’s house corporation, been chairman of a successful renovation fund drive and been a generous supporter of the General Fraternity. As an undergraduate, he was chapter president and Convention delegate.

In November 1992, he was among five men honored for outstanding service to Jamaica at the 11th annual Charity Gala of American Friends of Jamaica at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. These awards were presented by an earlier Oxford Cup recipient, Maj. Gen. Donald S. Dawson, USAF (Ret.), Missouri ’30.

Glen was founder, chairman and CEO of The Holden Group, a Los Angeles insurance company complex with more than six billion in life insurance. He was named Ambassador to Jamaica in 1989 by President George Bush.

Holden started a career in insurance from graduation. Starting as an agent, he soon had his own general life insurance agency spreading to three states. In 1964 the Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, known as VALIC, brought him to Washington to be its marketing director. Becoming VALIC’s president in a short time, he has been credited with being the pioneer who led many major life companies into variable annuities and other equity products to meet the competition of other financial markets. He sold VALIC and in 1973 formed Security First Group with headquarters in Los Angeles.

Pioneering the sale of insurance products through significant stock brokerage firms, he issued the first “interest sensitive” life insurance producers in the country. The business expanded under The Holden Group, and by 1990 it encompassed 11 separate financial companies. Its two wholly-owned life insurance companies had more than 4,000 government contracts across the country and provided similar services to public employees in many states.

An Oregon native raised on a ranch near Portland developed a love for horses, earned spending money caring for them, and developed a strong enthusiasm for polo. He won the prestigious Pacific Coast Open and competed in the semi-finals of the U.S. Open. A long-time trustee of the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, he helped restore its financial condition by guaranteeing its debts.

He was governor of the U.S. Polo Assn. And a member of Palm Beach Polo and Country Club. He has been on the boards of London Life Insurance and Trilon Corp. of Canada, Los Angeles Council of Boy Scouts, California Chamber of Commerce, California Museum Foundation, Music Center of Los Angeles County, Hugh O’Brien Youth Foundation, University of Oregon Foundation and a regent of Pepperdine College. He is past chairman of American Humanics.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Jamie Lloyd Whitten, Mississippi ’33 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 15
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 17, 1991

The term “career public servant” is the most appropriate label for the Honorable Jamie L. Whitten, who served a record 53 years in the United States House of Representatives. In the latter years of his tenure, he was known as “the Dean of the House.”

One obituary characterized him as having exerted “quiet but powerful control over the nation’s purse strings.” At one time, Betas had key appropriations positions in both Chambers: Whitten as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was responsible for every funding bill that came out of the House, and Senator Mark Hatfield, Willamette ’43, was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

When Whitten obtained his law degree from the University of Mississippi, he was admitted to the state bar with the highest average in 1932.

He was a 20-year-old public school principal when he was first elected to public office as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1931, at age 21. He next was elected district attorney at 23 and continued in that office for three terms until elected to Congress in 1941. He continuously represented the First Mississippi District from the 77th through the 103rd Congresses. He was chairman of the appropriations committee’s subcommittee for agricultural affairs except for the last term in that series.

Born in Cascilla, Mississippi, on April 18, 1910, he maintained a home in Charleston, Mississippi, through those years. He authored a book, That We May Live, written after sponsoring an official investigation into chemicals and chemical pesticides. He retired in 1994, having served under 11 Presidents.

A Mason and a Democrat also hold membership in Phi Alpha Delta, unique in that it is the only law fraternity whose roots were nurtured in a legal controversy. That fraternity names each of its chapters after some distinguished legal figure. Its University of Mississippi chapter, established in his junior year, was named for a Beta Supreme Court Justice, Joseph Rucker Lamar, Bethany 1877 and Washington and Lee 1878. Lamar had been General Secretary of Beta Theta Pi as a student in 1877-78.

Whitten was one of the members of an honorary cabinet chosen for the Beta Sesquicentennial Campaign in 1989.

He died September 9, 1995, in Jackson, Mississippi, at age 85 from chronic cardiac and renal disease complications.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Samuel Moore Walton, Missouri ’40 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 16
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 1, 1991

The man whom Fortune magazine headlined as “America’s Master Merchandiser,” Sam Walton, rarely procrastinated and seldom was even behind schedule. However, he was about seven years late in receiving his Oxford Cup.

When the Beta Board of Trustees introduced this way of recognizing Betas who had risen to the very pinnacle of their profession, one of the first selected was Sam Walton, who had created the Wal-Mart chain and with it emerged to be hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the most influential retailers of this century.” They scheduled a presentation for the 1985 Beta Convention. Some Wal-Mart emergencies interfered.

Repeatedly, a new presentation date would be scheduled and postponed. Eventually, the board delegated Past President Burton W. Folsom, Nebraska ’49, to deliver the award whenever and wherever Walton would stand still long enough to receive it, and to heck with a ceremony.

Ultimately a presentation was scheduled for October 7, 1991, at the Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Again something came up. Beta magazine Editor John R. McClung, Jr., described the outcome in the Winter 1992 issue: “The ceremony, therefore, turned out to be a breakfast and presentation at the local Day’s Inn. Complete with apologies for the roadblocks thrown in the way, Brother Walton gave assurances he was truly flattered… and said the Oxford Cup would be prominently displayed in his office. His only regrets were that the award could not have been made in the presence of Betas from all chapters who could hear his expression of pride.”

The article noted: “When Sam Walton entered Missouri and pledged Beta in the mid-1930s, he was not much, if any, different than most of his other classmates, lucky to be there in those depression times. Growing up, he (was) the youngest Eagle Scout in Missouri at the time and later, quarterback of the state champion high school football team… You could add student council president and being a pretty fair tennis player.”

After graduation, he took a job as a management trainee for J. C. Penny Co. at $85 a month. In 1945, he opened a Ben Franklin store in Newport, Ark, with borrowed money. His brother Bud soon afterward opened another in Versailles, Mo. They increased the number to nine, then opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962. Before 1970, they owned 30 stores under the two names. In greater detail than space allows here, the extraordinary story of the growth of the Wal-Mart chain is told in his book, Sam Walton: Made in America, written by John Huey.

A count in 1992 placed the total at 1,735 Wal-Marts and 212 Sam’s Wholesale Club warehouses. Sales for 1991 totaled almost $44 billion. Stock first issued in 1970 had split nine times. Brother Walton was the nation’s largest retailer.

Nevertheless, a combination of hairy-cell leukemia and bone marrow cancer became too much for him. He died at 74 in Little Rock on April 5, 1992.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Ernest Dolibois, Miami ’42 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 17
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 1992

It is an oversimplification to say simply that John E. Dolibois, Miami ’42, was Miami University’s alumni leader for 34 years and officially its vice president for development and alumni affairs for 14 when he retired to accept President Ronald Reagan’s appointment for four years as Ambassador to Luxembourg. It was the first time any naturalized American had been named ambassador to his native country.

The Miami University European Study Center in Luxembourg, which he helped make possible in the 1960s, now bears his name.

In the Beta magazine’s account of the 1939 Beta Theta Pi Centenary in Oxford, you find a picture of three young flagbearers leading a procession up Miami’s Slant Walk. Carrying the American flag in the middle is John Dolibois, one of eight Miami pledges initiated at this Centenary. Later, he was chapter president, and, as
an alumnus, he was chapter counselor and faculty advisor, district chief 1951-57, Convention secretary in 1955 and Scholarship Commissioner 1960-61. He has been a principal speaker at several Beta Conventions and was the director of the Sesquicentenary in 1989.

His experiences as a U.S. Army intelligence officer interrogating high Nazi officers for war crimes trials evident at the end of World War II make a fascinating story, much of which is captured in his recent book, Pattern of Circles.

John is a Phi Beta Kappa and holds Luxembourg’s Grand Cross of the Grand Ducal Order of the Crown of Oak. Miami University conferred its honorary degree Doctor of Public Service on him in 1984. A formal recognition of long and continuous service to the alumni program, formerly known as the Alumni Award, has been re-named the John E. Dolibois Award.

John and Winnie Dolibois, Miami classmates who married in their senior year before he left for war service, have three sons: Robert J. Dolibois, Miami ’69, is vice president of the National Association of Life Underwriters in Washington, D.C. Dr. John M. Dolibois, Miami ’66, is an orthopedic surgeon in the Oxford-Hamilton area. Special computer facilities at the John Dolibois Study Center in Luxembourg were created with funds contributed in memory of Brian Dolibois, the youngest son. He was a business executive and a talented musician.

John’s 50 years in Boy Scouting include being vice president of the Dan Beard Council in Cincinnati and recipient of the Silver Beaver and Distinguished Eagle Scout awards.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Harold Swanson Hook, Missouri ’53 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 18
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 1992

There was little doubt that Harold S. Hook, Missouri ’53, had a well-defined Beta path to follow. He was preceded in the Fraternity by his older brothers: Ralph C. Hook, Jr., Missouri ’47; Oliver F. Hook, Missouri ’48; and James E. Hook, Missouri ’52.

Ralph is a prolific author who has been Dean and Marketing Department chairman of the University of Hawaii School of Business and Hawaii Beta of the Year. Oliver is vice president of Kidder Peabody Company. Jim is president of the Hook Brothers Co. and co-owner and executive vice president of Dunlap Mfg. Co.

All that was left for Harold was to put together one of the world’s largest corporations in insurance and finance, American General Corporation. He also created Main Event Management, a management training system utilizing Model-Netics, and served two years as president of the three-million member Boy Scouts of America.

Harold’s Beta service included alumni secretary, new member educator, president and 1952 Convention delegate for the Zeta Phi chapter. He was chief of District XX, 1960- 61; Convention president, 1968; trustee and vice president, 1969-72, and currently serves on the Beta Foundation Board of Directors.

He and his wife, the former Joanne Hunt, a Missouri Pi Beta Phi, live in Houston, Texas. They have two Beta sons: Thomas W. Hook, Miami ’81, and Randall T. Hook, Westminster ’83, and a daughter, Karen.

Harold, who earned a master’s degree in accounting from Missouri and did postgraduate work in a Ph.D. program at New York University, started on the business administration faculty at Missouri. However, at 30, he had become the insurance industry’s youngest president. At 31, he became president of four successively large insurance organizations. In 1978, he became chairman and CEO of American General, one of the nation’s largest consumer finance service organizations, with $36 billion in assets and more than 18,000 employees.

Scouting honored him with its Distinguished Eagle Scout, Silver Beaver and Silver Antelope awards. He received honorary degrees from Missouri and Westminster College. He was 1969 Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity’s Man of the Year; 1984 Texas Business Executive of the Year by Texas A&M College of Business, and 1984 Houston Businessman of the Year by Stanford Business School.

On active duty with the Navy, 1954-57, he achieved the rank of Lt.Commander. Later, he was a founder-member of the Naval War College Foundation.

Director of several corporations, he also is a trustee of Baylor College of Medicine, on the Council of Overseers of Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Administration, and on the boards of Texas Research League, Houston Society for the Performing Arts, the Texas Medical Center and the Greater Houston Partnership.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

John Jacob Rhodes, Kansas State ’38 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 19
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 4, 1993

The Honorable John J. Rhodes, Kansas State ’38, is no stranger to alumni and undergraduates alike in Beta Theta Pi. His life has reflected all we portray in our magazine and public discussion under the banner “Worthy of the Highest.” Indeed, he personifies that concept.

A native of Council Grove, Kansas, he was president and Convention delegate from his chapter, later serving as vice president and then president of the General Fraternity.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, John retired from active military service after World War II as a Lt. Colonel and from the reserves as a full colonel.

The first Republican Congressman ever elected by Arizona in 1952, he served for 30 years. In all, he served 15 consecutive terms, the most extended House of Representatives’ tenure in Arizona’s history.

When Gerald Ford became Vice President in 1973, John succeeded him as House Minority Leader, a post he held for ten years. He chaired the Republican Platform Committee in 1972 and was the party’s Permanent Convention Chairman in 1976 and again in 1980.

Prior to his election to the top Republican Leadership post, he served as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee for nine years. He is a former member of the Committees on Appropriations, Rules, Education and Labor, and Interior and Insular Affairs. He was permanent chairman of the Republican NationalConventions in 1976 and 1980 and served as chairman of the 1972 convention’s Platform Committee.

John is the author of The Futile System, a book about how the legislative process suffered during nearly 40 years of one-party control. His most recent book is I was there, which traces his 30 years in Congress.

Presiding over one of Beta’s liveliest periods in modern history, 1984-87, John was a working president, visiting virtually every Beta chapter, taking part in installations and anniversaries. He later chaired Beta’s Sesquicentennial Fund Campaign and headed the committee which drafted the Beta 2000 goals.

On May 24, 1942, he married Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Harvey. They have four children and nine grandchildren. Still active in his so-called retirement, he and Betty divide their time between homes in Mesa, Arizona and Washington, D.C., where John continues an active law practice with Hunton & Williams.

The couple made a lasting gift to the new Foundation and Administrative Office with their endowment of the Beta Fireside Room, which features their portraits.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor

Burton W. Folsom, Nebraska ’49 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 20
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 4, 1994

Few men have given their time and resources to Beta Theta Pi as constantly and consistently as Burt Folsom. A Beta for more than 50 years, he was chapter counselor to Alpha Tau, Nebraska chapter, 1958-62; district chief for Iowa and Nebraska, 1962-64; General Treasurer, 1964-67; General Secretary, 1967-71; Alumni Affairs Commissioner, 1975-77; Fund Trustee, 1984-87, and President of the Fraternity, 1987-90.

Even before, he was a crucial person in Lincoln Beta alumni activities and recently was a founder of the Austin (Texas) Beta Club. Between his Beta Board terms and again since the completion of his term as President, he has attended Conventions and addressed Beta gatherings.

Born March 21, 1925, in Lincoln, Nebr., Burt grew up in that city. On January 13, 1943, as a 17-year-old freshman headed for military service, he became #671 on the role of Alpha Tau. He was the seventh Beta in a Nebraska Folsom line, totaling 11. First was an uncle, then Burt’s father and brothers. The string includes Burt’s son, Thomas L. Folsom, Westminster ’74, plus four cousins and a great-nephew. Burt was initiated with his father’s 1914 badge, and he quickly bestowed in turn upon a fetching Nebraska Alpha Phi, Margaret Reese.

By May, he had been inducted into the Army. Over the next three years, he earned the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in the European Theater with the 1st Infantry Division. Returning to college and Margaret, he found the Beta chapter closed; he now confesses that Margaret got more of his attention than the inactive Alpha Tau, and she married him in 1946.

By completing his Bachelor’s degree in 1949, there was the beginning of a family. Back in uniform, 1950-51, the Army had him in its 36th Combat Engineer Group at Camp McCoy, Wisc. There was also a Master’s degree at Indiana University in 1963, as he began his Beta roles as chapter counselor and district chief.

Burt and Margaret’s family includes Burton W. Folsom, Sally Folsom Pavalis, and Thomas L. Folsom, Westminster ’74. They remained in Lincoln until a 1981 merger of Nebraska Central Building & Loan Assn., of which Burt had become CEO. He also was President, Executive Club of Lincoln; chairman, Employee Division, United Way, and President, Country Club of Lincoln. In Westminster Presbyterian Church, he was chairman, Board of Deacons, and Clerk of Session, President and chairman, Westminster Foundation. He is a trustee of the University of Nebraska Foundation. He was a director of Nebraska Savings and Loan League.

In 1982, the Folsoms moved to Lakeway, Texas, where he was President of the Homeowners Assn., editor of Homeowners News, trustee/treasurer of Lakeway Church, a director of Lakeway Recreation Assn. and the local bank, President of Lakewood Town & Gown, and former Lakeway City Councilman. He claims that he finally caught up with Margaret with three holes-in-one.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Gupton A. Vogt, Westminster ’31 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 21
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 29, 1994

There is only one Gup! That nickname for Gupton A. Vogt, Westminster ’31, has been as distinctive as his long Beta service and leadership record. Initiated into Alpha Delta chapter by Francis W. Shepardson, February 25, 1928 dedication day of a new chapter house, that ceremony may have inspired Gup’s long Beta career and the presidency of the Fraternity.

Gup and his wife Grace underwrote the Finance Section of the new building. Moreover, the 1988 Vogt gift of oil portraits of the Beta Founders, of ever honored memory. This collection, by Robert Cloyd, Lexington, Ken., depicts the founders of college-age as Cloyd perceived them after researching portraits from later stages in their lives.

Born in St. Louis, August 6, 1910, Gup received a Bachelor of Arts from Westminster College in 1931 and an MBA from Harvard in 1933. He spent four years with Brown Shoe Co., then five years with Hess & Culbertson Jewelry Co. World War II meant five years in the Navy, emerging a Lt. Commander.

He married Grace Schotten of St. Louis, an alumna of Bennett College in Mill Brook, New York, in 1942. After the War, Gup and a partner formed a sales promotion company dealing in premiums, service awards, business gifts and American flags in 1950. By the 1960s, it had become the country’s largest distributor of U.S. flags and a significant gift importer to the wholesale jewelry trade. He also acquired Ad/ Sell Co., a mail advertising and printing company.

Gup has been involved in the Beta Alumni Clubs of St. Louis, Los Angeles and San Francisco. He was president of the St. Louis Beta Club, 1947-48, and was its 1967 Honor Guest. A singing cup competition among district chapters at St. Louis Club’s annual dinner bears his name, and when its Armstrong Community Leadership Award was retired in 1982, he assumed its sponsorship.

With Frank B. Whitbeck, Westminster ’69, and Thane J. Olsby, Westminster ’58, he led Alpha Delta’s 1968 centennial, attracting a record turnout. He edited all chapter publications with chapter contributions, raised funds for a new house wing and renovation and prepared a 1985 chapter directory. He has served on the house corporation board since 1970.

He was elected Beta’s vice president at the 148th General Convention. At the end of his term, he was elected president at the 151st General Convention, accepting office two days before his 80th birthday.

Gup was president of Westminster College Alumni Assn., 1964-66, served on the College Board of Trustees since 1966, chairman 1975-81, and led its successful $6-million fund drive in 1982. One often named Fellows of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library at Westminster; he was Senior Churchill Fellow, 1987-92.

His interests include photography, travel, piano and swimming. Memberships: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Big Brother, Rotary, YMCA and St. Louis Christmas Carols. The Vogts have two married sons and three grandchildren.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

H. Lauren Lewis, South Dakota ’37 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 22
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 29, 1994

Strong threads of leadership and legacy are woven into this Beta’s story. His full name on the role of Gamma Alpha is Harry Lauren Lewis; it may have been a long time since he used all of that. Furthermore, you may have found him listed in three classes: initiated as a member of the class of 1937, he was recorded as ’39 on the chapter roster in the Beta magazine for each of the remaining three years. However, we find that he received his Bachelor of Science in 1939. You could do that in South Dakota in the Thirties… if you were brilliant. Anyway, he was #277 on the chapter roll all the way and still is.

He still is also responsive to call. Chapter treasurer in his junior year, he was in charge of the construction of a new chapter house at Vermillion in 1969. He served the Fraternity as chief of District XXV, 1969-73. As a resident of Laquinta, California, he welcomed the 151st General Convention at Palm Desert to California in the role of Temporary President, his second time as Temporary President, and shortly afterward, he agreed to accept the chairmanship of the Beta Foundation Fund Drive for 1990-91 and to give that critical campaign his full attention immediately.

Three of his sons were initiated as Betas while undergraduates and his fourth son have only recently been initiated. When Lauren relinquished the district chief assignment, he was succeeded for two years by John W. Forney, DePauw ’65. Nevertheless, for 1975-79, there was a new chief: Lauren’s son David L. Lewis, South Dakota ’72, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The others are James T. Lewis, South Dakota ’65, chapter counselor for Gamma Alpha, and Paul Jay Lewis, South Dakota/ Washington University ’73, LaQuinta bank president. Allen Lewis was given honorary activation in 1995. Another recent addition is his grandson Thomas Lewis, South Dakota ’87.

Lauren was born in Sioux Falls on July 21, 1915. He practiced law in Washington, D.C., for several years. In 1951, he organized Midwest Coast Transport, Inc. and became its chairman. In 1964, he purchased All-America Transport, Inc., becoming its president. These two companies employed more than 3,000 persons when he sold them and entered the banking business in California and South Dakota.

Lauren has been a member of the Board of Regents for South Dakota. He is past president of Associated Motor Carriers, Inc., of South Dakota and president of the Middlewest Motor Freight Bureau of Kansas City, Missouri.

He is chairman of the Dakota Dome of the University of South Dakota, past president of its Foundation, and a Law School Foundation board member. In 1979, he was honored with an L.L.D. (Honorary) by the University of South Dakota.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Michael Jack Schmidt, Ohio ’71
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 23
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 19, 1995

In more than 2,000 games, spanning 18 years with the Philadelphia Phillies, Michael Jack Schmidt, Ohio ’71, helped lead the team to five division titles, two National League pennants and two World Series. He also claimed individual honors as Most Valuable Player three times, including MVP for the 1980 World Series; he won 10 Gold Gloves and led the league in home runs eight times.

Elected to the All-Star team 12 times, he finished his career ranked seventh on the all-time home run list and held 14 major league records, 24 Phillies career records and 11 Phillies season records. He was “1980s Player of the Decade” and was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995, his first year of eligibility.

Mike broadcast games on PRISM after retirement, bringing insight and humor to a behind-the-scenes look at the game. He is a partner and patron of the famous Mike Schmidt’s, a sports Philadelphia cafe whose motif highlights his Phillies career, and “Mike Schmidt’s Philadelphia Hoagies,” bringing the best in “fun food” to the Philadelphia area. Among his endorsements: Nike, Rawlings, Tri-State Chevron- let, Middle Atlantic Milk Marketing, Campbell’s Soup, Lee Jeans, 7-up and Benjamin Moore Paints. Mike assisted in developing and maintaining an ongoing relationship with Gold Bear Sports Management. This organization provides financial management services, advertising endorsements and business opportunities to professional athletes.

Mike places the highest priority on his devotion to family, evidenced by his 20-year marriage to Donna and his affection for his children Jessica and Jonathan.

His willingness to contribute to the community forged new programs for the United Way through corporate contributions for each home run he hit. He carried his program across the country, recruiting athletes in each significant league to set up similar programs, raising more than $1 million locally and $2 million nationwide. He also serves on the Boards of the Major League Baseball Alumni Association, Philadelphia Sports Congress, Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, and the Ohio University Board of Trustees. He gives time and expertise to the U.S. Baseball Federation as a hitting instructor for Team USA and the U.S. Olympics Team.

In addition, Mike established the Mike Schmidt Foundation, which provides contributions to various charities. He gives time to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and ALS through his involvement with Phillies Wives Charity. In July 1992, he introduced The Mike Schmidt Pro-Celebrity Challenge, a golf tournament to benefit the Pennsylvania Special Olympics. This event broke new ground in the ever-expanding ways that Mike has found to keep children and the children’s charities at the forefront of his life.

Michael Jack Schmidt: yesterday’s idol, today’s example, tomorrow’s legend.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor

James Grubbs Martin, Davidson ’57
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 24
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 3, 1995

Leadership has marked the career of Jim Martin at every turn, and the turns have been conspicuously often and varied. Formal designation as Dr. James Grubbs Martin, though entirely proper, would seem pretentious. It is not how he is best known. He has been Jim Martin as chemist and environmentalist, county commissioner, six-term Congressman 1972-84, president of Beta Theta Pi, Governor of North Carolina 1985-93 and in various other notable capacities.

Identification by the starchier label has been on the cover of his Ph.D. thesis, Stereochemistry of the DielsAlder Reaction, published in Chemical Reviews in 1961; on the titles of his four patents in the chemistry of butyl rubber vulcanization; on American Chemical Society’s list of Charles Lathrop Parsons awardees for outstanding public service by an American chemist and occasionally in the concert programs of the Charlotte Symphony, in which he has played the tuba.

He was initiated as #745 on the role of Phi Alpha, the Davidson chapter of Beta Theta Pi, on March 13, 1954. As a faculty member, he was chapter counselor and faculty advisory, 1960-64; chief of District IX, 1963-67; and Convention Secretary in 1965. As a Beta vice president, 1966-69, he helped develop a system of colonization and write a ritual for the installation of new chapters.

In 1993, he stepped from the Governorship of North Carolina to chairmanship of the Research Development Board of the Carolinas Medical Center at Charlotte, N.C. He is on the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, a trustee of Wake Forest University, chairman of Global Transpark Foundation, Inc., and member of the North Carolina Assn. for Biomedical Research. He also is a board member of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Carolina Freight Corp., Duke Power Co., Entropy, Inc., J. A. Jones, Meadowbrook Healthcare Services and Reprogenesis.

Born in Savannah, Ga., December 11, 1935, he received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Davidson in 1957. Receiving a doctor’s degree in chemistry from Princeton in 1960, he taught chemistry at Davidson for the next 12 years. As a Davidson faculty member, he also was a Mecklenburg County Commissioner, 1966-72, and president of North Carolina Assn. of County Commissioners 1970-71.

In six terms as Congressman from the Sixth District, 1972-84, he was on the House Ways and Means Committee, chairman of the House Republican Research Committee, an opponent of a unilateral freeze on nuclear weapons and a Capitol Hill authority on food additives, environment, health and toxic waste legislation.

When elected to his first term as Governor in 1984, he was North Carolina’s 66th governor since statehood, the second Republican elected Governor this century, and the first Republican Governor elected to two consecutive terms.

Jim and the former Dorothy Ann McAulay are parents of James, Jr., Emily and Benson Martin. A former Presbyterian deacon, Jim is a 33rd degree Mason, a Shri- ner and a member of the Chowder and Marching Society, with credentials as a choir member, composer and sailor.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Lee B. Thompson, Sr., Oklahoma ’25 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 25
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 5, 1995

Lee and his twin brother, Ralph Gordon Thompson, were born at Miami, Indian Territory, on March 2, 1902, just 13 years after the Oklahoma Territory was opened for settlement and five years before it gained statehood. In the Beta chapter, founded almost simultaneously with statehood, Lee and Ralph became Numbers 227 and 226, respectively, on the chapter roll. Furthermore, at 92, Lee was still driving 30 miles each spring from Oklahoma City to the campus to present the year’s Outstanding New Member Award.

From this and other evidence of loyalty, there was little surprise that Lee made the single most significant gift to building the new Beta Foundation and Administrative Office in Oxford.

His Beta service included chapter secretary, treasurer and vice president. A Convention delegate in 1925, he was elected a Convention vice president. He was a district chief 1935-42 and president of the 1942 Convention. He was elected vice president and trustee of Beta Theta Pi in 1945. He died on July 22, 1994. His identical twin, Ralph, had died on March 3, 1934.

Lee Thompson was student body president at the University of Oklahoma, which gave him its Gold Letzeiser Medal as an outstanding senior man for leadership and scholarship plus its Brown Derby Award as the student who contributed the most to the University at the most significant personal sacrifice. After graduation from the University’s College of Law, he began a law career in Oklahoma City and in 1928 married Elaine Bizzell, daughter of University of Oklahoma President William B. Bizzell. They became parents of Lee B. Thompson, Jr., Oklahoma ’54, Enid Okla., a former district chief, Beta vice president and trustee 1976-79; Carolyn Elaine (Mrs. Don T.) Zachritz and Judge Ralph G. Thompson, Oklahoma ’56, and grandparents of Lee B. Thompson III, Oklahoma ’84. Other Beta relatives also have included another brother, the late Wayman J. Thompson, Oklahoma ’27, and a nephew, William Bizzell, Tulane ’49.

At the University of Oklahoma, he was the first sophomore in its Reserve Officers Training Corps to earn a second lieutenant’s commission. By 1940, he was a captain, then advancing to major in three months. He attended Command and General Staff School and was promoted to full colonel in 1943.

Lee was a special justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 1967-68. Over the years, he was secretary, general counsel and director of the Mustang Oil Company, deacon and life elder of the First Christian Church of Oklahoma City, a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow and a 33rd degree Mason.

He was a founding member of the Dean’s Council of the University of Oklahoma College of Law and 1971 recipient of the University’s Distinguished Service Citation, past president of the University’s Memorial Student Union and 1982 recipient of its Greek Alumnus of the Year Award. He also was recognized in 1982 as Phi Beta Kappa of the Year.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Franklin David Murphy, Kansas ’36 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 26
Awarded the Oxford Cup on September 24, 1995

Born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1916, Franklin David Murphy, Kansas ’36, was president of the Alpha Nu chapter in his senior year. He went to Germany on an exchange fellowship at the University of Gottingen for one year. He returned to attend the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where he received his M.D. in 1941. In World War II, he was a captain in the Army Medical Corps, returning to Kansas City in 1946 to become a practicing cardiologist.

In 1948, he was appointed Dean of the University of Kansas Medical School at 32. The following year he was named “One of Ten Outstanding Young Men” by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce. Three years later, he was appointed Chancellor of the University of Kansas.

His administration at Kansas was happy but short. Six years later, he became Chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles. He improved the UCLA campus beyond measure, planting it with unusual trees, adding 40 new buildings, seeing the student body grow from 20,000 to 30,000 and raising the University to“major scholarly distinction in worldwide terms.”

In 1968, he became Chairman and CEO of the Los Angeles Times Mirror Group. He oversaw the company’s growth and expansion into new fields. He was a founder of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at its current site, a trustee of the J. Paul Getty Trust, a trustee of the Ahmanson Foundation, a trustee of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for more than 40 years, a director of Ford Motor Company and a director of The Bank of America.

He was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and on countless other boards, educational, medical and otherwise, where, according to the London England Independent, “his common sense, creative genius and unerring eye for the right person for the job were valued.”

Upon his death at age 78 in Los Angeles on June 16, 1994, he left surviving his beloved wife Judith Harris Murphy, one son and three daughters. Obituaries in the great newspapers of America from Los Angeles to New York praised Murphy as one of the nation’s most distinguished leaders. Nicholas Barker in the London Independent may have said it best:

“Murphy received honors and decorations at home and abroad, among them no less than 17 honorary doctorates… This catalog of distinction, however, gives us no idea of the vitality and individuality of his character… Life to him, with him, was always full of color. His door was open to anyone with a new idea, a hopeful enterprise. He would listen, utter a few warm words, make a short telephone call, and ’lo, the job was done. He was a wonderful talker, as well as a good listener, and no one who heard him will forget the liveliness, the pungent phrases of his conversation. He was not a big man, but he seemed to fill any room with his expressive features and the warmth and magnetism of his personality.”

Lyman Field, Kansas ’36

William H. (Bert) Bates, Missouri ’49
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 27
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 25, 1996

Leadership in his profession and community, as well as unselfish devotion to his fraternity and alma mater, have characterized four decades of an outstanding career of W. H. (Bert) Bates, Missouri ’49.

Bert served as chairman of the Kansas City law firm of Lathrop & Norquist (now Lathrop & Gage) and was formerly chair of its Managing Partner Committee. The former general counsel of the Midwest Gas Users Association and the Chamber of Commerce for a Greater Kansas City, he is a panelist of the Center of Public Resources, Inc., a certified arbitrator of the American Arbitration Association and a former president of the Kansas City Bar Assn. Foundation.

Induction into the Zeta Phi Chapter Wall of Fame in 1994 has followed such recognition as the 1984 Distinguished Non-Alumni Award of the School of Law of the University of Missouri-Columbia; the 1984 Man of the Year Award of the Kansas City Beta Alumni Chapter; and the University of Missouri’s 1990 Distinguished Alumnus Award, both its Presidential Citation and its Geyer Award for Service Public Education in 1991 and its 1992 Distinguished Friend Award.

Former chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, he was 1985 recipient of its Brotherhood Award, the YMCA’s 1986 Distinguished Service Award and 1988 honoree of Kansas City Tomorrow Celebration of Leadership.

A veteran of World War II Army service, he was initiated as No 981 on the role of the Zeta Phi chapter as the first man in his class on March 13, 1948, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was chapter vice president and attended the 1948 Beta Convention at Mackinac.

At the University of Michigan School of Law, where he received a Juris Doctor’s degree in 1952, he was the senior editor of the Law Review. After law school, he was a special assistant attorney general of Missouri, followed by five years as secretary and attorney for the Board of Police Commissioners of Kansas City.

He is past president of the Missouri Bar and a former member of the House of Delegates of the American Bar Assn. He received the Justice Charles Evans Whit- taker Award for Outstanding Service from the Lawyers Assn. of Kansas City and the President’s Citation Pro Bono Award of the Missouri Bar. He has been Missourichairman of Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and an officer and liaison to the executive committee, Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Assn.

Past president of the University of Missouri System Board of Curators, he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Kansas City, the Midwest Research Institute. He is chairman of the Trustees of Central United Methodist Church, Kansas City, a Missouri Academy of Squires member, and former chairman of The Hawthorn Foundation’s Board. He also served as chairman of the Missouri State Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, whose Board he served for nearly three decades.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Edward Maurice Brown, Miami ’31 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 28
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 19, 1996

Versatility and dedication, which have characterized Ed Brown’s entire career, also have been factors that brought him back to Oxford for energetic and generous retirement years. These have been years in which he and his wife, the former Anne Amos, Miami and Delta Delta Delta 1932, made significant gifts to the University as well as the Entrance Gates at the Beta Administrative Office.

As a Miami freshman, he quietly accepted leadership in Alpha’s struggle to regain effectiveness. In February 1928, he became Alpha rush chairman, social chairman, chapter president and 1930 General Convention delegate.

Ed earned the academic distinction. Graduating from Harvard Law School on a Rutherford B. Hayes Scholarship, he performed conspicuously in a major law firm, served Beta locally as a district chief and internationally as General Secretary and Vice President/Trustee, helping draft an entirely new administrative pattern for Beta, which included both the creation of a first Administrative Office and the selection of Ralph N. Fey, Miami ’40, as the man to set it up.

In 1947, he left law practice to become assistant to Marvin Pierce, Miami 1916, president of the McCall Corp., publisher of McCall’s, Redbook and Blue Book, and printer of Reader’s Digest, Newsweek and other magazines. Brown became vice president and assistant secretary of McCall in 1949, vice president and secretary in 1951 and a director in 1953.

In 1958, Brown joined Sperry Gyroscope Co., initially as treasurer. He became vice president and treasurer in 1958, vice president for administration 1960-65, and vice president of the Sperry Group, 1965-68, with responsibility for five Sperry Components Divisions in Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida and was a director of Gyro’s French and Ottawa companies. He also has been assistant treasurer of Sperry Rand since 1958. He became group executive of Teledyne, Inc., 1968-80, and in 1971 was elected chairman of the board of Teledyne Canada, Ltd. He retired in 1981.

For more than 25 years, he was a director on the National Center for Disability Services board on Long Island, New York. He served two elective terms, 1961- 65, as a trustee of the Village of Pelham Manor, N.Y, for which he was cited “for a long list of his accomplishments during his administration.”

When Miami’s School of Business Administration inaugurated its Business Advisory Council in 1969, he was named one of the first business executives. In 1972 Miami conferred its honorary degree Doctor of Laws upon him.

The Browns moved to Oxford in 1979. Family visitors to their home in Shadowy Hills include two sons, Edward Dustin Brown and Ernest Amos Brown, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Dr. Edward Bunker Taylor, Auburn/Davidson ’42 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 29
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 19, 1996

Honored by members of the Delta Zeta chapter (Auburn) as “our founder, advisor and most active brother,” Ed Taylor also enjoys the distinction of holding the same roll number in two chapters. A native of Southport, S.C., in Beta’s 100th year, he was initiated No 452 on the Davidson roll.

On November 18, 1958, several Auburn students were invited to Brother Taylor’s home to hear Dr. Seth R. Brooks, St. Lawrence ’22, on his first visit to Auburn. This led to the formation of The Beta Pi Club, later to become the Beta Pi colony. Approval of a charter was at the 1964 Convention, and installation of the Delta Zeta chapter with 41 charter members was on November 19, 1964. Many triumphs of this group have been credited to Founder Taylor’s leadership as chapter counselor, faculty advisor and president of the house corporation. On January 11, 1985, as numbers 448 through 451 were initiated, the ritual was interrupted to insert Dr. Taylor as No 452, then resumed for numbers 453 through 457.

Auburn, a perennially outstanding chapter and winner of a Sisson award every year since the award’s introduction, has named the newly completed chapter hall- pavilion addition in his honor. At the 1997 General Convention in Washington, DC, Delta Zeta became one of the first two chapters to qualify for the distinguished John Reily Knox award signifying the most outstanding chapters in the entire Fraternity.

A graduate in history and later textile management, he received a master of arts degree in vocational guidance from Columbia and a Ph.D. from Nebraska in adult education. He was Auburn’s advisor to fraternities and student affairs for 25 years after being an assistant professor of textiles 1957-63 and assistant director of engineering extension 1963-66.

Ed and the former Helen Bryson married in 1950 and have two daughters, Dr. Betsy Nance and Nancy Lloyd, a teacher. Both live in Richmond, Va. A Methodist Sunday School teacher and coordinator of lay speaking for his area since 1970, Ed has held numerous denominational leadership positions.

He is a retired Army Reserve colonel. His three years of World War II Army Air Corps active duty included Okinawa and Japan. He holds the Distinguished Service Medal, Award of Meritorious Service Medal and three battle stars. He received the honorary Golden Eagle Award of the Alabama Senior Citizens Hall of Fame in 1990, was president of the Faculty Club of Auburn University in 1970 and was a member of the Governor’s Commission on Physical Fitness.

Brother Taylor has been a member and officer in many professional, honorary, college and civic organizations. Having served as State Director for Alabama in the American Association of Retired Persons for five years, he is currently the State Training Coordinator for AARP in Alabama.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Dr. Hugh Edward Stephenson, Jr., Missouri ’43 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 30
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 1997

Hugh Stephenson has built Beta Theta Pi and its Zeta Phi chapter a legacy of dedication, devotion and sensitivity. Many say his practice of these attributes has been daily. A distinguished cardiothoracic surgeon developer of the first resuscitation unit, also known as the defibrillator, he is credited with leadership to establish a four-year medical school at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Significant in this fight was his persistent lobbying of state legislators; his performance at the 1951 hearing to establish Columbia, rather than Kansas City, as the site of Missouri’s first state-funded medical school.

He was Beta Theta Pi General Fraternity president, 1978-81, after serving as vice president 1973-76. He had been a district chief 1967-73. Along the way, he also had been chapter counselor, a house corporation board member, chairman of the fund-raising campaign for a new chapter house and currently serves as faculty advisor. A significant addition to the Zeta Phi chapter house has been named the Hugh E. Stephenson, Jr. Annex.
Hugh Stephenson became a member of the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Medicine at Columbia in 1953. He received a professorship in surgery in 1956 and was chairman of the department of surgery 1956-60.

In 1956 he also was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in the Nation. This also was a period for which he was appointed a Markle Scholar in Academic Medicine. In 1962 he visited all of the medical schools in the United Kingdom as a Surgical Traveler of the James IV Associates of Surgery.

He was then chief of the Missouri school’s division of general surgery 1976-87 and chief of staff 1982-94. He was named John Growdon Distinguished Professor emeritus in 1987. He was named interim dean in 1988-89, associate dean 1989-92 and distinguished professor of surgery emeritus in 1993. He is past president of the Missouri State Surgical Society.

Winning the four-year designation for the medical school resulted in an open-heart program. It made Missouri’s hospital one of only 20 facilities in the entire country where surgical heart procedures were taking place. Partly as a result of this, Hugh Stephenson is author of Immediate Care of the Acutely Ill and Injured, its second edition in 1974; Cardiac Arrest and Resuscitation, its fourth edition in 1975 and, currently, Aesculpapius was a Tiger, an occasionally light-hearted reminded of how the medical school came to be. Alongside these in the John Reily Knox Library at Oxford is Kicks That Count, 1981, a 270-page volume on the finer points of placekicking a football.

He has an SMU Beta son Ted, also known as Hugh Edward III; a daughter, a one-time professional tennis player, and their mother Sally Dickinson Stephenson, who has logged some 25 Beta Conventions herself.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Stephen Davidson Bechtel, Jr., Purdue/Colorado ’47 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 31
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 20, 1997

Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr., Colorado ’47, joins his father, eminent builder and financier, as the first father-son pair to hold this honor. The father, Stephen D. Bechtel, California ’23, received his Cup on April 28, 1987.

The son was accorded the same honor at age 72 as Chairman Emeritus of Bechtel Group, Inc., engineers and constructors. He is Chairman Emeritus of The Fremont Group and Sequoia Ventures, Inc., separate affiliated companies that manage and operate in marketable securities, natural resources and other selected investments.

Born May 10, 1925, in Oakland, Calif., he was initiated into Beta Theta Pi on November 21, 1943, as No 748 on the role of Colorado chapter. Completing his B.S. degree in civil engineering at Purdue in 1946 following World War II Marine Corps service, he married Elizabeth Hogan on June 5, 1946. They have three daughters, two sons and 16 grandchildren. He received his master’s in business administration from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1948.

Honored by Colorado, Purdue, Stanford, many learned societies and four Presidents of the United States, he has been asked for advice in national and international projects ranging from urban housing and pollution control to major conferences on productivity and wage standards.
An Honorary Fellow of the U.K.’s Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Foreign Member of its Royal Academy of Engineering, he also is an Officer of the French Legion of Honor and a Director and Life Member of the American Society of the French Legion of Honor. In 1994, he received the Distinguished Achievement Medal of the American Society of the French Legion of Honor.

Some of these honors are diverse. In 1979 the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) cited “his skill, enterprise and foresight in managing one of the world’s largest civil engineering projects: the Jubail Industrial Complex in Saudi Arabia.” This was followed by the 1980 Herbert Hoover Medal, the 1982 Chairman’s Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, and the ASCE 1985 Washington Award. That same year, seven national engineering societies awarded him the 1985 Washington Award for “his skillful, foresighted and efficient leadership in construction engineering.”

In 1991 President Bush awarded him the National Medal of Technology, the high- est American honor bestowed for technical achievement, in recognition of outstanding leadership in the engineering profession and for developing and applying ad- advanced management techniques to world-class industrial projects.

With it all, his interests and hobbies include golf, tennis, bird shooting, fly-fishing, cross-country skiing, hiking, horseback riding, photography, dog training and field trials.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Mark Odom Hatfield, Willamette ’43 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 32
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 30, 1998

In service to the Fraternity and the broader community, few have been more distinguished than Mark Hatfield. Nevertheless, as U.S. Senator from Oregon in 1985, having been a chapter founder, president of both the petitioning local and the chapter, a Navy combat officer, a Beta district chief, a State Representative, State Senator, Secretary of State, and Governor, he could say, “One of the truly great experiences of my life was to be a part of the Kappa Gamma Rho team from Willamette University to carry the petition for a charter to the 116th Convention.”

It is said that Hatfield has never lost an election. Retired to private life at age 74 after five terms in the U.S. Senate, he maintains an office in Portland, Ore. He serves as a guest lecturer at Willamette, George Fox and Portland State Universities. He continues a long commitment to medical research as chairman of Funding First, an initiative for medical research funding by the Lasker Foundation.

Among the numerous boards, he continues to serve are the National Advisory Council on Aging, the James Madison Fellowship Foundation, the Oregon Historical Society, the Oregon Symphony Foundation, the Oregon Health Sciences Foundation, Mercy Corps Intl. and the Omega Point Foundation.

“Retirement” has given him more time for rare books and presidential history, particularly the careers of Abraham Lincoln and Herbert Hoover. He is the author of four books: Not Quite So Simple (1967), Conflict and Conscience (1971) Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1976) and Vice Presidents of the United States: 1789-1993 (1997). He is co-author of five others: Amnesty: The Unsettled Question of Vietnam (1976), The Causes of World Hunger (1982), Freeze! How Can You Help Prevent Nuclear War (1982), What About the Russians? (1984) and Lessons and Legacies: Farewell Addresses from the Senate (1976). Several of these volumes are in Oxford’s John Reily Knox Memorial Library.

Born in Dallas, Ore., on July 12, 1922, he graduated from Willamette in 1943 with a B.A. degree and a master’s degree in political science from Stanford University in 1948 after being released from the Navy as a lieutenant (JG). He married Antoinette Kuzmanich on July 8, 1958. They are parents of Mark, Elizabeth, Theresa and Charles and have five grandchildren.

A World War II battle veteran, he has dedicated his life to preventing armed conflict and improving the human condition through a lifetime of public service. He authored 1992 legislation calling for an end to U.S. nuclear testing and opposed increases in defense spending and U.S. military involvement abroad while focusing on improving health, education and social services programs.

He was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the Rules Committee, the Joint Committee on the Library and the Joint Committee on Printing.

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37, Historian

Robert T. Howard, DePauw ’37 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 33
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 23, 1998

Long-time General Fraternity Historian, 1979-98, and Editor of The Beta Theta Pi magazine, 1955-63, 1976, Robert Thomas Howard was the complete Beta volunteer for more than 50 years. The Oxford Cup was presented to him on July 23, 1998, by Administrative Secretary Robert L. Cottrell, Miami ’54.

After graduating from DePauw, he completed a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern University. He was a reporter, copy editor and rewrite man with the In- Indianapolis News until 1947, taking time out for Navy duty during World War II when he served in nine Pacific combat operations as a communications officer aboard cruisers and the aircraft carrier Cowpens.
In 1947, Bob moved to Oxford, Ohio, as Miami University’s Sports Information Director. In 1956 he was named director of the University News Bureau and, in 1960, was promoted to Director of Public Information. He retired in 1978.

For the General Fraternity, Bob served the Tutor-in-Residence Selection Committee for a dozen years, half that time as chairman, and was a long-time member of the Founders Fund Scholarship-Leadership Awards committee. Besides authoring the centennial history of the DePauw chapter, he was a critical author of Beta history during the “Heritage I” session, 140th General Convention.

As General Fraternity Historian, he wrote all of the biographical tributes on the 32 Oxford Cup recipients since the program was introduced in 1984 until this one. He recently served on the select committee that planned the Archives Museum in the new Foundation and Administrative Office in Oxford.

A long-time member and president of the Oxford Museum Association, he headed efforts to restore the DeWitt log house, the oldest structure in Oxford Township, and historic Black’s (covered) Bridge. He contributed to the maintenance and operation of the Pioneer Home and Farm Museum.

The 1977 Oxford Citizen of the Year, Bob was publicity chair for the Oxford Bicentennial Committee, on the Butler County Council on Alcoholism board, an officer of Oxford Kiwanis Club, and session chair/speaker for regional and national conferences of Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

In 1989, he was inducted into the Miami University Hall of Fame in recognition of his many years chronicling the achievements of Miami athletes and for his involvement in the development of the now noted Cradle of Coaches. He was also awarded honorary membership in the University’s Alumni Association.

Born in Mount Vernon, Ill., he was married to Betty Ritchie Howard for 36 years until her death. He married the former Madra (Kuehn) Hutchinson of Hamilton, Ohio, in 1983. His family also includes son Robert T. (Tom) Howard, Jr., Asheboro, N.C.; daughter Betsey, Anchorage, Alaska; a stepdaughter; three grandsons and four granddaughters. He died in Oxford on Aug. 15, 1998.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Spencer Fox Eccles, Utah ’56
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 34
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 9, 1998

Spencer F. Eccles, Utah ’56, is a genuine product of the intermountain west: born and raised in the Rockies, head of the region’s most prominent banking empire, the energizer of winter sports and the 2002 Winter Olympics and lover of all that the region has to offer, from skiing to ranching and from the arts to higher education.

As most brothers call him, the Chairman and chief executive officer of First Security Corporation, Spence earned a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance, then completed two years of U.S. Army Infantry duty as a lieutenant before earning his master’s degree in banking and finance from Columbia University.

After his introduction to banking in 1959 with First National City Bank in New York City, he joined First Security Bank of Utah, N.A., in late 1960. He was senior vice president of First Security Bank of Idaho, Boise, 1961-70, returning to Salt Lake City as executive vice president of First Security Corp., advancing to the president in 1975, a chief operating officer in 1980, chairman CEO in 1982.

Spence is a licensed pilot who owns Eccles Flying Hat Ranch (650-acre/350-head cattle ranch), Hailey, Idaho, and Fox Ranch (2,000 acres) in LaBarge, Wyo. He is General Partner of Eccles Investment Co., owner of Goldener Hirsch Inn, Silver Lake Level Deer Valley and Brigham Street Inn.

In addition to the Boards of First Security Corporation and its subsidiaries, he is on the Boards of Anderson Lumber Co., Union Pacific Corp., ZCMI, U.S. Ski Team Foundation, Utah Symphony, and Alta Ski Lifts and the Advisory Boards of Ballet West, Pioneer Theatre Co., University of Utah and University of Utah Dean’s Advisor Council to the David Eccles School of Business.

He is a member of the American Bankers Association, on its Board 1985-88; Association of Bank Holding Companies, Chairman, 1989-90; Association of Reserve City Bankers, on its board 1989-91; The Bankers Roundtable and the International Financial Conference, Chairman, 1993-94, in London, England. He was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Salt Lake City branch, 1980-82, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 1983-88.

A member of the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, he is active in Utah Partnership for Educational and Economic Development, Primary Children’s Medical Center Foundation, Salt Palace Expansion Feasibility Task Force, Project 2000Coalition for Utah’s Future, Univ. of Utah Capital Campaign, March of Dimes WalkA- America and Boy’s and Girl’s Club Building Campaign.

Among dozens of awards and honors, he has seven honorary doctorate degrees. He and his wife, the former Cleone E. Peterson, have four children: Hope (Mrs. Randall Quarles), Lisa, Katie (Mrs. David Burnett) and Spencer (Kristine).

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Heber Hiram Stephenson, Jr., Miami ’39 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 35
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 21, 1998

The role of Hi Stephenson in Beta Theta Pi is unique. As General Fraternity Archivist since 1976, he is the custodian of the Fraternity’s museum and curator of its collections of documents and other treasures and coordinator of the John Reily Knox Memorial Library. He is often the first to greet visitors to the Foundation and Administrative Office in these capacities.

For Hi, the Archivist position is a volunteer job, and he has been part of a five-person committee planning the expansion and improvement of the archives and museum. Beta’s fourth Archivist since 1870, he is the first “resident archivist,” coming almost daily from his home to an office adjacent to the museum. The work follows him to a vacation home at Lakeside-on-Lake Erie, Ohio.

Born August 19, 1916, in Jackson, Ohio, he was initiated October 9, 1936, No. 638 on the Alpha chapter roll. He completed 1943-46 military service as a lieutenant in the Supply Corps of the Naval Reserve, all sea duty in the Pacific. In 1946, he returned to his alma mater to begin 31 years of student personnel staff work. He was Assistant Dean of Student Life for Housing Assignments and Administrative Services from 1973 until retirement in 1977.

He was the faculty advisor and counselor for the Alpha chapter and was secretary and on the Alpha Chapter House Company board for several years. In 1995, he became the 12th inductee into the Alpha Chapter Hall of Fame.

As an undergraduate, he sang in the Alpha chapter quartet, the Alpha Centenary Choir and was alumni secretary. He was a member of the Men’s Glee Club and Phi Mu Alpha, men’s music honor society. He was active in the University YMCA and director of its Freshman Camp his senior year.

An Elder in the Oxford Presbyterian Church since 1951, he was chairman of its Church School Board for six years, for many years the church’s clerk of session. He has intermittently sung in its chancel choir since his undergraduate days. Furthermore, it is common knowledge among his friends and associates that a portion of each Thursday morning is blocked out for his traditional unofficial duty as a proofreader of the church bulletin when he is in town.

In 1946, Hi was married in Orrville, Ohio, to the former Katharine Warner, Oberlin College graduate. They are parents of Edwin (Ned) Stephenson, Tennessee ’74, and Mrs. James (Jeannette) Keaton, Rockwall, Texas. Other Beta relatives: his father, the late Heber H. Stephenson, Ohio State 1906, and his uncle, the late Bertram S. Stephenson, Ohio State 1901, a district chief.

Hi was trustee and secretary of The Oxford Museum Assn., president of the Friends of the Library Society of Miami University, Republican Central Committeeman in Butler County and trustee and secretary of the Vereker Farm Condominium Assn., Oxford. With Mr. and Mrs. George Hill of Oxford, Hi and Kay are co-authors of an illustrated booklet, Highlights of Historic Oxford, 1969.

Stanley R. Smith, Southern California ’69
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 36
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 5, 1999

Few professional athletes achieve legendary status while embodying the ultimate in sportsmanship as an actual role model, as has Stanley R. Smith, South­ern California ’69. His domination of professional tennis in the ’70s is unques­tioned; he has since devoted his life to working with young people.

Stan lived in the Gamma Tau chapter house for two years, originating the chapter’s sponsorship of Big Brothers of America, working with youngsters in L.A.’s Watts area in 1966. He won the NCAA title in doubles two years and was singles champion one year. Before graduation, he played on the Pro Tour and was named the Davis Cup team.

Stan and his wife Margie live on Hilton Head Island, S.C. She was captain of the tennis team and a member of the first graduating class to include women at Princeton. Their children are Ramsey, Trevor, Kogan and Austin.

Often a finalist or semifinalist, Stan earned his place in the International Tennis Hall of Fame (1987) as No. 1 ranked player in the world, 1971-72; No. 1 in the U.S., 1969, 1971-73; winner of 39 career singles titles and 25 U.S. na­tional men’s singles and doubles titles placing him second only to Bill Tilden.

Winner of the U.S. Open in 1971 and Wimbledon champion in 1972, he won the Grand Prix Masters in 1970 and was a member of the U.S. Davis Cup team, 1968-73, 1975, 1977-79 and 1981.

In addition, the angular right-hander won 61 doubles crowns, most of those with long-time partner Bob Lutz, including four U.S. Open titles between 1968 and 1980 and the Australian Open in 1970. They are the only pair in tennis history to win U.S. national titles on four different surfaces – grass, clay, hardcourt and indoor. Stan twice won the 35-and-over title at Wimbledon.

(1984-85) and the U.S. Open (1984). He teamed with Peter Fleming to win the 35-and-over doubles at Wimbledon in 1991 and 1992, and Stan captured the singles title on the 35-and-over Grand Champions Tour in 1981, 1984 and 1986.

Stan continues to give back to his sport. He has been the director of coaching for the United States Tennis Assn. since 1988, and in 1994 became the USTA asso­ciate director of player development.

Touring professional of the Sea Pines Plantation in Hilton Head since 1976, he and Margie and their children were named Family of the Year by the South Carolina Tennis Assn. in 1995. He is a contributing editor for Tennis magazine.

Stan helped create the ATP Tour Partners Program, which links the fans to the Tour, the players and the tournaments. He headed a capital campaign for the Boys and Girls Club of Hilton Head, raising a $6 million building fund.

A frequent participant in Beta Conventions, Stan Smith, continues to serve aces in his life – for his family, community and Fraternity and on behalf of youth and his sport.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Frank Anderson Shrontz, Idaho ’53
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 37
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 8, 1999

A modest and effective leader, Frank Shrontz quietly rose to the heights of the corporate world after graduating with an L.L.B. from the University of Idaho in 1954. However, during his lifelong career with The Boeing Company, he has always found time for Fraternity and community, spurring support for the Gamma Gamma chapter and pursuing nationwide efforts to improve K-12 education.

Born in 1931 and raised in Boise, Idaho, he is the son of the late Thurlyn H. Shrontz, Idaho ’21. Frank was commissioned in the Army in 1953 and served two years on active duty, 1954-56. He earned a master’s degree in business ad­ministration from Harvard Graduate School in 1958 and was a Sloan Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1969-70.

Married to the former Harriet Houghton, a Delta Gamma and a graduate of the University of Idaho, the couple lives on Mercer Island, Wash. They have three sons, all Betas: Craig H., Idaho ’78; Richard W. (Rick), Idaho ’81 and David A., Idaho ’83. Frank’s uncle was Orville L. Shrontz, Idaho ’27.

Frank joined Boeing in 1958. In 1973, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for installations and logistics, and in 1976 he became Assistant Secretary of Defense. He rejoined Boeing in 1977 as corporate vice president, contract administration and planning.

He was vice president-general manager of the 707 /727 /737 Division of Boeing Commercial Airplane Company, 1978-82; he was vice president of sales for the Commercial Airplane Company, 1982-84 of the Commercial Airplane Company before becoming president of Boeing in February 1985.

Currently chairman emeritus of The Boeing Company, Frank retired as chair­man in 1997. He was chairman from April 1988 and C.E.O. from April 1986 until April 1996. He retired as a Boeing board member on August 1, 1997.

Frank serves on the board of directors of Boise Cascade Corporation, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) Company, Chevron Corporation and the Seattle Mariners baseball club. He also is a citizen regent on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents and is a member of The Business Council.

He is vice chairman of the New American Schools Development Corp., a pri­vate, non-profit corporation formed to develop and support new, high-quality, “break-the-mold” school designs. He is also chairman emeritus of the Partner­ship for Learning, a non-profit organization supported by Washington business and community leaders to increase public awareness about Washington state’s efforts to raise academic standards in public schools.

At Gamma Gamma, Frank was chapter president 1953-54, attended the 112th General Convention (1951) at Old Point Comfort, Va., and was a delegate to the 114th General Convention (1953) in Pasadena, Calif.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Kenneth Lee Lay, Missouri ’64 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 38
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 7, 2000

While Ken Lay’s lofty stature in the business-industrial community may not be common knowledge to the average person, he shares top billing among the handful of the world’s leading energy entrepreneurs. Chairman and CEO of Enron Corp. since its inception in 1985, he has guided the company from a regulated U.S. pipeline company to a significant player in the international energy and communications field while propelling it to the top 20 among the largest U.S. corporations.

A native of Missouri, Brother Lay was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in economics from the University of Missouri, where he also received a master’s degree in economics. He began his career in 1965 as a corporate economist with Exxon Company, USA, later earning a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Houston.

An officer in the Navy, he was a technical assistant to a Commis­sioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Deputy Undersecretary of the Interior. Also, while in Washington, DC, he was an assistant professor at George Washington University, teaching graduate courses in micro- and macro­economic theory and government-business relations. He is married to the former Linda Phillips of Washington, DC. They have five children: Robyn, Mark, David, Elizabeth and Beau.

An enthusiastic supporter of Beta Theta Pi and the Men of Principle initiative, Ken was the keynote speaker on August 5, 1999, at the 160th General Convention in Oxford, Ohio.

Enron, one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas and communications companies, had $40 billion in revenue in 1999 and some $34 billion in energy and communications assets as the Houston-based company entered the new millennium. Named Fortune’s “most innovative company” for the last five years, the firm produces electricity and natural gas, develops, constructs and operates energy facilities worldwide, delivers physical commodities and financial and risk management services to customers around the world and is developing an intelligent network platform to facilitate online business.

Interestingly, all three members of the Chairman’s office at Enron are Betas: Jeffrey K. Skilling, Southern Methodist ’75, president and chief operating officer; Joseph W. Sutton, Ohio ’69, vice chairman, and Lay.

Ken was president of Continental Resources Company (formerly Florida Gas Company) and executive vice president of the Continental Group, parent com­pany of Continental Resources, before joining Transco Energy Company in May 1981 as president/CEO and a director.

In June 1984, he joined Houston Natural Gas as chairman/CEO. Houston Natu­ral Gas merged with InterNorth, Inc. in July 1985 to become Enron Corp., and he was named chairman/CEO of Enron in February 1986.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Neal R. Fosseen, Washington ’39 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 39
Awarded the Oxford Cup on May 17, 2000

In Eastern Washington’s largest city, the name Neal R. Fosseen invokes such glowing appellations as “the man who changed the face of Spokane” or “the man who helped save our city from economic collapse.”

Even the local daily, The Spokesman-Review, saluted him with the headline, “Reluctant leader left his mark,” noting: “As a mayoral candidate, Neal Fosseen initially was reluctant, and as mayor, he occasionally was frustrated, but as a former mayor, he is a standard-setter.

“The mark of the former public official, Marine Corps colonel and bank CEO is all over Spokane. There’s the Fosseen Room on the campus of Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute. There’s the Fosseen Award given each year to a military unit for community service. There’s Camp Fosseen for Boy Scouts, named for a person who, at age 12, was the nation’s youngest Eagle Scout.”

It was 40 years ago that community leaders tapped Fosseen to reverse the flight of stores and jobs from downtown. Devoting seven years at 60-70 hours a week to his ‘part-time’ job as mayor, he declared, “The best way to bring jobs to Spokane is to have a well-run city.” He introduced the council-city manager system. Soon, he had elevated this “Capital of the Inland Empire” to a thriving center which led to the highly successful Expo ’74 World’s Fair.

Fosseen and his wife of almost 64 years, Helen Witherspoon, enjoy a full life that has included sharing their good fortune with several gift annuities to foundations, including one they recently established with the Beta Theta Pi Foundation to, as Fosseen sees it, “assist worthy young Betas fulfilling their educational and leadership goals. It’s a win-win situation!”

After graduating from the UW in 1929, he was with Washington Brick, Lime & Sewer Pipe Co., 1923-58, the last 20 years as president; Securities Intermountain Co. as a director, 1954-71; Old National Bank of Washington, 1958-73, chairman and president 1972-73; and Washington Bancshares, 1968-73, chairman of the board and president 1972-73. He was a director of Utah-Idaho Sugar Co., First National Bank of Spokane, Spokane Industrial Park, North Coast Life Insurance Co., Old National Bancorp, Quarry Tile Co. and Day Mines, Inc.

He originated the sister city program and was a personal ambassador to Nishinomiya, Japan, where he was named honorary citizen. His encouragement for the development of the expanse of green along the Spokane River that weaves through downtown is in sharp contrast to the aging cityscape of the 1950s.

A lifetime volunteer in Beta Theta Pi, he still serves on the house corporation board for the chapter at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, 10 miles from Spokane. He and Helen have contributed many cultural artifacts to numerous institutions, including pre-Columbian Indian artifacts to the Otani Museum in Japan. They have two sons, Neal, Jr., and Roger.

Eric Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Steven Browning Sample, Illinois ’62 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 40
Awarded the Oxford Cup on May 17, 2000

Dr. Steven B. Sample has always been a step or two ahead of his time. More than six years before Beta Theta Pi piloted its critically acclaimed Men of Prin­ciple initiative in 1998, Dr. Sample had installed his 14-point Minimum Stan­dards for the University of Southern California Greek community. The USC president defined the goal of these Standards: “To achieve a Greek system repre­senting real excellence in the student experience, a Greek system which can be described as the best in the U.S. and which will bring significant credit to the University.” His vision has achieved that and more.

An electrical engineer, musician, outdoorsman and inventor, he became USC’s 10th president in 1991.

Active in Beta Theta Pi from his undergraduate years, Brother Sample earned a Beta Founders Fund scholarship in 1960. He is married to the former Kathryn Brunkow of Park Ridge, Ill. The Samples of San Marino, Calif., have two daugh­ters, Michelle Sample Smith and Elizabeth Ann Sample.

Sample served on the Beta Theta Pi Vision Committee in 1996 and was Key­note Speaker at the Fraternity’s 159th General Convention in Miami, Fla.

In addition to earning B.S.E.E., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineer­ing at the University of Illinois, he has received honorary doctorates from the University of Nebraska, Purdue University, Hebrew Union College, University of Sheffield, England and Canisius College.

His patents in digital appliance controls have been licensed to practically every major manufacturer of appliance controls and microwave ovens globally. Nearly 200 million home appliances have used his inventions.

After earning his Ph.D. degree in 1965, he worked for a year as a senior scien­tist at Melpar Inc., a research and development firm. He then joined the faculty in electrical engineering at Purdue University, where he also worked as a con­sultant to industry.

Sample served as deputy director for academic affairs at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, 1972-74, and as executive vice president for academic affairs and dean of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska, 1974-82.

Sample came to USC from the State University of New York at Buffalo, serving as president since 1982. While there, SUNY-Buffalo was the first public university in New York or New England to be elected to membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU).

Sample is a trustee of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and the Regenstrief Medical Foundation. He was a founding member of the California Business-Higher Education Forum and is a member of Project California, the Coalition of 100 and the Los Angeles Business Advisors.

Eric Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

B. Hume Morris, Centre ’68 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 41
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 5, 2000

From the dawn of his Beta life on May 11, 1965, B. Hume Morris, Centre ’68, has maintained significant involvement in the Fraternity — a practice continuing today as the General Fraternity Historian.

A resident of Louisville, Kentucky, Hume attended Centre College, 1964-66, majoring in history and drama. He served the Epsilon chapter as corresponding secretary, recording secretary and ritual chairman. He also was a member of Phi Beta Chi honorary.

In 1966, Hume transferred to the University of Louisville, where he founded Beta’s Delta Pi chapter.

He was the founder and first president of the Nu Xi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta history honorary society, editor of the campus newspaper, Collegiate Assessor, and Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honorary.

He attended the University’s Law School, where he was managing editor of the Journal of Family Law, vice dean of Delta Theta Phi law fraternity, chairman of the Honor Council, president of Omicron Delta Kappa and recipient of The Outstanding Graduating Senior Award, School of Law, 1971.

In private practice, he specializes in trial work and civil litigation. He is a member of the American Trial Lawyers Association and the Kentucky Academy of Trial Attorneys.

Hume and Betty (Williams) were married in 1966. Betty is recently retired from a teaching career. They have three children. Son Benjamin H. Morris, Auburn ’88, is a senior banking officer with Republic Bank, Louisville. He and his wife Wendy have a son Blake, 4. Son Hunter W. Morris, Auburn ’00, will graduate in information systems management in fall 2000. Daughter Creighton Hopmann is with the Kentucky Family Literacy Center, while husband Steve is with a Louisville advertising agency.

Other Beta relatives are David C. Williams, Kentucky ’91, and Kirk Williams III, Vanderbilt ’89.

Hume served Beta Theta Pi as chapter counselor of Delta Pi, 1976-78; chief of District XXXIII, 1977-83; secretary of the 141st and 142nd General Conventions; president of the 143rd General Convention; General Secretary for two terms, 1983- 89, and General Fraternity President, 1993-96. He was named Fraternity Historian on December 15, 1999.

Hume edited the 13th Edition of Son of the Stars and the 150th Anniversary History of the Fraternity, The Faithful Home of the Three Stars, written by Dr. Peter J. Floriani, Lehigh ’77. He also designed the Oxford Cup, authored its award ritual and designed the Fraternity’s “dragon” ring.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Weldon B. (Hoot) Gibson, Washington State ’38 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 42
Awarded the Oxford Cup on September 23, 2000

A giant in international economic research and global business development, Hoot Gibson joined SRI (then Stanford Research Institute) as Director of Economics Research and Chairman of International Programs. He was SRI’s third employee. For more than 40 years, he played a crucial role in SRI’s steady growth in size and worldwide prominence.

After graduation from WSU in 1938, he received an MBA degree in 1940 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He is an International Associate of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Following World War II service in the Army Air Corps as director of material requirements, he retired as a colonel in 1946. He became Assistant Director of the new USAF Institute of Technology at Dayton, Ohio.

In 1947, Dr. Gibson joined Stanford Research Institute, a new non-profit research organization. In the 1950s, he extended the scope of SRI’s operations worldwide, organizing 80 major international conferences for senior business executives in some 25 countries. In the 1970s, he created the SRI International Associates Plan, including more than 800 companies in 63 nations.

Dr. Gibson was named Associate Director of Stanford Research Institute in 1956, Vice President in 1959, Executive Vice President in 1960, Senior Director in 1982 and Senior Director Emeritus in 1988.

In connection with SRI’s worldwide operations, Dr. Gibson has traveled extensively throughout Europe, South America, Africa, the South Pacific, the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East. He co-founded the International Industrial Conference, a significant meeting of world industry leaders and has been on the governing boards of numerous civic, educational and business associations throughout the world, including the Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), which he co-founded in 1967, and the American University of Beirut, which he served as a trustee. PBEC honored him in March 2000 as International Counselor and Senior Advisor.

In 1946, the U.S. presented Dr. Gibson the Medal of the Legion of Merit, and he was awarded the Order of Commander of the British Empire in 1947.

SRI established The Weldon B. (Hoot) Gibson Achievement Award. He was presented The Weldon B. (Hoot) Gibson Silver Anniversary All-American Award by Time-Life International in 1963. He is the founding chairman of the WSU Foundation. Each year WSU presents a Gibson Award for service to the University.

A native of Eldorado, Texas, Helen Mears Gibson was married 60 years in March 2001. A son, David M., is a figurative and landscape artist in New York. Another son, Arthur E., died in 1962 at the age of 19. Mrs. Gibson studied fine art at Oberlin and Stanford and continues to do watercolors. Dr. Gibson enjoys following Stanford and Washington State athletics. They have one grandson.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Owen S. Williams, Toronto ’50 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 43
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 13, 2000

Considered Beta Theta Pi’s Canadian conscience in recent years, Owen S. Williams, Toronto ’50, has given selflessly of his time and energies to the Fraternity’s presence there, particularly in Ontario and Quebec.

Chairman of the Board of the Beta Theta Pi Foundation of Canada, he became an involved alumnus for Beta soon after earning an honors BA in economics. Entering the real estate field, he became an Accredited Real Estate Appraiser of the Canadian Institute and earned an MBA from York University, Toronto, in 1968. He joined the new educational system of Community Colleges of Applied Arts & Technology at Seneca College as assistant chairman of Business, later becoming director of the Real Estate & Insurance, Business Administration and General Business courses.

He retired in 1987, subsequently teaching retailing and related subjects at Ryerson University, Toronto, while concurrently holding an appointment as a field faculty professor of Business from Norwich State University of Vermont.

While a collegian, he was rush chairman and treasurer. “As the procurer of scarce postwar items for the chapter,” he conceded, “I was labeled ‘Angles.'”

Owen has served on the Beta Theta Pi Foundation Board of Directors since 1995. He was chapter counselor to Theta Zeta (Toronto) chapter for more than 25 years, has been president of the chapter house corporation since 1976 and was chief of District IV, 1963-67.

Former treasurer and president of Theta Zeta Alumni Association, he was vice president of two Beta General Conventions and chaired the 50th, 75th and 90th Theta Zeta anniversary banquets. In 1996, he was awarded the additional chapter roll No 1000 by Theta Zeta.

Born and residing in Toronto, Owen was commissioned in the Royal Canadian Navy in 1942. He served in various seagoing wartime assignments as executive officer of the Canadian Naval Repair Dockyard in Newfoundland.

Owen has four children: Kevin, a mechanical engineer; Mrs. Sheila Yeap, a teacher of mentally challenged young adults; Brian, a robotics technician, and Mrs. Mary Ellen Norland, a management consultant. “I have five grandchildren under 10,” he adds, “and two are computer literate.”

Director of the Naval Officers’ Assn. of Canada, Toronto branch, he is on the executive of the Royal Canadian Legion, Fort York branch; deputy chair of the communications and marketing committee of St. John Ambulance of Canada and a member of the Soldiers’ Tower Committee of the University of Toronto.

An officer of the Order of St. John, he was honored with the 125th Anniversary of the Canadian Confederation medal for community service and a Silver Medallion of the Naval Officers’ Association of Canada. Owen is a York Downs Golf & Country Club and the Beaver Valley Ski Club member.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Bruce A. Nordstrom, Washington ’55
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 44
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 20, 2000

The grandson of the founder of Nordstrom Corporation, John W. Nordstrom, Bruce A. Nordstrom, Washington ’55, has been an integral part of the retail giant for more than 45 years. He began his career in the stockroom and on the sales floor of the downtown Seattle store, serving customers in various roles until he was named president in 1963.

Along with his cousins John and Jim Nordstrom and brother-in-law Jack McMillan, he assumed the company’s leadership from the second generation in 1968. The four took the company public in 1971 and continued to share leadership responsibilities for the Nordstrom company as co-chairmen until 1995.

Bruce and his fellow co-chairmen led the company’s national expansion drive into California, the Midwest and the East Coast and increased sales from $100 million in 1973 to $3.9 billion in 1971. Bruce has served as a member of the Board of Directors since 1995. He reassumed his position as chairman of the company in September 2000.

“Nordstrom’s started as a shoe store,” he is proud to relate, “and even today, you will see some big, I hope beautiful, stores that are built around large, strong shoe departments. That is our heritage.”

Bruce joined the Board of Directors of Nordstrom.com in 1999. He has also served on the boards of such companies as Safeco, First Interstate Bank of Washington and the Westin Hotels. He is the former president of the Downtown Seattle Association, Children’s Hospital Foundation, Seattle Golf Club Association and Seattle Goodwill. He was the United Way of King County campaign chairman in 1984.

After graduating from the University of Washington in economics, he remained active in various University of Washington alumni affairs.

Among the numerous other members of the Nordstrom family who are members of the Beta family are Bruce’s father Everett W. Nordstrom, Washington ’23; uncles Lloyd W. Nordstrom, Washington ’32; Elmer J. Nordstrom, Washington ’26; and sons Blake W. Nordstrom, Washington ’82; Peter E. Nordstrom, Washington ’84, and Erik B. Nordstrom, Washington ’85; nephews J. A. Nordstrom, Southern California ’84, and John W. Hopen, Washington ’81, and cousin John N. Nordstrom, Washington ’58.

Bruce and his wife Jeannie continue to live in Seattle. He has provided leadership in restoring the Beta Omega chapter house and membership to excellence in recent years. In that effort, as in Nordstrom, Inc., Bruce quickly points out that such successes depend heavily on teamwork.

“Loyalty and pride may be the two things I believe in most,” he insists. “I’ve always been proud to say I work at Nordstrom’s, and I’ve always been proud to say I’m a Beta.”

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Stanley Richard Church, Washington State ’31
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 45
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 28, 2001

Stan Church was a communicator. He perceived information needs, and he devoted his skills and resources toward their resolution. Toward such ends, he became an influential regional radio executive, an innovator in Beta activities of the Pacific Northwest and an originator of ideas in leadership.

Stan was inducted into the Gamma Theta chapter on May 26, 1928, younger brother of Wilbur Everett Church, Washington State ’27. Unofficially, he was considered a member of two chapters: Gamma Zeta at Whitman had declared him an honorary member in 1981 when it invited him to attend a reunion of the chorus, which had been featured at the 1939 Beta Centenary in Oxford. Then at Gamma Zeta’s 75th anniversary, he was handed a nametag identifying him as Washington State ’31, Whitman ’81.

His first two years after leaving school, Stan was with a radio station in Montana, where there were no Beta chapters. Then he moved to Walla Walla, Wash., as manager of Station KUJ. There was a Beta alumni group which he joined. In 1932 he moved to Portland, Ore., and was elected secretary of its alumni group. Eventually, he would become a lawyer.

Stan originated the Northwest Beta Songfest, among chapters at Oregon, Oregon State, Whitman, Washington, Washington State, Idaho and British Columbia, in 1937. This popular contest, held alternately in Spokane, Seattle and Portland, continued until 1953, except for war years, and led to some of the largest assemblages in Beta history.

In 1939 he and his wife Gladys drove one of the cars in the Whitman Chorus Caravan to the Beta Centenary, where he also was elected one of three Convention vice presidents. In 1940 he was graduate chairman of an Interfraternity Conference at Oregon State for fraternities in all Western States.

He was named district chief for Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State and British Columbia in 1941, serving in that capacity through the war and until 1948. When Willamette University was opened to fraternities in the 1946-47 school year, he assisted in installing the Beta, Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Chi chapters there Jan. 3-4, 1947.

He was the author of the Wooglin, Dragon and Fraternal Fifties ceremonies currently in use. He assisted Dr. Peter J. Floriani, Lehigh ’77, in the authorship of The Faithful Home of the Three Stars, a 1989 compilation of the Fraternity’s first 150 years and compendium of related information. His contributions to the book include “The White- man Chorus — Road Trip to the Centenary,” a section titled “Poetry,” and a section titled “Rituals.”

In 1953, he received a plaque from the Fraternity, recognizing his 65 years of membership and devotion and service. In 1993, he was chosen vice president of the 154th Convention. At the 1996 Convention, his 18th, he was saluted as the Beta in attendance who had been a member longest — 66 years.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Robert Lyman Cottrell, Miami ’54
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 46
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 26, 2001

Fortunate indeed was Beta Theta Pi that Bob Cottrell’s career plans and the Fraternity’s management needs coincided in 1991 when the Board of Trustees invited him to serve as Administrative Secretary. As a result, his firm hand led to establishing a professional management approach to fraternity administration, and his vision and perseverance brought about the funding and construction of the new Foundation and Administrative Office.

Raised and educated in Southwest Ohio’s Oxford-Hamilton community, Bob is the son of a Miami University professor. A Phi Beta Kappa graduated summa cum laude in economics from Miami, where he was an Air Force ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate. On active duty in the mid-’50s, he flew single-engine jets.

As a youth, he bagged groceries at the local Kroger store, a relationship that ultimately led to his advancement to executive positions with the Cincinnati-based firm.

In his distinguished career with Kroger, he was promoted to vice president, Store Operation Service, in 1964; vice president, Corporate Procurement and Trade Relations in 1977; vice president, Distribution Administration 1979, and vice president, Wholesaling, and chairman of the Board of Foodland Distributors in 1984.

After leaving Kroger in 1988, he established Cottrell & Associates, a management consulting firm in the food industry. He served on an interim basis as senior vice president of operations for Circle K Corporation.

As a Beta, he was chapter president. He stayed close to the Alpha chapter as president of the house corporation for two terms and as district chief, which led to his election as vice president and a member of the Board of Trustees, 1971-74. Following his term as Administrative Secretary, 1991-98, Bob was director of the Beta Theta Pi Foundation, 1998-99, and currently serves on the Foundation Board of Directors.

Bob has taken a leading role in Alpha’s $400,000 chapter house renovation, not content to be idle during retirement.

As a family man, he and his wife Nancy, a Kappa Kappa Gamma and Miami graduate, are parents of three sons, all Miami Betas: Philip F. ’78, Robert S. ’79 and Richard F. ’80.

As a concerned citizen, he was a trustee of the Ft. Hamilton-Hughes Hospital, 1977-85, providing financial leadership for a $42 million expansion; trustee and president of the Board, Hamilton Community Home Assn., 1979-86; elder, trustee and chairman of the finance committee, Hamilton Presbyterian Church, and chairman, of the Butler County Children’s Services Board, 1993-99.

For Miami University, he was chairman, Advisory Council of the School of Applied Science; vice-chairman and trustee, Miami University Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Council of the School of Business and the Resource Development Board. In 1989, he received the John E. Dolibois Alumni Award for service to the University.

Upon learning of Bob’s selection to receive the Oxford Cup, one member of the Foundation Board sent a congratulatory note which readily embodies the former Administrative Secretary’s management philosophy: “You have never attempted to take all the credit for achievements which could understandably have been only yours to receive. Instead, you have been more than willing to share and give credit to all those people who did the work and succeeded because of your excellent instructions. That is one of the signs of a good leader. You have truly earned this award.”

Eric Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Joe M. Allbaugh, Oklahoma State ’74
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 47
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 2002

The Allbaugh family settled on a plot of land outside Blackwell, Oklahoma, in the Cherokee Strip Run of 1893. Years later, the oldest son of Marvin and Peggy Allbaugh grew up on the family’s wheat farm, some 100 miles north of Oklahoma City. Young Joe dreamed of the day when he would become a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys.

Joe M. Allbaugh, Oklahoma State ’74, took a keen interest in politics during the seventh grade after a knee injury ended his budding football career. In 1964, he volunteered to distribute leaflets for Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. Allbaugh as- sisted with gubernatorial, senatorial and presidential campaigns in the years that followed.

His sense of civic responsibility paid off when Senator Harry Bellmon offered Allbaugh a job with his re-election campaign. After graduation, he accepted a position as Bellmon’s field representative in Enid, Okla., Joe Allbaugh was a natural when organizing and managing political campaigns — a skill that would serve him well as George W. Bush’s national campaign manager in 2000.

Allbaugh advanced his knowledge and honed his various legislative and administrative roles before being named Oklahoma’s deputy secretary of transportation. In 1994, a former Bellmon staffer recommended Allbaugh to Bush, searching for a new campaign manager. Bush won the Texas governorship and named Allbaugh as his chief of staff.

In February 2001, President Bush again turned to his trusted friend from Oklahoma, nominating Allbaugh to serve as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA.) “When the worst happens anywhere in America,” remarked Bush, “I can assure you folks will be confident when Joe Allbaugh arrives on the scene . . . Joe will help Americans deal with the worst, in the best, most compassionate way possible.”

As FEMA director, Allbaugh coordinates federal disaster relief activities, including the Federal Response Plan, which authorizes the response and recovery operations of 28 federal agencies and departments and the American Red Cross. He also oversees the National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Fire Administration and initiates proactive mitigation activities that reduce loss of life and property from all types of hazards. Allbaugh directs approximately 2,500 federal employees and 4,500 temporary disaster assistance employees.

During his first six months at the helm, Allbaugh provided emergency assistance to victims of tornadoes in Kansas, tropical storms in Mississippi, floods in Iowa and more than two dozen other natural disasters around the country.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Allbaugh was in Bozeman, Montana, attending the annual meeting of the National Emergency Management Association. After learning of the terrorist attacks, he immediately made his way back to Washington, DC, and New York City. Allbaugh directed FEMA’s unprecedented response by quickly activating search and rescue teams from across the country. “That single day challenged our agency, my staff and me — indeed the nation — in a way nothing that came before it had ever done,” wrote Allbaugh in the spring issue of The Beta Theta Pi. He continued, “The aftermath truly separated those who make things happen from anyone else. And it underscores the Beta concept of mutual assistance in a way none of us would have imagined.”

“I think America has seen (Joe’s) superb ability during September 11 and its aftermath,” White House Advisor Karl Rove told Oklahoma Today magazine. “He’s a talented leader who’s been able to inspire a lot of volunteers, to give comfort where it’s needed and to provide tough leadership in the face of a very, very tough crisis,” he said.

Allbaugh, who is not a great fan of the limelight, believes that actions speak louder than words. “At the end of the day,” he offered, “it’s not what you said that’s going to be measured, it’s what you did that actually counts.”

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Richard Osborne Ristine, Wabash ’41
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 48
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 5, 2002

Dr. Seth R. Brooks, St. Lawrence ’22, wrote in his inaugural “Inter Fratres” article on the ever-important subject of recruitment. Brooks suggested, “A boy is not conferring an honor on our Fraternity when he pledges,” but rather the Fraternity is “conferring an honor upon him.” The article closes in classic Brooks’ fashion, “Resolve that the delegation you pledge shall be an honor and a credit to the Founders and those who have followed in a long, illustrious line.”

Richard O. Ristine, Wabash ’41, was no stranger to the concept of “a long, illustrious line” when he was a student at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. More than 60 members of his family have attended the 170-year-old institution, including 11 faculty members and nine members of the College’s Board of Trustees. At least one member of his family has served on the Board since the College’s founding in 1832.

As an undergraduate, Ristine was active in numerous campus roles, including yearbook editor, Glee Club, Varsity football team, president of Young Republicans and, of course, Beta Theta Pi. A Phi Beta Kappa, he graduated summa cum laude in 1941.

After earning his bachelor of laws degree from Columbia University in just 22 months, Ristine served as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps, 1943-46. Four years later, Ristine followed in another “long, illustrious line.”

His great-great-grandfather, Major Henry Ristine — Crawfordsville’s second settler — served in the state legislature in the 1820s. Theodore Harmon Ristine, Richard’s grandfather, served in the state senate in the 1880s. In 1950, the 30-year-old Ristine was elected to the Indiana Senate, serving through 1960 in capacities such as chairman of the finance committee and four years of service on the state budget committee. Ristine continued his public service from 1961-65 as lieutenant governor under then-Governor Matthew E. Welsh. He was the 1964 Republican nominee for governor.

Ristine has served passionately as a member, director and chairman of numerous corporate and non-profit boards, including the Indiana Historical Society, Meridian Mutual Insurance Company, Elston Bank & Trust, L.S. Ayres & Company, Indiana State Board of Mental Health, The Nature Conservancy and the advisory committee for the U.S. Small Business Administration. He was executive vice president and secretary of Lilly Endowment, 1972-83.

Ristine has been an integral part of the Wabash community since his graduation 61 years ago. He served as a trustee (1958-93) and treasurer from 1966 to 1975. He was president of the National Association of Wabash men from 1956-58 and has served as president of the Wabash Foundation. Ristine also served as director of planned giving, 1983-84; director of development, 1985-89, and director of external affairs, 1992-93.

The former lieutenant governor is a nine-time recipient of the Sagamore of the Wabash — the highest honor that an Indiana governor can give. Ristine has also been presented with the George Rogers Clark award, which honors modern-day Hoosiers whose lives and careers are symbolic of the ideals and dreams of the prominent frontiersman.

With the presentation of the Oxford Cup, Beta Theta Pi confers another honor on Ristine. He is a credit to the Fraternity its founders and has most certainly followed in the “long, illustrious line.” it’s not what you said that’s going to be measured, it’s what you did that actually counts.”

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Robert J. Schaupp, Lawrence ’51
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 49
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 4, 2003

Suppose a measure of a man is that he contributes his very best to his life’s work and shares his good fortune with humankind. In that case, Robert James (Bob) Schaupp, Lawrence ’51, readily defines what we intend to celebrate in honoring him with Beta Theta Pi’s Oxford Cup. An industry and Beta leader, he continues to focus his efforts and treasure on the education and development of young people.

Imbued with a comfortable sense of humor and an ever-present smile, Bob fits like an old glove from when you first meet him. He is always interested in others, listens with enthusiasm and encourages by example.

A graduate in economics from Lawrence University, Bob was drafted into the U.S. Army for two years, spend- ing most of his time in Post Intelligence at Fort Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska. He returned to Wisconsin and joined LCL Transit Company, Green Bay, Wis., an overland motor transport company founded by his father-in-law in 1926.

After serving in various management roles, including personnel, safety, sales and operations, he was elected chairman of the board in 1966. Under his leadership, LCL became one of six major operating companies under P&S Investment Company, Inc.: LCL Transit, LCL Bulk Transport, HFCS Transport, Stellar Express, LDS Express and St. Joe Express. Among them, the firms haul edible food products in tank vehicles throughout the United States. Principal products carried are corn syrup, edible oils and chocolate. P&S is the largest hauler of chocolate in the nation.

Professionally, he is past chairman and currently a director of the executive committee of the Wisconsin Motor Carriers Association and is the Association’s delegate to the American Trucking Association; past chairman and currently a director of the National Tank Truck Carriers, Inc., and a director and member of the executive committee of the American Trucking Association.

Born February 25, 1929, Bob was initiated on December 5, 1950, by the Gamma Pi chapter at Lawrence with Roll No. 392. He was subsequently honored with Roll No. 59 by Zeta Zeta at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, a chapter he helped mentor from colony to chapter status.

In 1993, he was elected Fraternity vice president and member of the Board of Trustees, and in 1996 he was elevated to the presidency of Beta Theta Pi for a three-year term. He continues to serve on Beta’s advisory council of former trustees. During his term as president, the earliest steps were taken to research and identify what was to become Beta Theta Pi’s benchmark Men of Principle initiative.

A strong supporter of Beta 2000, he encouraged others by his example of helping to make the new Administrative Office in Oxford a reality. He endowed the facility with the Communication Conference Room and the grand piano that is the centerpiece of the Fireside Room.

Bob continues to serve his alma mater. He is a past president of the Lawrence University Alumni Association a member of the Lawrence 150 Steering Committee. He is a long-time member of the University’s Board of Trustees and its executive committee.
In addition, he is past president of the Founders Club and currently serves as chairman of the University’s audit committee. He has generously and strongly supported the efforts of our chapters at both Lawrence and Wisconsin-Oshkosh to live in fraternity houses as a vital part of the fraternal undergraduate experience.

Bob’s wife Joan (nee Pomprowitz) is an alumna of Alpha Chi Omega at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A published author, she and Bob live in DePere, Wis. They have four children — Margaret (Peggy) and Elizabeth (Ilse), both of whom live in Lake Forest, Ill.; Frederick (Fritz), Wilmette, Ill., and John (Hans) Green Bay, Wis. — and ten grandchildren.

Perhaps this Green Bay Packers fan’s persistence for excellence was influenced by the staunch character of his Fraternity brothers at the small private college that helped shape his youth.

Probably his stick-to-it-iveness was borne out of 47 years with the same company as he helped grow it into an industry leader. Without a doubt, his sincere efforts to entitle education, and the young people who seek it, owe much to his unqualified love of family and his unswerving devotion to Beta Theta Pi’s founding principles.

Erv Johnson, Idaho ’53, Editor Emeritus, The Beta Theta Pi

Warren R. Staley, Kansas State ’65
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 50
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 1, 2003

Ask Cargill, Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Warren R. Staley, Kansas State ’65, how he moved from a blue-collar neighborhood to the executive suite at Cargill’s lake office. He will humbly recount a colorful story about his remarkable journey.

Staley spent his boyhood days in Springfield, Ill, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher. He spent the summer months on his grandfather’s farm in Emporia, Kan as a young man. There, he developed a work ethic that would serve him well in his later life.

“There was no culture of people going to universities in my neighborhood,” recalled Staley. “My high school teachers, however, encouraged me to do so.” Shortly after arriving in Manhattan, Kan., to begin his freshman year, Staley was taken aback when asked about his intended major. “As soon as I said ‘engineering,’ I was immediately asked, ‘what kind?'” Thinking quickly and remembering his sincere interest in “fiddling with radios,” Staley blurted out, “electrical!”

Paul E. Sangster, Kansas State ’61, the older brother of a high school friend, encouraged Staley to become involved in a fraternity. He departed for a rush event at the Beta house with that advice. The decision to pledge Beta Theta Pi was made after a good night’s sleep and some prodding from James N. Baxter, Kansas State ’63, (who later became Staley’s pledge father.) Staley went on to serve as chapter and Interfraternity Council president.

Staley then earned a master’s degree in business administration at Cornell. He married his Delta Delta Delta sweetheart, Mary Lynn, in July 1967. The couple moved to Colombia to follow a job opportunity with the Ford Foundation.

In 1969, he joined Cargill, Inc., “an international marketer, processor and distributor of agricultural, food, financial and industrial products and services with 90,000 employees in 60 countries.” Staley was enthralled by the now 138-year-old corporation, immediately expressing interest in an “opportunity to eventually be part of the senior management team and gain international experience.”

Warren Staley climbed the corporate ladder swiftly, but not without sacrifice. Having found success in the corn milling division, he was promoted to general manager of the company’s European branch in 1978. He and Mary Lynn, moved across the Atlantic with their three young children: Jennifer, Jeff and Chris. Four years later, as the family was preparing to return to the United States, Staley was offered a significant role as head of Cargill operations in Argentina.

Staley served as president and a chief operating officer from February 1998 until being named CEO in June 1999. By August 2000, he had added “Chairman of the Board” to his resume. Staley’s predecessor, Ernest Micek, lauded him as a “critical factor in our march into more value-added businesses and services,” with “a steady hand and an eye on the future.”

Staley is intrigued by the Men of Principle initiative, which is no stranger to strategic planning, stating that it “is the right direction for today’s environment. The vision promotes being friends, gentlemen and scholars; no one of them is good enough… balance is required. Today’s students will be competing with others for the rest of their lives; others won’t be as interested in values development as the Betas.”

Like Beta Theta Pi, Cargill has its own set of guiding principles. “These principles clearly indicate who we are and what we believe. The key driver of a high-performing company is behavior. If we don’t act appropriately, we will fail,” he said.

Staley believes that he, and others, should give back to society. “At Cargill, the whole organization gets involved.” According to its 2001 Citizenship Report, Cargill contributes an estimated $15.5 million to community projects worldwide. In the United States, the company is committed to donating two percent of its domestic pre-tax earnings.

His philosophy is admirable, yet remarkably simple: “Be judged over the long-term, dare to make decisions and believe in yourself.” Of his 41 years of membership in the Fraternity, Staley reflects, “It has been a positive experience and has certainly made a difference in my life.”

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr., Southern California ’62
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 51
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 17, 2004

The Honorable Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr., Southern California ’62, is a judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He is the first Armenian-American to have served as a federal judge.

Brother Tevrizian’s judicial career began in 1972 when then-Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Los Angeles Municipal Court. Six years later, he was elevated to the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles. From 1982 until he was appointed a federal judge by President Reagan in 1986, he practiced law in Southern California as a partner in Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg and Tunney.

Tevrizian graduated cum laude with a B.S. in finance. He received his J.D. from the USC School of Law three years later. From 1966 until his appointment to the Los Angeles Municipal Court, he was a partner in the law firm of Kirtland and Packard. At age 31, he was the youngest person to be appointed to the judiciary by Governor Reagan up to that point.

Numerous professional accolades include being named Trial Judge of the Year by the California Trial Lawyers Association, Trial Jurist of the Year by the Los Angeles County Bar Association and Federal Court Trial Judge of the Year by the Malibu Bar Association. In 1998, he was awarded the Peter the Great Gold Medal of Honor from the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences for outstanding contributions to the field of law and he recently received the Orange County Federal Bar Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award.

An advisory director to the UCLA School of Public Policy since 1999, Judge Tevrizian has been a lecturer for numerous Bar Associations, California Continuing Education programs and State Bar Mandatory Continuing Legal Education seminars. He was an advisor to the Gamma Tau chapter, 1978-84 and 1986-92. He serves on the Armenian General Benevolent Union, Glendale Memorial Hospital Foundation and the Armenian EyeCare Project. Tevrizian and his wife Geraldine are residents of Pasadena.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Edward P. Roski Jr., Southern California ’62
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 52
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 17, 2004

Edward P. Roski Jr., Southern California ’62, is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of one of the oldest and largest privately held real estate firms in the United States. Founded in 1948, Majestic Realty Co. owns more than 50,000,000 square feet of property, with projects throughout Southern California and in several major metropolitan areas nationwide.

Combining his passion for business with a love of sports, Brother Roski is co-owner of the Los Angeles Kings, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Staples Center. He is also an adventurer. An avid traveler, Roski has hiked Mt. Everest, K2, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and rode his bike across Mongolia, Russia, Ireland, China and Burma. His passion for adventure led to membership in the Explorers Club.

Roski takes an active role in area cultural activities, serving on the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art boards, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission, and the California Science Center. He also serves on the Board of Regents at Loyola High School and the Board of Trustees at the University of Southern California.

He continues to give back to his community, contributing to various committees and raising funds for worthwhile organizations such as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, Walt Disney Concert Hall, L.A. Convention 2000, March of Dimes, Friends of Child Advocates, Inner-City Arts, Boys and Girls Clubs, Public Council and The City of Hope. A well-respected civic and community leader, Roski has received numerous accolades, including The City of Hope’s “Spirit of Life” award in October 2003, Project Restore’s Los Angeles Heritage award and his alma mater’s Asa V. Call Achievement award.

Born in Oklahoma and raised in Southern California, Roski was a walk-on football player at USC. He graduated in 1962 with a B.S. in finance and real estate and served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1962 to 1968. He and his wife Gayle have three children, Patricia, Edward III and Katrina, and four grandchildren.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Richard E. (Dick) Heckert, Miami ’44 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 53
Awarded the Oxford Cup on March 6, 2004

As CEO of DuPont in the late-1980s, Richard E. Heckert, Miami ’44, involved the company in fast-growing businesses like electronics and life sciences while safeguarding more traditional chemical markets. He joined the company in 1949 as a research chemist in DuPont’s experimental laboratories and was involved heavily in cellophane research and development of Mylar polyester film.

Heckert climbed the managerial ranks through the chemical, film and plastics departments and took over the fabrics and finishes department in 1969. Four years later, he was appointed to the Executive Committee and sought to remedy the sluggish corporate performance caused by increasing competition and rising energy and raw material costs.

After becoming CEO in 1986, Heckert adopted a strategy of investing resources in areas where the company excelled, retreating from weak sectors and moving into more promising ones. He reorganized DuPont’s electronics, imaging and medical products ventures and consolidated its automotive products operations. He also stepped up the company’s attention to marketing, instituting an annual corporate marketing excellence award. Heckert retired from DuPont in 1989.

Heckert’s ties to Miami University and Oxford, Ohio, are substantial. His father was a distinguished professor in Miami’s School of Education from 1910 to 1924 and served as the first director of the William Holmes McGuffey Laboratory School.

Majoring in chemistry, Brother Heckert held memberships in Phi Beta Sigma, Sigma Pi Sigma, Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa. He was initiated into Beta Theta Pi’s Alpha chapter on October 16, 1942, serving as president during a portion of the 1943-44 academic year.

After graduation, Heckert served in the Army as a technician with a special engineering detachment at the Oak Ridge atomic energy facility. Heckert married the former Barbara Kennedy in 1945. He holds a master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees from the University of Illinois.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Charles S. Mechem Jr., Miami ’52
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 54
Awarded the Oxford Cup on March 6, 2004

Under the leadership of Charles S. Mechem Jr., Miami ’52, Taft Broadcasting, later known as the Great American Broadcasting Company, expanded from one station into a diversified company with six AM, six FM and six television stations around the United States. The company included Hanna-Barbara Productions, Inc. and Cinemobile System, Inc., film and television studios in Hollywood and family amusement parks in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Ontario.

His business associates know him as one who generates exceptional loyalty and performance from those who work for him. He has an eye for detail and the capacity to absorb it. He serves on the boards of the Messer Construction Co., The J.M. Smucker Company, Ladies Professional Golf Association, Myers Y. Cooper Company and Royal Precision, Inc. Brother Mechem has served as chairman of the board of U.S. Shoe Corporation (1993-95), Cincinnati Bell Inc. (1996-98) and Convergys Corporation (1999-2000.) From 1991 to 1995, he served as commissioner of the LPGA, and he continues to serve as Arnold Palmer’s business advisor.

Mechem has served on the boards of numerous Cincinnati-based civic organizations. At the national level, he has been a member of the Presidential Board of Advisors on Private Sector Initiatives, the Joint Council on Economic Education and a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development.

The Nelsonville, Ohio, native was initiated into the Alpha chapter of Beta Theta Pi on October 27, 1949, and was president during his senior year. He was also president of the Student-Faculty Council, the Young Republican Club and Omicron Delta Kappa. A Phi Beta Kappa, Mechem received the Herschel D. Hinckley award as the outstanding junior man. He served a nine-year term on Miami’s Board of Trustees from 1980-89, received an honorary doctor of laws in 1980 and served on the advisory board of the Richard T. Farmer School of Business.

Following graduation, he married the former Marilyn Brown and the couple departed the Buckeye State for Connecticut, where Mechem spent three years at Yale Law, graduating second in his class. He was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1955. He practiced law with Taft, Stettinius and Hollister for a dozen years, with a three-year interruption from 1956- 59 for service in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Byron E. (Barney) Calame, Missouri ’61
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 55
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 17, 2004

Byron E. (Barney) Calame, Missouri ’61, is a deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. His responsibilities include paper-wide quality control and taking charge of The Journal without the managing editor.

Calame joined The Journal in September 1965 as a reporter in the New York bureau and covered the real estate and construction beats. He transferred to the Los Angeles bureau in March 1967 and moved to the Washington bureau in June 1969, where he covered labor and law enforcement.

In March 1974, Calame was named Pittsburgh bureau chief. He returned to Los Angeles as bureau chief in September 1978 and 1985 became an assistant managing editor in charge of West Coast coverage. He returned to New York as a senior editor in 1987, and in May 1992, he became the deputy managing editor.

“When I was named managing editor,” said Paul Steiger, “there was only one choice to be deputy managing editor — Barney. He’s more sensitive to ethics issues than anyone I’ve ever known.”

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers honored Calame in 2002 with its Distinguished Achievement Award. The award cited his tireless efforts on behalf of The Wall Street Journal and business journalism in general. He served as president of the 3,200-member national organization of business journalists during 2000-01.

Calame is the recipient of a 1996 Faculty-Alumni award from his alma mater and was it’s Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in 1997. He was a panelist on Bill Moyers’ PBS series, “Genesis. A Living Conversation,” in 1996.

A native of Appleton, Mo., Calame received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Maryland. As an undergraduate, he served as president of the Zeta Phi chapter. “Being chapter president taught me a lot about leadership,” he said in an interview with The Beta Theta Pi in 1996. “Trying to help lead a group of your peers with whom you live, work and play is an especially tough challenge. You can’t play games or fool anyone because they know you too well.”

In addition to his chapter leadership role, Calame served as president of the Student Union Activities Board, regional president of the Association of College Student Unions, president of the Journalism School Senior Class, and Commander of the Naval ROTC Battalion. He was a member of Kappa Tau Alpha (journalism), Omicron Delta Kappa and Mystical Seven honoraries and was named Sigma Delta Xi’s Outstanding Male Graduate.

From 1961 to 1965, Calame served in the U.S. Navy as an officer on a minesweeper that was part of the first division assigned to duty in South Vietnam, and later as a public information officer in Washington.

He is married to Kathryn Calame, a biochemistry and molecular biophysics and microbiology professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. They have two grown children.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

G. Kennedy Thompson, North Carolina ’73
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 56
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 2004

G. Kennedy (Ken) Thompson, North Carolina ’73, has served as chairman, chief executive officer and president of Wachovia Corporation since 2001, following its merger with First Union Corporation. Wachovia is currently the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States, ranked by assets, with more than $400 billion.

Thompson joined First Union in May 1976, swiftly rising through the ranks as president of First Union-Georgia, senior vice president and head of First Union human resources, president of First Union-Florida and vice chairman of First Union Corporation and head of Global Capital Markets to become chairman, chief executive officer and president of First Union.

In a January 2003 Forbes article titled, Best Fraternities for Future CEOs, Thompson remarked that Beta Theta Pi had given him “the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and places, and the connections have continued beyond my university years to my business life.”

The 53-year-old executive has drawn accolades from several other prominent business publications. BusinessWeek’s listing of the best managers for 2003 offered, “In his nearly four years at the helm of First Union — now Wachovia Corporation — Thompson has rewritten the book on bank mergers.” The Charlotte Business Journal named him it’s inaugural (2003) Business Person of the Year, citing “Thompson’s methodical, focused approach in crafting a post-merger Wachovia has delivered results for shareholders and has put the bank in a position to excel as the economy shows signs of rebounding.”

Thompson serves on the boards of several business organizations, including Florida Rock Industries, Carolinas Healthcare System and Financial Services Roundtable. He is chairman of the board of The Clearing House.

Thompson is a member of the Wake Forest University board of trustees and serves as a board member of Teach for America, North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Charlotte Latin School, YMCA Metropolitan, Charlotte Institute for Technology Innovation and the International Advisory Board of the British American Business Council. He is co-chairman of Advantage Carolina and was chairman of the 2003 United Way of Central Carolinas campaign.
A native of Rocky Mount, N.C., Thompson attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar, majoring in American studies. He earned his M.B.A. from the Wake Forest University Babcock Graduate School of Management.

He and his wife Kathleen have three children — Kenny, North Carolina ’06, Scott, and daughter Stacey.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

E.B. Wilson, St. Lawrence ’53
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 57
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 20, 2004

It all started with a baseball glove. A 12-year-old E.B. Wilson, St. Lawrence ’53, had played second base for his sandlot baseball team in Albany, New York. He decided to become a first-baseman but did not have the proper glove. Wilson communicated his desire to his parents over dinner one evening. Their response provided a valuable lifelong lesson.

“How do you plan to pay for the glove?” they asked. In the modest household of his youth, Wilson learned the value of hard work. He had a string of lawns he would mow and gardens he would take care of in the neighborhood. “It was a family of values, hard work and no handouts,” he recalls.

Harry Reiff, a professor at St. Lawrence in the early 1950s when Wilson studied on the Canton, New York, campus, was the mentor who lit the intellectual fires within the impressionable young man. Reiff was a charismatic yet tough educator who further instilled an appreciation for the ethic of discipline and hard work. Regular tutorials would involve serious discussions on Plato’s Republic and Plutarch’s Lives. It was then that the young Eagle Scout learned the value of being an educated citizen and offering one’s service to his community. While earning his MBA at Harvard, Wilson earned his keep as a door-to-door salesman, toting Fuller brushes. After his formal education, he served two years in the U.S. Army.

Nevertheless, he says, “the smartest thing I did in those early years was to marry Betsy,” his college sweetheart, a marriage that just passed 48 years.

Wilson developed a thorough understanding of and appreciation for international business in a professional business career that spanned nearly five decades. He started at Vicks Chemical Company (later known as Richardson-Vicks) in New York City and was soon sent to Europe for a time. Then, after three years in the Philip- pines, he and his wife Betsy moved to Wisconsin, where Wilson took over the international marketing director post for Kimberly-Clark Corporation.

By 1965, he became CEO of the company’s Japanese subsidiary, where he successfully introduced the Kleenex brand to the Japanese market. That was followed by a stint as CEO of the French subsidiary and, later, a turn in Minnesota as CEO of Pillsbury’s international operations. His most outstanding achievement came when, as co-owner and CEO, he resurrected Almay Cosmetics, which was on the verge of going-out-of-business out of business. In the process, he secured FDA approval and determined the scientific standards to establish the brand as the first to be known as “hypo-allergenic.”

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there,” muses the 72-year-old Wilson as he offers his definition of strategic planning. Wilson had a reputation for being an influential strategist during his business career. He has since transferred these strategic skills from the business world to higher education as an author and facilitator who heads a consulting practice.

While serving as chairman of the board of trustees at his alma mater, Wilson noticed a widening disparity be- tween the values of the host institution and the behavior of members of the Greek community.

In an August 1996 letter to then-editor L.E. (Erv) Johnson, Idaho ’53, Wilson wrote, “I have witnessed a steady, general decline of campus influence and perceived value of the Greek system not only at St. Lawrence but on campus after campus across the United States.” His letter was shared with leaders of the Fraternity, who promptly invited him to Oxford to discuss what might be done. In 1997, Wilson chaired the Fraternity’s strategic planning process, which led to creating the Men of Principle initiative.

He harkens back to the central mission of the host institution, “Our colleges and universities are dedicated, as they should be, to the education of our young adults and building the intellectual vitality of those undergraduates.” As a consultant to the boards of numerous institutions of higher learning, Wilson is confident that administrators recognize Fraternity life as a co-curricular component of being educated, “but it is incumbent upon those Fraternities to earn their role by acting in all ways to support the central mission of the host institution.”

“The implementation of Men of Principle is a daunting commitment. It takes resolve to stay the course. It requires discipline to make tough decisions. It means allocating resources, human and financial, of historical proportions to design and build programs and initiatives that support and advance Men of Principle.”

Wilson has remained true to his values from his early days of playing sandlot baseball through his impressive career as a CEO and strategist. He is willing to work hard to orient his efforts toward promoting a values system that is honorable, challenging and demanding, for which there are substantial rewards. Those rewards come in the form of a principled life, where success is found in one’s family, business and community.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

John C. Reppert, Kansas State ’63 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 58
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 6, 2004

In the summer of 1959, John Reppert, Kansas State ’63, worked at a Manhattan, Kansas, swimming pool as a lifeguard. Head Lifeguard Gary E. Luck, Kansas State ’59, encouraged him to pledge Beta Theta Pi. “It was great advice,” remarks Reppert with a tight-lipped grin.

“One of the aspects of Gamma Epsilon, in particular, was to prepare people for leadership positions and to provide them opportunities to do that,” he adds. As a young man, Reppert served in his church and the Boy Scouts but had never been a popularly elected leader. His fraternity experience changed that. During his college years, he served as chapter president, president of the professional journalism society and editor of the college newspaper.

Having completed his bachelor’s degree in journalism, Reppert remained in Manhattan to earn a master’s degree and continued courting the lovely Patricia Ann Rash, who was a year behind him in school. The couple married and moved to Illinois, where Reppert planned to take up the family business. He ran the family newspaper and had just purchased a second when a trip to the mailbox in November 1965 changed his life.

He had been drafted into the U.S. Army and was required to report in January 1966. Even though military service did not run in the Reppert family — the last military man in his father’s line had been a general in the Civil War — Reppert never considered alternatives such as joining the Reserves, moving to Canada, or accepting a scholarship to return to the classroom.

With a sense of patriotism and obligation, he reported for duty and signed up for Officer Candidate School. Reppert was four years older than most of his peers, held two degrees and had three years of experience as a newspaper editor under his belt. He was prepared to take on the mantle of leadership. “If I was going to Vietnam, I wanted to do so in a leadership role,” he recalls.

Reppert was assigned to the Signal Corps and stationed in Korea. He immediately expressed an interest in going to Vietnam. “If you’re going to lead, you should go where the action is,” he said. Reppert went to Saigon, where he directed communication for General Westmoreland’s headquarters, the American Embassy and the most extensive Air Force base in Vietnam. He was present during the 1968 Tet Offensive, during which more than 100 people were killed.

As his 12 months in Vietnam came to a close, Reppert had to decide whether to remain in the military. He was approached with the idea of participating in the Foreign Area Officer program. The program entailed four years of paid schooling in a particular geographic region, followed by four years of service on assignments in that area.

Shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Brigadier General Reppert became the first U.S. diplomatic representative to visit Kyrgyzstan since it became independent. Anomalies in the system prevented State Department officials from visiting the new country. However, the Department of Defense — for which Reppert had been serving as a military attaché in Moscow — had no such restrictions.

Reppert and his wife Pat were greeted by the new country’s national security advisor and the deputy minister of foreign affairs. The men spoke little English, but Reppert’s calm manner and ability to speak Russian fluently set the stage for a memorable visit. Taken with Reppert’s extensive knowledge in foreign affairs and a willingness to share his wisdom, the national security advisor insisted that Reppert meets with the fledgling nation’s vice president. He was asked to explain U.S. foreign relations and how the U.S. works with other countries.

Reppert holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Kansas State and a master’s degree in Soviet area studies from the University of Kansas. He also holds a Ph.D. in international relations from George Washington University in Washington, DC. Having attended or taught classes during all but three of his 33 years in the military, Reppert qualifies as a lifelong learner. The General is a graduate of the Army War College, an honor graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, the Armed Forces Staff College, the U.S. Army Russian Institute and the U.S. Army Signal Corps Officer Advanced Course.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

John D. Backe, Miami ’54 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 59
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 10, 2005

John D. Backe, Miami ’54, has fashioned a spectacular career as a business executive, beginning with a marketing position at General Electric Co., continuing to the presidency of CBS Inc. In 1981, Mr. Backe left CBS and founded The Backe Group.

The Backe Group is a management company that invests in and manages companies in the broadcast, communications technology and publishing fields worldwide. Based in Wayne, Pa., its divisions have included four television stations, a technology company specializing in equipment for film and television production, a portfolio of consumer and trade magazines, a chain of community newspapers, a mass-market paperback book company and a division specializing in the publication of legal books and journals. Over the years, several of the original companies have been sold off.

Today, Mr. Backe owns and operates a mass marketing paperback publishing company, a magazine publishing company in New York, and an advertising agency in Philadelphia. He is also a general partner in a New York-based investment group that invests in communications properties.

Mr. Backe is a native of Akron, Ohio. As an undergraduate, he was vice president of the Alpha chapter. After graduation from Miami with a marketing major and an Air Force commission, partly financed by an ROTC scholarship, Mr. Backe trained as a fighter pilot. He was then transferred to the Strategic Air Command as a B-47 bomber pilot. Three years of Air Force active duty had matured him. He was quoted as saying, “I went through some hairy experiences, so I guess maybe very early in life I learned a lot about myself . . . some men go through life and they’re never really challenged, or they step away from some real challenges, and they never understand what it’s all about.”

Following Air Force active duty, Mr. Backe spent nine years with the General Electric Company, rising through various marketing and management positions. He began in the aircraft nuclear engine department in Cincinnati. Later, he was transferred to the small aircraft engine department in Lynn, Mass., where he became G.E.’s lead negotiator with the U.S. Air Force for all engine contracts and development programs. He concluded his tenure with G.E. in the computer department in Phoenix, Ariz.

Mr. Backe entered the publishing industry in 1966 when he was recruited for the marketing department of Silver Burdett, a textbook division of General Learning Corporation (a joint venture of G.E. and Time, Inc.) In less than two years, he was president of Silver Burdett, and in another year, he was president of the parent company.

In 1972, Mr. Backe was asked to represent all American publishers at a UNESCO conference in Cairo, Egypt. The following year, he was recruited to CBS Inc. to lead the publishing group. In three years, he had increased sales from $150 million a year to more than $400 million; profits had moved from a yearly deficit to an excess of $20 million. By 1976 he was elected president and chief executive officer of the giant multimedia conglomerate.

As president, Mr. Backe was credited with reestablishing CBS as the leading television network in four years. He was responsible for the initial CBS corporate strategic plan, which for the first time defined the corporation’s overall goals and identified new technology areas in CATV video text and Home Video. He put a CBS School of Management in place for developing and evaluating executives, established the CBS Sports Division, and expanded CBS into the production of feature films.

Mr. Backe earned an MBA from Xavier University and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Miami and Xavier. He has been a faithful supporter of Beta Theta Pi, and the communication area of the Foundation and Administrative Office has been dedicated in his honor.

He and his wife Katherine, a Miami Kappa Kappa Gamma, reside in Bonita Springs, Fla., and Princeton, N.J. They have two children, Kimberly and John, and six grandchildren. Mr. Backe continues to be a licensed multi-engine pilot who owns and operates his own Beechcraft King Air 200 aircraft.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Russell E. Palmer Jr., Michigan State ’56 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 60
Awarded the Oxford Cup on March 4, 2005

Russell E. Palmer Jr., Michigan State ’56, joined the accounting and consulting firm of Touche Ross & Co. (now Deloitte & Touche) in 1956. He became CEO of Touche Ross at age 37, the youngest person ever to attain that position in a “Big Eight” (now “Big Four”) firm. He led the firm to become one of the fastest-growing companies in the “Big Eight.”

After 27 years in the accounting and consulting profession and ten years as CEO, Palmer became Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As the tenth dean and the first to come from the private sector, he shared his management experience with MBA students in a leadership course that he developed. He was instrumental in attracting approximately 100 new faculty members to the School, building a new executive education program and complex and raising more than $120 million. When he departed Wharton after seven years, it was ranked as one of the top three business schools in the country.

Active in the outside business community, Palmer has served on 14 boards of companies on the New York Stock Exchange. He currently serves on the board of directors of Honeywell International, Inc. and The May Department Stores Company. He is a trustee emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, a trustee of the National Constitution Center. He serves on the board of the Gesu School, a K-8 school in one of Philadelphia’s neediest areas.

For the last 14 years, Palmer has headed his firm in Philadelphia. The Palmer Group is a private investment firm that invests in businesses to help them achieve leadership in their markets and develop a reputation for excellence in their industries. Among its accomplishments, The Palmer Group acquired 18 career colleges in eight states over ten years and integrated them into one unified school group. In 2004, the school group was sold to Education Management Corporation, a company on the NASDAQ and one of the largest post-secondary education providers in North America.

Always an active philanthropist, Palmer has been involved with many charitable organizations, including serving as chairman of the New York chapter of the Salvation Army. His private foundation provides programs to benefit students at an inner-city high school in West Philadelphia and spearheads a community development project through a church in a blighted North Philadelphia neighborhood. The foundation also supports a pilot program at Michigan State University encouraging Native American students to study business and helping to provide the necessary resources for them to succeed.

Palmer, who served as president of his chapter (Gamma Psi), was a 1955 recipient of the James L. Gavin Memorial Scholarship award from the General Fraternity and attended the 1955 General Convention in Bedford Springs, Pa. He has been a strong supporter of Beta Theta Pi for many years.

A resident of Philadelphia, Palmer has three sons, a daughter and eight grandchildren.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

James A. Collins, UCLA ’50
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 61
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 6, 2005

While others may consider their golden years a time for quiet contemplation or general relaxation, James A. Collins, UCLA ’50, serves as the epitome of philanthropy at age 78. Collins, who retired in Aug. 1999 as chairman of Worldwide Restaurant Concepts, Inc., is having the time of his life.

The quintessential storyteller, Collins can spend hours recounting tales of his childhood, his days in the U.S. Navy, college experiences at Miami University and UCLA, and his colorful journey through the maze of fast-food service. Through all of his experiences, Collins claims that many of his accomplishments are due to good fortune. “Being in the right place at the right time has been a huge part of my success,” he explains. “The other parts are hard work and enthusiasm.” Collins attributes his strong work ethic to his father while indicating his spirit comes from his mother.

After passing his Naval exam, Collins was called for service in August 1944. Following boot camp in Jacksonville, Fla., his next stop was Norman, Okla., where he started in the V-6 program. He passed the V-5 exam and moved on to Miami University in the fall of 1945, where he pledged the Alpha chapter. Collins was discharged from the Navy in July 1946 and enrolled at UCLA the following fall to be closer to home.

As UCLA did not have a civil engineering degree, Collins and five of his friends transferred to California-Berkeley in the fall of 1949. This allowed him to graduate from UCLA in January of 1950. Collins became involved with the Naval Civil Engineering Corp. and did not get called up for duty in Korea in a stroke of good fortune. Instead, he went to work for a construction company, building Catholic churches and schools.

In 1952, Collins was building a coffee shop with his father-in-law in Culver City, Calif., when Vern Goode of the Edison Company approached him. “He asked me if I had time to take a ride to San Bernadino with him the next day, where I met Dick and Maurice McDonald.” The McDonald brothers had introduced the idea of fast food service, and Collins was taken aback when he saw people lined up for 15 cent hamburgers and 10 cent drinks.

Collins brought his father-in-law to witness the spectacle first-hand the following day, and within short order, the coffee shop at Centinela and Sepulveda became the “Hamburger Handout.” A second stand was opened in 1957, followed by a third in 1958 and a fourth in 1960.

A friend encouraged Collins to go to Louisville, Ky., to meet Colonel Sanders in 1960. Sanders was selling franchises for take-home KFC chicken and Collins saw potential growth. “By 1961, the Colonel was calling me to teach new franchisees how to prepare the mashed potatoes, and, by 1962, I had convinced him to hire me to be the exclusive agent in Southern California.” In just six years, Collins had established more than 240 stores.

In July 1967, Collins and two of his UCLA Beta brothers, Walter McBee, Jr. ’52 and Rushton O. (Ross) Backer ’51, purchased the Sizzler chain of restaurants. On November 15, 1968, Collins Foods International became a public company. Opening day shares sold at $18 each and closed at $31 per share. The stock was worth $46 per share by the end of January.

The company grew to include some 270 Kentucky Fried Chicken stores and 700 Sizzler restaurants in the United States and Australia. The company’s name changed to Sizzler in April 1991 (later Worldwide Restaurant Concepts, Inc.), and Collins negotiated a tax-free exchange of PepsiCo shares for the US-based KFC stores.

Since his retirement in 1999, Collins spent much of his time finding ways to give back to his community and provide an opportunity for others. “I made my living based on the foodservice industry, so it is my pleasure to give back.” When driving through Venice, Calif., it is virtually impossible not to spot the James A. Collins Youth Center. The center is home to Venice’s Boys and Girls Club and serves some 1,800 youth.

Collins and his wife Carol reside in the Los Angeles area. The couple recently celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. They have four children and five grandchildren.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

Hugh L. McColl Jr., North Carolina ’57
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 62
Awarded the Oxford Cup on February 17, 2007

Hugh L. McColl Jr., North Carolina ’57, has left a legacy of leadership as an executive, citizen, parent and fraternity man. His chapter’s motto, A Leader, “is how everyone who has ever known Hugh would describe him,” says his nominator for The Oxford Cup. Best known as the chairman and chief executive officer of the Bank of America Corporation, the nation’s largest Bank, Brother McColl became a banker more by default than by design.

He served as chapter president of the Eta Chapter in 1956-57, when he graduated with a degree in business administration. After two years as a troop leader and lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps., he returned to his birthplace of Bennettsville, S.C., where he expected to begin his career, possibly in the family’s cotton brokerage and ginning business. His father had a better idea, steering his son to the American Commercial Bank in Charlotte, where the McColl family had done business for years. He was hired as a trainee with the Bank that became the North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) through a merger in 1960. McColl worked as a loan officer and a vice president before assuming the Bank’s presidency in 1982; then, chairman and chief executive officer in 1983.

During the 1980s, NCNB grew from a one-state bank with 172 offices in North Carolina to a seven-state franchise with 826 full-service offices and more than 28,000 employees. In 1991, McColl engineered NCNB’s merger with C&S/Sovran, creating NationsBank, the third-largest bank in the United States. In 1998, a merger with BankAmerica created the Bank of America with more than $614 billion in assets, 5,000 banking centers in 22 states and 180,000 associates.

During his tenure with America Corporation, McColl guided the organization to more than 50-fold growth, acquiring more than 50 companies and creating America’s most extensive banking institution.

He retired as chairman and chief executive officer in 2001, when he co-founded McColl Partners. This advising firm provides leading investment banking services to middle-market companies involved in mergers and acquisitions.

McColl is known in the banking industry as a stiff competitor and entrepreneur. He is straightforward and outspoken. His credo: “Do what you say you’re going to do. Get the job done. Get it done right.” He has applied this competitive nature and enthusiasm for progress to his community and higher education activities. McColl is credited with bringing about much of Charlotte’s Center City. With the vision and support of the Bank of America and the Arts & Science Council, the Center for Visual Arts opened to the public in 1999. In 2002, it was renamed the McColl Center for Visual Art to honor its founder and Charlotte’s corporate and cultural champion.

He is a member of the Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Board of Visitors and trustee of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprises. The building that houses the Kenan Flagler Business School was completed in 1997 and named the McColl Building in his honor. In 2005, he received the Business School Leadership Award, which recognizes an alumnus who demonstrates exceptional achievement in a career field, personal endeavor or service to UNC Kenan-Flagler.

In 2000, UNC’s Board of Governors presented its highest honor known as the University Award to McColl. The honor highlights the outstanding contributions individuals make to higher education. In 1992, he was presented the William Richardson Davie Award by UNC’s trustees for extraordinary service to the University and society. Davie was a Revolutionary War hero considered the father of the University because he authored the bill that established UNC.

In 2001, Bank of America honored Hugh with the McColl Habitat for Humanity Drive that produced 120 new homes across America. Ten houses were built in Charlotte. 110 houses were built over five years in the District of Columbia and the 21 states that made up the Bank’s retail service area. In 2005, McColl was one of four Laureates inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame. He had already been inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame in 1990.

Hugh and Jane McColl reside in Charlotte and have three children, all UNC alumni: Hugh III (B.S.’82), John (MBA’91) and Jane (B.A.’90). Hugh has two Beta brothers: David, North Carolina ’59 and James, North Carolina ’61.

Jonathan J. Brant, Miami ’75

Howard D. Fineman, Colgate ’70
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 63
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 4, 2007

Howard D. Fineman, Colgate ’70, is Newsweek’s chief political correspondent, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. Fineman is also an NBC News analyst, an award-winning writer, contributing reports to the network and its cable affiliates. The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman’s work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His “Living Politics” column is posted weekly on Newsweek.com.

Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate since 1984, focusing on the rise and times of George W. Bush in recent years. A cover story in November 2001 featured the President’s first extensive post-9/11 interview. Another, “Bush and God,” was the top-selling issue of 2003 and was part of a series of Newsweek articles that won the magazine a National Magazine Award for General Excellence that year. His reporting has helped Newsweek win numerous other honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Fineman’s other awards include a “Page One” from the Headliners Club of New York, a “Silver Gavel” from ABA and a “Deadline Club” from the Society of Professional Journalists.

As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year cover stories, other projects have included: the rise of the religious right, the power of talk radio, race and politics, the Pledge of Allegiance controversy, the impact of digital technology on society and the influence of Hollywood on politics. He has interviewed business leaders such as Bill Gates, Steve Case, Steve Ballmer, Robert Rubin and Ted Turner and entertainment personalities such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Aaron Sorkin and Jay Leno.

Although Fineman now reports on TV exclusively for NBC, he has appeared on most major public affairs shows, including Nightline, Face the Nation, Larry King Live, Fox News Sunday, Charlie Rose and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He was a regular panelist on PBS’s Washington Week in Review, 1983-95, and CNN’s Capital Gang Sunday, 1995-98. He worked with Ted Koppel to produce Nightline special reports on Ross Perot and Pat Robertson.

A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his journalism career at The Louisville Courier-Journal, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper’s Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993 and senior editor in 1995.

Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He lives in Washington with his wife, Amy L. Nathan, and their two children.

Thomas C. Olver, Central Michigan ’98, Editor, The Beta Theta Pi

James L. Mann, Wichita State ’56
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 64
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 10, 2007

James L. Mann graduated with a degree in business administration from Wichita State University in 1956. After college and a five-year stint as a pilot in the Strategic Air Command of the United States Air Force, Mann returned to Wichita, Kansas, to work in sales for IBM Corporation. In 1965, he joined a Wichita-based accounting firm to start a computer services and software business that grew to $21 million in sales annually. Mann left the computer services industry for four years and re-entered it in 1981 as president of Bradford National Corporation, a New York City-based computer services and software concern.

Mann was chairman of SunGard Data Systems, Inc. He joined the Company in 1983 at its inception as COO leaving the president and CEO position of Bradford National Corporation. In 1986, he was appointed CEO and publicized the Company through an IPO. Under Mann’s leadership, the Company’s annual revenues grew from $70 million to more than $2 billion by 2002, a compound growth rate of 25%. His dedication to his core values of strategic prudence, management precision and professional excellence empowered others to share his vision and provided the leadership to accomplish it. In 2002, Mann was named chairman of the board. In 2005, SunGard announced a definitive agreement to sell the Company to a private equity consortium for $11.4 billion in cash, representing the most extensive technology privatization and the second-largest leveraged buyout ever completed.

His Delta Gamma Chapter was founded as a local fraternity, Alpha Gamma Gamma, in 1916 when Wichita State University as Fairmount College. As an undergraduate, he served as alumni relations chairman. After graduation, Mann supported his local chapter’s affiliation with Beta Theta Pi and was active in the petitioning for a charter from the General Convention. Once Delta Gamma received its charter, Mann was the first group of alumni to be initiated into Beta Theta Pi.

Mann was the keynote speaker at his chapter’s Founders Day Reunion banquet in Wichita in November 2006. This celebrated 90 years on the campus and 47 years as a chapter of Beta Theta Pi.

Over the years, he has continued to provide financial support to the chapter and recently provided most of the funds to purchase the property adjacent to the chapter house. Recognizing the importance of recruitment, Mann has challenged the chapter to reach 40 members by 2008, offering a substantial sum to retire a great deal of the chapter’s debt. He has been a donor to the General Fraternity’s Beta Leadership Fund since 1971 when the BLF was established.

Mann and his father, Raymond – Roll No. 120, were initiated on the same day. His brother is Herbert, Wichita State ’63 – Roll No. 33.

John W. Warner Jr., Washington & Lee ’50 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 65
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 15, 2008

The Honorable John William Warner Jr., Washington and Lee ’49, was born on February 18, 1927. He is the grandson of John W. and Mary Tinsley Warner of Amherst County, Virginia, and the son of Martha Budd Warner and Dr. John W. Warner, a physician and surgeon.

The Senator’s first public service opportunity began during World War II when, in January 1945, at age 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served on active duty until the summer of 1946, when he was honorably discharged as Petty Officer 3rd Class, electronic technician’s mate. He attended Washington and Lee University on the G.I. Bill following the war and was awarded a B.S. degree in 1949. He then entered the University of Virginia Law School.

At the outbreak of the Korean War in the summer of 1950, Senator Warner interrupted his law studies and commenced a second tour of active military duty, beginning in October 1950, this time as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. A year later, in October 1951, as a first lieutenant in communications, he volunteered for duty in Korea and served as a ground officer with the First Marine Air Wing. Following his active service in Korea, he remained in the Marine Corps Reserve for ten years and was promoted to the rank of Captain.

Upon his return from the Korean Peninsula, Senator Warner finished his law degree at the University of Virginia. In 1953, he was selected by the late Chief Judge E. Barrett Prettyman of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as his law clerk. In 1956, he was appointed an Assistant U.S. Attorney and served four years in the trial and appellate divisions. He entered private law practice in 1960 with the long-established firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Senator Warner’s next public service began as the U.S. Senate confirmed his Presidential appointment to be Under Secretary of Navy in February 1969. For more than five years during the war in Vietnam, he served in the Department of the Navy and led the Department as Secretary from 1972-74.

During his five years in the Navy Secretariat, Senator Warner was engaged in two vital diplomatic assignments: representative for the Secretary of Defense to the Law of the Sea Talks in Geneva (1969-73), and subsequently, as a principal negotiator and signatory for the United States of the “Incidents at Sea Executive Agreement” between the United States and the former Soviet Union (1970-72). This Executive Agreement remains in effect today and has been used as a model for similar agreements between other nations covering the operational directives for naval ships and aircraft in international sea lanes worldwide.

Following his work in the Navy Department, Senator Warner was appointed by the President to coordinate the celebration of the Bicentennial of the founding of the United States of America, directing the federal role at events in all 50 states and 22 foreign countries.

Senator Warner has won five consecutive elections to the U.S. Senate, beginning in 1978. In 2005, Senator Warner became the second-longest serving U.S. Senator from Virginia in the 218-year history of the Senate.

Now serving in his 29th year in the Senate, Senator Warner is the former chairman. He is now the second-ranking Republican of the Senate Armed Services Committee, having begun his association with our men and women in uniform 60 years ago. In this capacity, and throughout his career, he has shown unwavering support for the men and women of the armed forces. He has also been a champion of modernizing the structure and operations of the military to ensure its effectiveness in the 21st century.

Senator Warner also serves as the second-ranking Republican on two other committees, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. In addition, he serves on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

Jerry R. Lucas, Ohio State ’62
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 66
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 7, 2008

A dominant force in college basketball and the NBA, Jerry R. Lucas, Ohio State ’62, has always been a consummate team player. Under Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State, Lucas teamed with Hall of Famers John Havlicek and Bob Knight to produce a 78-6 record and three Big Ten Championships. Impressively, he led the Buckeyes into three straight NCAA Finals (1960-62) and the 1960 championship. In 1960 and 1961, Lucas was named the NCAA Tournament Outstanding Player. His distinctive over-the-shoulder shooting style helped him amass 1,990 college points, but he was an equally tenacious rebounder, grabbing 1,411 for his collegiate career.
Brother Lucas became the only basketball player in collegiate history to lead the nation in field goal percentage and rebounding for three years, thus becoming the only three-time recipient of the Big Ten player-of-the-year award.

He was a three-time All-NBA First-Team selection during 11 NBA seasons with Cincinnati, San Francisco, and New York. Named to seven NBA All-Star teams, Lucas was chosen MVP of the 1965 game. When traded from San Francisco to New York, he helped orchestrate the Knicks’ 1973 NBA Championship.

Chosen seven times as an All-Pro during his professional basketball career, Lucas was named one of the 50 most outstanding NBA players of all time. He was chosen as one of the five most outstanding college basketball players of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated in its article entitled “Team of the Ages,” which appeared in the November 1999 College Basketball preview issue. Lucas was inducted into The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1979.

Not only an athlete, but Brother Lucas excelled academically as well. As a young man with a very active mind, he challenged himself by inventing mental games to test his memory. At an early age, Lucas realized that being a successful student in school took knowing how to learn and how to retain that learned information. He became determined to develop ways to make the learning process easy, fun and long-lasting. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ohio State.

Like a farmer who plants tiny seeds in the soil and carefully tends them, so they grow, Brother Lucas has devoted his life to cultivating ideas and methods for fun and easy memory retention. The resulting methods are now known as The Lucas Learning SystemTM and have earned him the title of Doctor MemoryTM.

William A. Cook, Northwestern ’49 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 67
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 9, 2008

William A. Cook, Northwestern ’53: Billionaire, inventor, tour bus driver. His interests run the gamut — producing a Broadway musical, owning a British professional basketball team and driving John Cougar Mellencamp’s tour bus — but one thing is for sure: the medical device industry would not be the same today without him.

Brother Cook graduated from Northwestern University and was an Army surgical technician. Later, he created a cardiovascular catheter with a $1,500 blowtorch, soldering iron and plastic tubing.

Shortly after leaving MPL Inc. in 1962 — a company Brother Cook co-founded with Brian E. Baldwin, Northwestern ’54 — he formed the Cook Group Inc. The principal factory of this new enterprise was initially located in the spare bedroom of his apartment. Cook’s first products were wire guides, needles and catheters. Today, those products are just a few of the more than 50,000 that his companies manufacture worldwide.

It didn’t take long for Brother Cook to spread the business out to medicine, overseas medical product manufacturing and distribution, real estate, retail management and other industries. He focused on making the company a leader in the production of catheters, wire guides, introducer needles and sheaths, stents and stent-grafts, embolization coils, intraluminal filters and other minimally invasive devices.

Although Cook Group has offices worldwide, its headquarters remain in Bloomington, Indiana, where 60 percent of the company’s total workforce is located. Brother Cook sought out the southern Indiana town — population 69,291 — for its quality of life, solid schools and skilled labor pool. His ties to the small, Midwestern town run deep. Despite his overwhelming financial success, Cook and his wife Gayle still live in the three-bedroom house they purchased in 1967.

Brother Cook has renovated two hotels (sites of two of Beta Theta Pi’s General Conventions in 1976 and 1982) and built a $250 million, 80,000-square-foot nautical-theme casino in French Lick, Indiana.

William J. (Bill) Bowerman, Oregon ’33 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 68
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 25, 2009

In 1964, William J. (Bill) Bowerman, Oregon ’33 entered into a handshake agreement with Phil Knight, a runner he had coached in the 1950s, to start an athletic footwear distribution company called Blue Ribbon Sports, which was to become Nike, Inc. Knight managed the business end of the partnership while Bowerman experimented with improvements in athletic footwear design.

His design ideas led to creating a running shoe in 1966 that would ultimately be named “Cortez” in 1968, which quickly became a top-seller and remains one of Nike’s most iconic footwear designs. Bowerman’s design ideas were incorporated into many Nike shoes. However, he is best known for ruining his wife’s waffle iron in 1970 or 1971, experimenting with the idea of using waffle-ironed rubber ripples to create a new sole for footwear that would provide increased traction and be lightweight.

Bowerman’s design inspiration led to the introduction of the so-called “Moon Shoe” in 1972, so named because
the waffle tread was said to resemble the footprints left by astronauts on the moon. Further refinement resulted in the “Waffle Trainer” in 1974, which helped fuel the explosive growth of Blue Ribbon Sports/Nike, which helped athletes worldwide achieve maximum performances.

His obsession with shaving weight off his athletes’ running shoes was legendary. He believed that custom-made shoes would weigh less on the feet of his runners and cut down on blisters, as well as reduce the overall drag on their energy for every ounce he could remove from the shoe. Today, Nike’s headquarters is located on Bowerman Drive in homage to the company’s co-founder.

After graduation from the University of Oregon, Bowerman was set to teach school for two years and then attend medical school. He taught biology while coaching football and basketball in Portland and Medford. His track teams at Medford High School won numerous state championships and developed many outstanding young men.

Bowerman enlisted in the United States Army following the Pearl Harbor attack, and his legendary Tenth Mountain Division was assigned to Naples, Italy. He negotiated a stand-down of German forces near the Brenner Pass in Italy. Bowerman was awarded a total of four Bronze Stars and a Silver Star.

After the war, Bowerman returned to his position at Medford High School. The family then moved to Eugene, Oregon, where his “hero,” Bill Hayward, asked him to return to the University of Oregon in 1948. Bowerman’s “Track Men of Oregon” won 24 NCAA individual titles (with wins in 15 of the 19 events contested)and four NCAA team crowns (1962, 1964, 1965 and 1970) and posted 16 top-10 NCAA finishes in 24 years as head coach. His teams also boasted 33 Olympians, 38 conference champions and 64 All-Americans. Bowerman always considered himself a “teacher” rather than a “coach.”

Oregon posted a 114-20 record at the dual track meet level and went undefeated in 10 seasons. In addition, Bowerman coached the world record-setting 4-mile relay team in 1962. Among the athletes that he coached was the legendary Steve Prefontaine.

Bowerman created a training program for adjusting athletes to the high altitude they would experience at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. He was the 1972 Munich Olympic Track and Field head coach and coached teams from Norway, Canada, Australia and the United States.

During a trip to New Zealand in 1962, Bowerman was introduced to the concept of jogging as a fitness routine through a jogging club organized by his friend and coaching colleague Arthur Lydiard. He brought this concept back to the United States and wrote articles and books about jogging. Bowerman also created a jogging program in Eugene that became a national model for fitness programs. “A Jogger’s Manual,” a three-page guide, was published shortly after he returned from New Zealand.

In 1966, along with cardiologist W.E. Harris, Bowerman published a 90-page book entitled jogging. Short and to the point, the book sold more than a million copies and was credited with igniting the jogging phenomenon in the USA. To this day, jogging remains a popular exercise for men and women of all ages.

In 1971, Bowerman stepped back from day-to-day coaching activities to spearhead the renovation of Hayward Field grandstands before the 1972 Olympic Trials.

Bowerman is a member of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame, the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and Oregon’s Athletic Hall of Fame. He passed away in 1999, at the age of 88. Bill and his wife Barbara have three sons: Jon, Thomas and William J. (Jay) Jr., Oregon ’65.

Clarence William (Bill) Nelson, Florida/Yale ’65
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 69
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 5, 2010

The Honorable Bill Nelson, Florida/Yale ’65, born and raised in the Sunshine State on September 29, 1942, currently serves as a Senator for the State of Florida. Nelson was born in Miami to Nannie and Clarence Nelson, and he attended public school in Melbourne. Senator Nelson enrolled at the University of Florida but eventually transferred and graduated from Yale University in 1965, and he later earned his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1968. While in college, Nelson joined the Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). He then served in the reserves and as an active duty member for the U.S. Army from 1965 to 1971, where he rose to the rank of Captain. In 1968, Senator Nelson was admitted to the Florida Bar, and he began practicing Law in Melbourne in 1970.

Bill Nelson and his wife Grace wed in 1972. They have two children, Bill Nelson, Jr. and Nan Ellen Nelson. In the same year Bill and Grace married, Nelson was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and he was reelected in 1974 and 1976. During these three terms, Senator Nelson created the nation’s first law that protected consumers from computer fraud.

From 1979 to 1991, Brother Nelson served as a Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. During this tenure, Nelson became the second member of Congress to fly into space. He took flight from January 12-18, 1986, on Space Shuttle Columbia’s STS-61-C Mission as a Payload Specialist, spending a total of 6 days, 2 hours, and 3 minutes in space. While in space, the seven-man crew deployed the SATCOM KU satellite and performed experiments related to materials processing and astrophysics. Senator Nelson joins three other members of Beta Theta Pi who have flown in space: Joseph P. Allen, DePauw ’59, Kenneth D. Cameron, MIT ’71, and Paul J. Weitz, Penn State ’54.

From 1994 to 2000, Nelson served the Sunshine State’s Cabinet as state Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and Fire Marshal. While in office, he fought to keep insurance rates affordable for homeowners, investigated life and burial insurance sales abuses against the elderly and minorities, and demanded European insurers to honor settling payments to Holocaust-era victims.

In 2000, Senator Nelson won the Florida Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate. Currently serving in this position, Brother Nelson is a member of the following committees: U.S. Senate Armed Services, Budget, Commerce, Finance, Intelligence, and Aging. Within these committees, Senator Nelson is the Chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and Chairman of the Science and Space subcommittee. He is also recognized as the leading congressional expert on NASA.

Brother Nelson worked on issues as a Senator, including preventing identity theft for consumers, creating legislation to stop unsolicited e-mails to individuals and businesses, and working with men and women in the armed forces to ensure their proper equipment needs were met. Senator Nelson also fought to prevent drilling for oil off Florida’s coast, defended war veterans’ quality health care, and ensured proper Medicare benefits for senior citizens. Nelson also saw that victims from the 2004 hurricane season were well taken care of with sufficient federal financial aid. This also prompted him to take an integral role in reforming the federal agency that assists people after disasters occur.

Currently, Senator Nelson is employing efforts to prevent major disruptions in life and economics to Florida citizens due to the 2010 BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana.

Donald L. Cromer, Washington State ’59
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 70
Awarded the Oxford Cup on September 18, 2010

Donald L. Cromer of Spokane, Wash., attended Washington State for one year before receiving an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1959 and was immediately commissioned in the Air Force, assigned to Strategic Air Command as a missile combat crew commander. He did not know at the time, but he was embarking on what would become a fifty-year career in air and space that would take him across the country and into a handful of government agencies.

Cromer spent the late 60s and early 70s a little differently than most people his age. While young people across America were focused on rock music and free love, he was at Cape Canaveral testing space crafts for NASA’s Gemini Project or in a lab analyzing satellite data at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Moreover, while some college students across the country were rioting and protesting on their campuses, Cromer was busy in the classroom, earning a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Denver, completing the executive program at Stanford Business School, as well as the National Security Management Course at Harvard.

In the late 70s and 80s, Cromer was raised to even more prominent leadership positions. He gathered a host of official titles, including Director of Advanced Technology, Director of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, even Director of Space Systems at the U.S. Air Force Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In this position, he was responsible for managing test, launch and on-orbit control activities of Air Force space and ballistic missile systems.

Following his retirement from the Air Force in June 1991, Gen. Cromer became president of Hughes Space Communications Company and served in that capacity through 1998. He subsequently served as an advisor to the Air Force and the Department of Defense for National Security Space Programs. He was Chairman of the Board of The Aerospace Corporation from 2005 to 2008.

During these “retirement” years, Don would occasionally return to Spokane to visit family and friends. During one such visit, which also included his addressing ROTC students at the University of Idaho and Washington State, he was advised by an alumnus of the plight of the struggling Gamma Theta Chapter. He volunteered to help and a steering committee was formed around his leadership. He assumed the presidency of the chapter housing corporation and made regular trips from Southern California to Washington State for meetings to help solve chapter problems. Nevertheless, again, a busy man still found time for his Fraternity.

All the details of Don Cromer’s half-century career could (and probably should) fill volumes, and this biography is far from comprehensive. However, one common thread is shared by all of his experiences: high stress and responsibility coupled with little personal glory. Brother Cromer could tell you there is nothing fabulous about staying up until 5:00 a.m. monitoring satellites and ballistic missiles’ precise location and speed. He always focused on what he could do better and how he could help, not whom he could blame or what he could get out of it. This approach to work and to life that we celebrate in Beta Theta Pi, and why Donald Cromer is now bestowed with Beta’s highest individual award for professional achievement.

Don and his wife Carole live in Fallbrook, CA. They have four adult children and five grandchildren.

William O. Douglas, Whitman ’20 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 71
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 30, 2011

Dedicated. Resilient. Staunch. Three words that describe Douglas and his tenure as the longest-serving justice in the history of the United States Supreme Court – 36 years and 209 days. Further, throughout his service, he gave the most speeches, wrote the most opinions and dissents and authored the most books among past and present justices. In an issue of the 1975 TIME magazine, an article described Douglas as “the most doctrinaire and committed civil libertarian ever to sit on the court.”

Douglas was born on October 16, 1898. Working odd jobs as a young lad and mercilessly studying in high school, Douglas earned a scholarship to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., where he joined the Gamma Zeta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Initiated on March 31, 1917, he became roll number 67 of the young Chapter that had just been founded one year earlier (1916.) Douglas served as the student body president and participated on the debate team. After graduating, Douglas decided to move to New York to enroll in Columbia’s Law School. His Fraternity membership proved invaluable. He stayed with Beta brothers in New York and borrowed $75 from a Whitman brother to begin law school. Douglas finished law school in 1925 and married Mildred Riddle shortly after that.

Douglas joined the faculty at Columbia Law School and eventually Yale Law School, where he became an expert on commercial litigation and bankruptcy. He moved on from Yale in 1934 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through his appointment by his personal friend and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939, after Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ resignation, President Roosevelt nominated Douglas to the Supreme Court. After the U.S. Senate voted approval (62 to 4), Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939, at 40, making him one of the youngest justices ever confirmed to the Court.

Douglas’ son, William O. Douglas, Jr., Whitman ’56, was initiated into the Gamma Zeta Chapter as roll number 644 on October 1, 1952. Douglas retired from office on November 12, 1975, and passed away on January 19, 1980.

Donald E. Petersen, Washington ’46
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 72
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 30, 2011

Born in Pipestone, Minnesota, on September 4, 1926, Donald Petersen joined the Ford Motor Company in 1949 after receiving a master’s degree in Business Administration from Stanford University. He received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington in 1946, where he joined Beta Theta Pi on October 15, 1944, as roll number 651. Petersen served in the U. S. Marine Corps in World War II and the Korean War.

Petersen became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Ford Motor Company on February 1, 1985. Hailed a “Most Valuable Person” of 1988 by USA Today and “CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive Magazine in 1989, Petersen transformed Ford with his inclusive, team-oriented management style. Before he was elected Chairman, Petersen had been President and Chief Operating Officer since March 13, 1980. He was a member of the Board of Directors from September 8, 1977, until his retirement in February 1990.
Petersen received the University of Washington’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1981, and he received the Stanford Business School Alumni Association’s Arbuckle Award for outstanding achievement in business management in 1985. He remains active in various capacities at both schools. In 1986, Petersen became the first recipient of the American Achievement Award, presented by Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, for “significant contributions to the United States through achievement in the areas of industry, business, science, and the arts.”

In addition to numerous awards and accolades, Petersen has received five honorary doctorate degrees from schools around the country. He has served as a director on boards of The Boeing Company, Dow Jones & Co. and Hewlett-Packard Company. He is a Life Member of the University of Washington Foundation Board.

Petersen’s father, William L. Petersen, South Dakota ’16 was a founder of Beta’s Gamma Alpha Chapter (roll number 56; founded October 5, 1912). His brother, Peter E. Petersen, Oregon State ’45, was also a Beta, initiated as roll number 362 on February 14, 1943. Petersen and his wife, Jo Anne, reside in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Donald G. (Don) Abbey, Penn State ’70
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 73
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 30, 2011

Don Abbey, Penn State ’70, was initiated into his beloved Alpha Upsilon Chapter on May 25, 1968, as roll number 956. Having played under legendary and championship-winning Nittany Lion Coach Joseph “JoePa” Paterno, he certainly understands the importance of persistence, sacrifice and hard work.

Abbey has achieved tremendous professional success as founder and CEO of The Abbey Company, a privately held real estate business he began in 1990. The Abbey Company owns and manages more than 6 million square feet of office and industrial space and has expanded to 18 branch offices and has amassed a portfolio of more than 1 billion dollars in assets. The Abbey Company has grown to 80 employees, many of whom are Penn State graduates and alumni of the Alpha Upsilon Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Abbey received the Distinguished Alumnus award in 2003 from Penn State in recognition for his entrepreneurial achievements and service to the University.

In addition to his professional success, Abbey has generously given the Fraternity gifts of time, talent, and treasure. His $8.5 million gift to restore the Alpha Upsilon Chapter house at 220 North Burrowes Street in State College, Penn. is the single most significant gift to an individual chapter house in North American fraternity history. Beyond his financial gifts, Abbey has also dedicated hundreds of hours of service as a house corporation board officer for the chapter, serves as their leadership development advisor and has attended multiple Beta sponsored leadership events, including the John and Nellie Wooden Institute for Men of Principle and the General Convention.

Beyond his professional success and contributions to the Fraternity, Abbey is a very generous philanthropist. His philanthropic efforts have progressive causes such as the Wounded Warriors Project, which supports injured Navy SEAL team members upon returning home, youth sports initiatives and law enforcement efforts in California and Montana.

Abbey resides in Southern California.

David C. Mulford, Lawrence ’59
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 74
Awarded the Oxford Cup on October 29, 2011

Ambassador David C. Mulford, Lawrence ’59, was initiated into the Gamma Pi Chapter of Beta Theta Pi on February 12, 1956, as Roll No. 510. Graduating in 1959 with a B.A. in economics, cum laude, Mulford continued his educational path by earning his M.A. in Political Science from Boston University in 1962 and his Ph.D. from Oxford University in England in 1966. Mulford began his professional career in 1965, serving as Special Assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury as a White House Fellow during the first year of the White House Fellowship Program.

Following his two-year role in the White House, Mulford served as Managing Director and Head of International Finance at the investment bank of White, Weld & Co., Inc., where he was responsible for coordinating efforts with Credit Suisse on international financial business from 1966 to 1974. In 1974, Mulford was seconded to a senior investment advisor to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA). He managed the investment of Saudi oil revenues and developed a comprehensive investment program for SAMA.

From 1984-92, Mulford served in the U.S. Government as Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs. Among the highlights of Mulford’s responsibilities and accomplishments include U.S. Deputy for coordination of economic policy with other G-7 industrial nations; Head of the Administration’s Yen/ Dollar negotiations with Japan; the Administration’s senior advisor on financial assistance to Russia and the ex-Soviet Republics; leadership of the Administration’s international debt strategy; leadership of the U.S. Delegation to negotiate the establishment of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; leadership of the G-7 negotiations to reduce Poland’s official bilateral debt and develop and implement the Baker/Brady Plans and President Bush’s Enterprise Initiative for the Americas.

Mulford joined the London-based banking firm Credit Suisse in 1992, where he served as Chairman International and a member of the executive board until 2003. Mulford led Credit Suisse’s worldwide, large-scale privatization business and other corporate and government advisory assignments in these roles.

In November 2003, President George W. Bush nominated Mulford for U.S. Ambassador to India. Mulford was confirmed by the Senate one month later, and he was sworn into office in January 2004. During his five-year ambassadorship, the U.S. and India achieved unprecedented economic cooperation and an exponential expansion in business, health, finance, science, agriculture, education and military cooperation. Additionally, Mulford negotiated the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Initiative, which was considered a foundation for the strategic partnership between the two countries and the end of India’s 35 years of isolation.

In 2009, Mulford rejoined Credit Suisse after accepting an appointment to Vice Chairman International. In this role, he works with various clients across the integrated bank, focusing on governments and corporate clients worldwide.

Mulford has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Sue M. Cobb Award awarded by the U.S. Department of State for Exemplary Diplomatic Service in his efforts to make an impact on U.S.-India bilateral relations; an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Lawrence University; the Legion d’Honneur from the President of France; the Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University; the Alexander Hamilton Award, the highest honor to be bestowed by the Secretary of the Treasury; the Order of May for Merit from the President of Argentina and the Officer’s Cross of the Medal of Merit from the President of Poland.

Mulford was born in Rockford, Ill., in 1973 and is married to Jeannie Simmons Mulford. His nephews, Matthew J. Roberts, DePauw ’97, and Adam M. Roberts, DePauw ’00, are alumni of the Delta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi.

John E. Warnock, Utah ’61
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 75
Awarded the Oxford Cup on March 24, 2012

Dr. John E. Warnock, Utah ’61, was initiated into the Gamma Beta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi on May 17, 1959, as Roll No. 1,019. Graduating in 1961 with a B.S. in mathematics and philosophy, Warnock continued his educational path at the University of Utah, earning his M.S. in mathematics and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

In 1982, Dr. Warnock co-founded Adobe Systems, Inc., with Dr. Charles Geschke, building the company from a small start-up to one of the world’s largest and most recognized software companies. Warnock has worked closely with Geschke for more than two decades, pioneering the development of graphics, publishing, and Web and electronic document technologies that have revolutionized the field of publishing and visual communication.

Serving as president of Adobe during his first two years, Warnock served as CEO for the next 16 years. Retiring as CEO in 2000 and CTO in 2001, Warnock currently serves as co-chairman of the board, along with Geschke, where he continues to shape the direction of the nearly $3 billion company.

Before co-founding Adobe Systems, Warnock was a principal scientist at Xerox Palo AltoResearch Center (Xerox PARC). Warnock also held positions at Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, and the University of Utah.
Warnock’s entrepreneurial success has been chronicled by some of the country’s most influential business and computer industry publications, and he has received numerous awards for technical and managerial achievement. A partial list of his awards includes:

• University of Utah Distinguished Alumnus Award (1995)
• Software Systems Award (1989, Association for Computing Machinery) Edwin H. Land Medal (2000, Optical Society of America)
• Bodley Medal (2003, Bodleian Library at Oxford University)
• Lovelace Medal (2004, British Computer Society)
• Medal of Achievement (2006, AeA)
• Computer Entrepreneur Award (2008, IEEE Computer Society)
• United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2009)

Warnock is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Utah, the American Film Institute, and Nottingham University. Along with serving on Adobe’s board of directors, Warnock is also a member of the boards for Mongonet Inc. and Salon Media Group and serves on the board of trustees of the Sundance Institute.

A strong supporter of higher education, Warnock and his wife, Marva, donated 200,000 shares of Adobe Systems in 2003, valued at more than $5.7 million, to the University of Utah as a significant gift for a new engineering building. They have also supported three endowed presidential chairs in computer science, mathematics and fine arts at the University of Utah and a chair in medical research at Stanford University.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on October 6, 1940, Warnock lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He and his wife have three children. The Beta Spirit runs deep in Warnock’s family. Many of his relatives have also been initiated into the Gamma Beta Chapter at Utah, including his son, Christopher M. Warnock, Utah ’91, and his brother, Thomas V. Warnock, Utah ’57.

Dale T. Mortensen, Willamette ’61 (Deceased)
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 76
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 2, 2012

Dale T. Mortensen, Willamette ’61, was born February 2, 1939, in Enterprise, Oregon. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Willamette University, where he was initiated into the Gamma Sigma Chapter on March 2, 1958, as Roll Number 325. Mortensen later received his Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Mortensen, a Northwestern University faculty member since 1965, is also a Board of Trustees professor. He served as the Ida C. Cook Professor of economics from 1985-2011 and is currently a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Mortensen was granted an honorary Doctor of Science from his alma mater, Willamette University, in 2011. After completing his 2006-10 tenure as the Niels Bohr visiting professor of economics at Aarhus University in Denmark, the building which houses all Aarhus University international and Ph.D. activities was named after him.

Mortensen is a prolific author with more than 50 scientific articles and two recently published books. He jointly authored Job Matching, Wage Dispersion and Unemployment in 2011, and in 2003, published Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently? Mortensen’s work has appeared in such publications as the American Economic Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Labor Economics.

In 2010, Mortensen was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank (Nobel) Prize in economic sciences in honor of Alfred Nobel for analyzing markets with search frictions. Mortensen pioneered the job search and search unemployment theory, and his insight has become the leading technique for analyzing labor markets and the effects of labor market policy.

In 2008, he elected an American Economic Association distinguished fellow. Mortensen is also the recipient of the Society of Labor Economics Mincer Prize in 2007 and the IZA Labor Economics Prize in 2005.

Mortensen has been awarded numerous grants throughout his career, including eight National Science Foundation grants and three U.S Department of Labor grants. He is a fellow of the Society of Labor Economics, the European Economic Association, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.

Residing in Evanston, Illinois, he is married to Beverly Patton Mortensen. The couple has two daughters, Lia and Julie, and one son, Karl.

Eric M. Javits, Columbia ’52
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 77
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 27, 2013

Ambassador Eric M. Javits, Columbia ’52, was initiated into the Alpha Alpha Chapter on May 1, 1950, as Roll No. 691. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1952, he attended the School of Law at Columbia University. In 1955, Javits graduated from law school and was admitted into the New York Bar.

He moved to New York City and began his legal career at Javits & Javits, a firm that his father and uncle founded. Ambassador Javits conducted an international practice as senior partner of the firm from 1964 until 1989 when he left the law practice to serve as a consultant in the U.S. Department of State. He then returned to law as Senior Counsel to the New York law firm of Robinson Brog Leinwand Greene Genovese & Gluck, P.C., engaging mainly in pro bono activities until 2001.

In 2001, he was nominated by President George W. Bush as Ambassador and Permanent U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Having been confirmed unanimously by the Senate, he served in that post from 2001-2003. He was then nominated and again unanimously confirmed as Ambassador and U.S. Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, the capital city of the Netherlands. He served in that position from 2003 until he retired in January 2009.

He has been actively involved in many civic organizations. He has served as the president and chairman of the Spanish Institute and board memberships of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the Spain – U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the French Institute/Alliance Francaise, and the Cardozo School of Law. He was appointed by the Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, to serve as a member of the New York City Commission for the United Nations and Protocol. New York Governor George Pataki appointed him to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Operating Corporation board.

Ambassador Javits has garnered an impressive list of awards during his illustrious career. In 1994, he was honored at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute’s Gold Medal Gala, recognizing him for his contributions to the cultural relations and international appreciation of Spain and Ibero-America. Ambassador Javits has been honored twice by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, in 1981 and 1990, with Isabela La Catolica decorations. This award recognizes an individual’s services that benefitted the country.

Ambassador Javits has served as an outside director of numerous corporations listed on the New York and American Stock Exchanges. He is also a published author, writing a book titled SOS New York – A City in Distress, published by Dial Press in 1961. He also served multiple years on his Alpha Alpha Chapter’s house corporation board.

Ambassador Javits and his wife, Dr. Margaretha Espersson, now reside in Palm Beach, Fla., and spend summers in their country home in Sweden. He is the father of Eric Javits, Jr., a noted designer, and Jocelyn Javits, an investment banker.

Raymond E. Mabus Jr., Mississippi ’69
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 78
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 1, 2013

Raymond E. Mabus Jr., Mississippi ’69, was initiated into the Beta Beta Chapter on March 19, 1967, as Roll No. 616. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s degree in English and political science from the University of Mississippi. Shortly after that, he attended Johns Hopkins University, received a Master’s in political science, was admitted to Harvard Law School, and graduated magna cum laude.

Serving two years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer from 1970-72 aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock, Mabus served as a law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He began his professional career working in Washington, D.C., as legal counsel to the U.S. House Agriculture Committee. Following the election of Governor William Winter, he returned to Mississippi to work in the governor’s office.

In 1983, Mabus was elected state auditor and served from 1984 to 1988. He participated in a large FBI sting operation (“Operation Pretense”), which recovered millions in misspent and stolen public funds and ensnared 57 county supervisors in 25 counties. All but two supervisors served time in prison.

Mabus ran for Governor of Mississippi in 1987, becoming the youngest governor in the nation. He served from 1988 to 1992, and during his tenure, he stressed education and job creation. He passed B.E.S.T. (Better Education for Success Tomorrow), known as one of America’s most comprehensive education reforms.

In 1994, Mabus was appointed Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He served in the role from 1994 to 96. As Ambassador, a 1994 border crisis involving Yemen was defused, a 1994 crisis with Iraq was deterred, and Saudi Arabia officially abandoned the boycott of U.S. businesses that traded with Israel.

In 2009, Mabus was sworn in as 75th Secretary of the Navy after receiving the nomination from President Obama and unanimous Senate approval. Currently, he leads the Navy and Marine Corps and is responsible for an annual budget above $170 billion and some 900,000 personnel. Leading the world’s only global Navy, he has traveled 715,000 miles and visited more than 95 countries. Maintaining an active presence on Facebook by personally commenting on his daily affairs, he is the first branch secretary to maintain such a high-profile web presence.

A year later, President Obama asked Mabus to prepare a long-term recovery plan for the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. After extensive travel and many meetings, his report “America’s Gulf Coast: A Long-Term Recovery Plan After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill” was released in September 2010. The report was met with broad bipartisan support.

During his illustrious career, Mabus has garnered an impressive list of awards. He received the U.S. Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award, was named one of Fortune Magazine’s top ten education governors, was honored with the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Civilian Service Award and was given the Martin Luther King Social Responsibility Award from the King Center in Atlanta. Mabus also received the King Abdul Aziz Award from Saudi Arabia.

An avid photographer, he has raised thousands of dollars for Mississippi charities. As an expert on Middle East affairs, he has been featured on “60 Minutes”, “Nightline,” and even the television drama series “NCIS.”

The father of two daughters, Elisabeth and Annie, Mabus lives in Ridgeland, Mississippi.

Daniel M. Carney, Wichita State ’53
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 79
Awarded the Oxford Cup on November 15, 2014

Daniel M. Carney, Wichita State ’53, was initiated into the Delta Gamma Chapter on October 16, 1960, as Roll No. 215. Born in Wichita, Kan., he attended nearby Wichita State University, earning a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in business administration.

While attending WSU, he helped run the family business, Carney’s Market, and was approached by the business’ landlady one day. She had read an article in The Saturday Evening Post about the emergence of pizza in America and wanted a restaurant to replace a small bar and grill she owned next to Carney’s Market.

In 1958, after borrowing $600 from their mother, Carney and his younger brother, Frank, decided to open up their pizza restaurant. The brothers purchased second-hand equipment but had no idea how to make pizza. They met a man named John Bender, who had a pizza recipe through a connection. They tried Bender’s mixture, liked it and included him in their business venture. Pizza Hut was born.

Pizza Hut quickly became one of the most successful restaurants in Wichita and expanded rapidly. In 1968, the first international Pizza Hut opened in Canada. That same year Pizza Hut went to the open market with a public offering. In 1971, it became the world leader in pizza sales and several restaurants. Carney sold Pizza Hut to Pepsi Co. in 1977, and it remains the largest pizza chain in the world.

Since Carney sold Pizza Hut, he has been involved in many organizations, serving on the board of more than 20, including the WSU Foundation, Guadalupe Clinic, Wichita Red Cross, The Lord’s Diner, St. Paul WSU Newman Center, Catholic Charities Advisory Board, Harbor House, a shelter for the domestic abused, TOP – The Opportunity Project, an early education program for children living in poverty, and Wichita Community Foundation. He has been Chairman of the Board of Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation of Kansas since its inception in 1972.

For his efforts, he has received numerous honors. Carney was awarded the Wichita State University President’s Medal, the WSU Frank Barton School of Business Distinguished Alumni Award, the Wichita State Achievement Award, named the 2007 Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce Uncommon Citizen, received the Big Brother/ Big Sister “Reaching the Summit” honor, was inducted into the Kansas Business Hall of Fame and was the first inductee into the Pizza Hut Hall of Fame.

Residing in Wichita with his wife Gayla, Carney has 11 brothers and sisters, six children, three step-children and 17 grandchildren.

Geoffrey S. Mason, Duke ’63
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 80
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 8, 2015

Geoffrey S. Mason, Duke ’63, was initiated into the Gamma Rho Chapter on December 11, 1960, as Roll No. 472. He graduated from Duke University with a degree in sociology.

Though Mason started his career at the Boston Herald covering the yachting beat, he would become one of sports television’s most accomplished executives. In January 1967, while still on Navy shore duty, Mason drove to Las Vegas to score the golf Tournament of Champions, the first production he ever worked. That September, Mason joined ABC Sports full-time as a production assistant.

Mason moved to Europe to continue working for ABC, with his career off to a great start. In 1976, he opened ABC’s full-time production office in Paris, but four months later, NBC Sports made him an offer he could not refuse: he opened NBC Sports’ first Paris office. In 1981, Mason returned to NBC Sports in New York as executive vice president. Soon after, however, things took a turn for the worse.
In September 1983, Mason checked himself into the Betty Ford Center for alcoholism. Thankfully, by the end of the year, he was back on his feet and returned to NBC. Ever since, his career has been an exciting one, as he has left an indelible mark on sports television.

In total, Mason has worked for ABC, NBC, Fox, ESPN and the NFL Network during his five decades in the business, and has produced coverage of countless events, including seven Olympic Games (Summer and Winter), Monday Night Football, Major League Baseball, the Indianapolis 500, Triple Crown Horse Racing, PGA Golf, six World Cups and multiple America’s Cup races. Currently, at ESPN, he serves as a senior production specialist, assigned to a wide variety of major productions.

Mason’s excellent work has not gone unrecognized. Having won 25 Emmys in December of 2010, he was inducted into the National Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

Outside of his profession, Mason served for 22 years on the board of directors at the Betty Ford Center and is a founding board member of the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Mason and his wife, Chris, reside in the Naples, Fla., area.

D. Deloss Dodds, Kansas State ’59
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 81
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 6, 2016

A native of Riley, Kansas, DeLoss Dodds, Kansas State ’59, was initiated into the Gamma Epsilon Chapter on April 14, 1956, as Roll No. 711.

Growing up, Dodds was a football, basketball and track standout – they called him the “Riley Flash.” After graduate school and time served in the U.S. Army, his athletic prowess led him back to Manhattan, Kansas, for a more than 15-year career with his alma mater, first as an assistant track coach, then head coach and, finally, as the director of athletics. In that time, Dodds led Kansas State to six Big Eight conference titles and turned a struggling department into a profitable athletics program.

His success in Kansas caught the attention of the University of Texas, where he was named athletic director in 1981. During his tenure, the men’s athletic programs saw one of their most successful periods, claiming 14 national championships and 108 conference titles in nine different sports. The football team won their fourth national title, five straight bowl games and achieved at least ten victories in nine straight seasons. Basketball made a school-record 14 trips to the NCAA tournament. Furthermore, baseball advanced to the NCAA Men’s College World Series seven times, winning the national championship twice.

As successful as his athletes were on the field, Dodds further elevated Texas into the national spotlight behind the scenes. He helped UT emerge as the leading member of the new Big 12 in 2010 and, subsequently, oversaw the launch of the Longhorn Network, the first sports television channel devoted to a single school. Additionally, Dodds guided the creation of The Longhorn Foundation, which raises money for student-athlete scholarships, academic services, sports medicine, facilities and more. Today, the foundation boasts more than 13,000 donors and has raised more than $370 million.

Dodds’ honors and accolades are numerous and far-reaching. He was named the 2011 Athletic Director of the Year by Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily, the two leading publications on the business of sports. His dedication to college athletics and administrative abilities also earned him the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame’s John L. Toner Award in 2006 and the Gridiron Club of Dallas Chapter’s Most Distinguished Texan Award in 2014. Dodds also belongs to the U.S. Track Coaches Hall of Fame, and Drake Relays Coaches Hall of Fame, Kansas State Athletics Hall of Fame and Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Dodds and his wife, Mary Ann, reside in Austin, Texas, and have three children – Doug, Kansas State ’83, Diedre and Debra – and eight grandchildren.

Shahid Rafiq Khan, Illinois ’70
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 82
Awarded the Oxford Cup on July 27, 2017

Shahid R. Khan, Illinois ’70, was initiated into the Sigma Rho Chapter on October 12, 1968, as Roll No. 1086.

On January 4, 2012, he became the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars. His dream of owning an NFL team had become a reality on December 14, 2011, in a unanimous 32-0 vote by NFL owners to support his purchase of the franchise.

Khan’s passion for the National Football League took root long before entering the league. His dream of one day owning an NFL team began while watching games with his fraternity brothers in the basement of the Beta Theta Pi house as a student at the University of Illinois. Through the success of his own business, Flex-N-Gate Corporation, his dream came true 40 years later.

Khan’s history with Flex-N-Gate started in 1970 when he worked as an engineering student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Khan came from his native Pakistan in 1967 at the age of 16 to attend college. When he graduated in 1971, he became Flex-N-Gate’s engineering manager. In 1978, Khan left Flex-N-Gate. With $13,000 in savings and a $50,000 loan from the Small Business Loan Corporation, he created the start-up Bumper Works, which revolutionized the industry through an innovative one-piece bumper design that is still considered the industry standard for all seamless steel bumpers worldwide.

When Flex-N-Gate came on the market two short years later, Khan purchased his former employer and brought Bumper Works into the fold. In 2015, Automotive News ranked Flex-N-Gate Corporation as the 10th-largest original equipment supplier in North America and the 38th largest supplier globally.

In 2007, Khan received the Minority Business Leadership Award from the National Minority Supplier Development Council and had continued to earn honors throughout the world for his example as a successful minority business owner, which extends to the NFL as in 2011 he became the first team owner of minority ethnicity in league history.

In 2013, Khan complemented his sports club portfolio by purchasing the London-based Fulham Football Club. As chairman of Fulham, Khan became the only person in the world to own 100 percent of both an NFL club and a Barclays Premier League team.
Then, in September 2016, Khan purchased full ownership of Four Seasons Hotel Toronto, regarded as one of the premier destinations in the luxury hotel segment anywhere in the world.

Ranked 84th on the Forbes 400 Wealthiest Americans list in 2016 and the wealthiest person in the world of Pakistani origin, Khan and his wife, Ann, are philanthropic leaders both in their newly adopted hometown of Jacksonville as well as in Illinois, where they met as students while attending the University of Illinois. In 2007, the Khan Foundation was formed to expand research at the University of Illinois, with Ann Khan serving as the foundation’s president. Since its inception, the foundation has given out more than $5 million in grants nationwide.

The Khans have focused their charitable giving on the Jacksonville community through the Jaguars Foundation. Since 2012, the foundation has provided more than $9.3 million in grants to support children’s and family programs, the NFL/Jaguars Play 60 youth fitness program, military and veterans, women’s health issues, neighborhood revitalization, and other NFL and team-related initiatives.

Khan has served on many University of Illinois boards, including the Engineering Board of Visitors, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Alumni Board, MechSE Extern Program, University of Illinois Foundation Board of Directors and the President’s Council. Khan was inducted into the Engineering at Illinois Hall of Fame in 2010.

Khan shares his passion for the American dream with his family, and he and his wife Ann have passed on their commitment to work and service to their two grown children, Tony and Shanna.

Walter J. Pories, Wesleyan ’59
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 83
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 2, 2018

Walter J. Pories, Wesleyan ’52, was initiated into the Mu Epsilon Chapter on February 19, 1949, as Roll No. 822. He is a professor of surgery, biochemistry, and kinesiology at East Carolina University and a retired colonel of the U.S. Armed Forces.

A Holocaust survivor who fled Germany with his family in 1939, Dr. Walter J. Pories, MD, FACS, earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He received his MD with honors at the University of Rochester, where he also completed his surgical training in general and cardiothoracic surgery. Following his appointments at the University of Rochester and Case Western Reserve, he became the founding chairman of surgery at ECU (1977–1990). He currently serves as the director of the Metabolic Surgery Research Group.

Dr. Pories’ research interests in pediatric and bariatric surgery produced the first report that zinc is essential for plants and animals. This discovery, made as a second-year medical student, was a part of the green revolution. The addition of two cents worth of zinc to a ton of feed accelerated poultry egg-laying by 45 days, finished broilers in six weeks instead of ten, and increased feed efficiency in swine by 20 percent.

On graduation from medical school, he joined the U.S. Air Force for 12 years, rendering primary care and obstetrics in France and serving as a part-time fellow in head and neck surgery at the University of Nancy. Following his internship, he returned to Rochester to complete his surgical training and serve a year as a biochemist in the Manhattan Project. Following his residency and certification, he was named chief of surgery at Wright Patterson AFB for five years of the Vietnam War.

In 1967, after 12 years as a career military officer, he returned to Rochester to found and direct the university’s cancer center – a venture he repeated two years later for the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital.

In 1977, he became the founding chair of the surgery department at East Carolina University. He maintained a busy surgical practice focusing on pediatric, thoracic and bariatric surgery.

In 1978, he joined the Army Reserve and served as the 3274th U.S. Army Hospital commander. He retired with the rank of colonel after 24 years of service with the Legion of Merit. He received a Presidential Citation for the regiment’s performance under his command in the first Gulf War.

In 1980, he developed the current version of the gastric bypass operation. He was first to document it produced durable weight loss and the complete remission of Type 2 diabetes in 83 percent of patients. To improve national outcomes from bariatric surgery, he founded the Surgical Review Corporation. He was also the first to develop a postgraduate curriculum for graduate surgical education, published through four editions.

His current research interest is the molecular explanation for why Type 2 diabetes clears within a matter of days following bariatric surgery. His group has had uninterrupted funding from the NIH for over three decades.

He served as president of the Society for Environmental Health and Geochemistry, the Association of Program Directors in Surgery, and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery; as vice president of the American College of Surgeons and the Southern Surgical Association; and as editor-in-chief and associate editor of several journals.

Dr. Pories is married to Dr. Mary Ann Rose, professor at the ECU College of Nursing. They have six children. The couple lives on a farm with cattle, goats, soybeans, deer, dogs, cats and even a small family of bears in the “low grounds” next to the Tar River. His hobbies include cooking, cartooning and watercolors.

Philip E. Nelson, Purdue ’56
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 84
Awarded the Oxford Cup on September 22, 2018

Philip E. Nelson, Purdue ’56, was initiated into the Beta Mu Chapter on October 10, 1953, as Roll No. 824. Born in Morristown, Indiana, he attended nearby Purdue University, earning a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate.

In his youth, Nelson helped during planting and harvesting seasons in his family’s tomato canning factory – the Blue River Packing Company. At age 15, he won a 4-H award for the 24 perfect tomatoes he had entered in competition at the Indiana State Fair. For this accomplishment, he was given the title “Tomato King.”

After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, Nelson returned to the farm and canning operation before earning his doctorate from Purdue in 1967. The dean of the College of Agriculture, Earl Butz, who later served as U.S. secretary of agriculture under Presidents Nixon and Ford, offered him a tenure-track faculty position, leading to a nearly 50-year career at the university.

In the 1970s, Nelson traveled to India to study food spoilage, which affected 50 percent of all food produced in the country. He began exploring ways that technology could be used in developing countries to preserve food for domestic distribution and consumption and export and sell overseas.

In pursuing his goals, Nelson accomplished what had not been done before: successfully bringing together crucial aspects of the aseptic processing system — parts of which already existed and parts of which he discovered, designed or modified during his research — that are used today across the globe.

These advances have benefited developing countries by reducing postharvest waste and providing an inexpensive packaging and shipping system for importing and exporting foodstuffs.

Humanitarian feeding programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and managed by Land O’Lakes since 2000 have provided aseptically packaged milk and biscuit products as part of school nutritional programs in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Because of Nelson’s work, by 2005 in the Philippines, less than 0.2 percent of the school-feeding products were lost.

His revolutionary technology was also used to bring potable water and emergency food to survivors of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In addition to his scientific discoveries, Nelson has also had an enormous impact in educating food scientists by building one of the largest and most recognized food science departments in the world at Purdue.

For his outstanding achievements, Nelson has become recognized as the leader of modern food science and technology. Chief among his numerous awards is receipt of the 2007 World Food Prize – an award created by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman E. Borlaug and often called the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture.”

Also, in 2007, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced the creation of the Philip E. Nelson Innovation Prize, recognizing outstanding Hoosier scientists for their discoveries, research and inventions. Furthermore, in 2010, Purdue University honored Dr. Nelson’s legacy by rededicating its campus Food Science Building as the Philip E. Nelson Hall of Food Science.

He has served appointments to the U.S. government, including the USDA National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education and Economics Advisory Board, USDA Specialty Crops Committee, and the USDA Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Nelson has served as professor emeritus of food science at Purdue since retiring from full-time work in 2010. He lives in Pellston, Michigan, with his Beta Sweetheart, Sue.

Dow H. Finsterwald, Ohio ’52
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 85
Awarded the Oxford Cup on January 12, 2019

Dow H. Finsterwald, Ohio ’52, was initiated into the Beta Kappa Chapter on March 6, 1948, as Roll No. 889. Born in Athens, Ohio, he earned his bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in his hometown.

While in school, Finsterwald was a three-year letter winner in golf, a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, and president of both the Varsity
O Club and his chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Finsterwald left an indelible mark as an amateur golfer even as an undergraduate. At 20 years old, he posted a 61 in the final round of the St. Louis Open – the lowest round at a PGA Tour event at the time. By 1951, Finsterwald had turned professional, and he debuted on the PGA Tour one year later.

Known for his superb short game, Finsterwald was widely considered one of the most consistent players on the Tour in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He finished fifth or better more than 50 times throughout his career and finished either runner-up or shared second 18 times in the 31 months preceding his PGA Championship win in 1958.

All told, Finsterwald won 11 Tour titles as a PGA professional, along with capturing the 1957 Vardon Trophy (awarded each year to the PGA Tour’s leader in scoring average), registering the lowest scoring average (70.3) for an entire season and was named the 1958 PGA Player of the Year. He also made 72 consecutive cuts, still the fifth-longest streak of all time and in such company as Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Finsterwald made 398 of 474 Tour cuts, an exceptional 83.9 percent efficiency standard.

He was a member of four U.S. Ryder Cup teams and served as non-playing captain for the victorious 1977 U.S. Ryder Cup team. During the 1961 and 1963 Ryder Cups, he played alongside Arnold Palmer. The two went on to become close friends.

Since retiring, Finsterwald has served as director of golf at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colorado; PGA of America vice president; sat on the United States Golf Association Rules of Golf committee; and is pro emeritus at the Pikewood National Golf Club in Morgantown, West Virginia.

In 2006, Finsterwald was inducted into the PGA of America Hall of Fame. A year later, fellow Ohio native Jack Nicklaus was honored at the 2007 Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio. In 2008, he was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.

While today he splits his time between Florida and Colorado, Athens and Ohio University have long held a special place in Finsterwald’s heart. There, he was awarded the Medal of Merit in 1958, the alumni association’s highest honor, and was inducted into the Ohio University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1960. It is also where he met his late Beta Sweetheart, Linda, who passed in 2015. The school’s Dow
and Linda Finsterwald Sports Management Scholarship is named in their honor.

Dow’s father, Russell, was also a Beta brother, initiated into Beta Kappa in 1914. Dow has three sons and a daughter. The family’s love for the game continues through his middle son, Dow Jr., head pro at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas.

Richard H. Evans, Denver ’66
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 86
Awarded the Oxford Cup on April 27, 2019

Richard H. Evans, Denver ’66, was initiated into the Alpha Zeta Chapter on January 20, 1963, as Roll No. 1011. Born in Ogden, Utah, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Denver.

Evans’ journey to becoming American sports and entertainment executive began quickly upon graduating when he joined the Walt Disney Company as an employee of the Celebrity Sports Center in Colorado. His tenure with the company spanned seven years. It included work at Disneyland in California before transferring to Orlando, Florida, to plan, construct, and pre-opening Walt Disney World. After its opening, Evans was responsible for operating the east portion of the Magic Kingdom and, later, of Disney World’s resort hotels and recreation facilities.

In 1975, following brief stints at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Marriott’s Great America Theme Parks, Evans became founder and president of Leisure General Corporation. There, he assumed the management of troubled businesses, representing investors by developing and implementing strategic plans. His reputation as a crisis manager continued to evolve throughout his career, and his work has helped save companies large and small, private and public.

Among those companies was Radio City Music Hall Productions, Inc., where Evans is credited with saving the famed Radio City Music Hall. Under his direction as chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer, the New York entertainment landmark became profitable for the first time in 30 years by changing from a first-run movie theater to the home of significant concerts, television projects and theatrical productions – including the introduction of the well-known Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

Evans’ next project took him a short walk across Manhattan to the Madison Square Garden Corporation. There, he served as president and CEO until 1991, overseeing all arena operations, including the NBA’s New York Knicks; the NHL’s New York Rangers; Miss Universe, Inc.; MSG TV/Radio Networks; and more.

In 1993, his talents were taken to Music City, U.S.A., when he was named Chief Operating Officer of Gaylord Entertainment Company in Nashville, Tennessee. Beyond spearheading a company reorganization of business units including the Grand Ole Opry, Opryland Hotel, Gaylord Communications Group (cable television’s TNN and CMT) and more, Evans is credited, along with Mayor Phil Bredesen, for bringing professional sports – the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and the NHL’s Nashville Predators – to Nashville. He also founded and chaired the PGA BellSouth Senior Classic at Opryland.

After leaving Gaylord in 1996, Evans became president and CEO of H. Wayne Huizenga’s Huizenga Sports & Entertainment Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which owned the Miami Dolphins, Florida Marlins, Florida Panthers, Pro Player Stadium, the Homestead Motor Sports Complex, Sports Channel Florida and Leisure Management International. In addition to overseeing the design, construction and pre-opening planning of the $185 Broward County Arena, the MLB’s Marlins won the 1997 World Series under Evans’ watch.

Since 1998, Evans has served as chairman of Evans Holdings, LLC, a real estate investment services company. He also has directorships with Life Point Health, Gridiron Capital, Tokyo Joes and Tharpe Robbins. Throughout his career, he has been involved with major organizations, the likes of Genesco, Bass Pro Shops, Young Presidents’ Organization, New York City Sports Commission, World Presidents Organization, Chief Executives Organization, and as a member of the University of Denver Board of Trustees.

To date, he is the only individual to have served as CEO of a franchise in all four major leagues –the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB –and to represent each of these franchises on their leagues’ respective Board of Governors. Evans resides in Blue Hill, Maine, and recently celebrated his 50-year “Mickey Mouse” anniversary to his Beta Sweetheart, Carla. Fittingly, they first met working together at Disneyland.

M. Rivers Rutherford, Mississippi ’89
Oxford Cup Roll Number: 87
Awarded the Oxford Cup on August 5, 2021

With a name like Rivers Rutherford, it’s no surprise this soulful storyteller and recent Nashville Songwriter Hall of Famer was destined to become one of music’s most talented and accomplished singer-songwriters.

Having grown up in the shadow of Elvis’ Graceland homestead in Memphis, Rutherford came out of the gates swinging at 21 years old, landing his first cut with American legends Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson – also known as The Highwaymen.

What followed were dozens of hits; multiple Grammys; Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music nominations; and over 20 awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, including the coveted awards for Country Song of The Year and Songwriter of The Year.

All told, these honors have firmly established Rutherford’s position within the upper echelon of Nashville’s most lauded songwriters.

You’ll see Rivers’ name on #1 songs by Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton, Rodney Atkins, Montgomery Gentry, Gretchen Wilson, Trace Atkins and Brooks & Dunn. Rivers has also enjoyed success with Country giants like Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Reba McEntire, George Jones, Toby Keith, Faith Hill, Hank Williams Jr., Gary Allan, and hosts of others.

Known for his gritty southern style, Rutherford is unapologetic about his faith, devotion to his family and making great music. His decades-long career, the countless hits to his credit and his ability to write music that is timeless are testament to a man that has come to be respected as an artist in his own right.

Currently signed to Verse 2 Music, a Sony Music Publishing joint venture helmed by Kane Brown and Kent Earls, Rivers continues to write with and for the biggest names in country music. He’s also returned to his early troubadour roots and maintains a rigorous touring schedule with over 50 dates a year, bringing his rip-roaring brand of no-holds-barred entertainment to audiences all over the world. 

With a persona that is at once direct, raw and impassioned, Rivers possesses the shrewd skills of a storyteller capable of cutting right to the heart of the matter – a trait that leaves his
talent both unique and enduring.