Forty years ago this spring, my turn came to stand and speak at the Lodge’s senior dinner. The brotherhood deserved some words of inspiration, and I was just the humble, magnanimous elder to deliver them. I bombed.
Is it too late for a do-over?
As my five semesters in Alpha Sigma were drawing to an end in 1986, I couldn’t begin to express how much I was going to miss the place. So, in order to deflect from the looming void of my own separation, I decided to call sober attention to undergrads who had already drifted away from the Lodge. “Let’s honor the bonds and not lose touch with these absent brothers.” I had prepared some names. “Guys like Scott Ruth …”
“He’s right here!” shouted Ted Ridgway, sitting near Scott in a back corner of the dining room. Ted knew performative sobriety when he heard it. Sorry I overlooked you, Scott.
Advice from a now official senior (according to AARP): if you take yourself too seriously, others have all the fun.
During my first visit to Chi Psi, I was invited to go bowling at the student union with a small group of brothers. One of them was Addison Sweeney, a meticulous talker and the slender definition of debonair. Another was John Snyder, who sounded like a stoner and dressed like laundry day. At the lanes, these two got into a deep discussion on a topic I don’t recall. What I do remember, with indisputable accuracy, is that whenever Addison or John was due to bowl next, he would excuse himself from the other, grab a ball and, to get the nuisance over with, throw a deadeye strike. He then resumed the debate exactly where he had left it. This happened every single interruption.
Advice from a now official senior (according to AMC movie discounts): don’t miss what John Wilson wrote here about the richness of Chi Psi’s diversity.
That introductory outing wasn’t the last time brothers left me—as the British Moreheads might have said—gobsmacked. The Lodge was full of sharp, talented, interesting and hilarious people: future doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, writers, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, arts patrons, and historical restorationists, to name a few. City newsrooms are famously no-holds-barred arenas, and becoming comfortable around such an impressive cast of Chi Psis primed me, a career copy editor at newspapers in Raleigh, Philly, and New York, to take even the crustiest reporters in stride.
Advice from a now official senior (according to public transit fares): there’s a lot to learn by being the dumbest one in the room, even if the room includes a future Motley Fool.
I might have never been a Chi Psi if an older brother, Arri Eisen, hadn’t paused after we passed each other in a Connor Dorm stairwell to ask if I’d like to come over for dinner. Break no. 1: formal rush was over, but I hung around and, no doubt because of Arri’s backing in particular, received a bid. Break no. 2: a year later, something in the Lodge’s climate gave me the idea to run for Daily Tar Heel co-editor with a fellow student journalist, and we won. Break no. 3: thanks to my roommate, Shaun Wallace, who photographed it, our election poster caught the eye of a Kappa sister. A Trader Vic’s social brought us together after I graduated for a first conversation; last fall we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary. Break nos. 4 through too many to count.
Advice from a now official senior (according to the grunt when I sit back down in my chair): you can’t control chance and luck, but your path will be clearer if you recognize them. Thank you, 321 West Cameron, for showing the way.
And wouldn’t you know it, because they go back even further as friends, my wife still keeps in touch with Scott Ruth.
