Internal Promotions Announcement

Phi Kappa Tau is pleased to announce the ascension of several employees within the organization.  

Director of Chapter Services  

Brandon Lewis, Middle Tennessee State ’15  

Brandon is a founding member of the Zeta Lambda chapter at Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He started on staff in 2016 as a Success Manager and ascended to Associate Director of Chapter Services in 2018.   

Brandon will be supporting the Fraternity and Foundation by overseeing the Chapter Services Department which includes: chapter conduct, chapter billing and finances, alumni engagement, and expansion.  

Director of Communication  

Logan Lukacs, Baldwin Wallace ’10  

Logan joined the Phi Kappa Tau staff in 2014 as an Expansion Consultant and later assumed the role of Associate Director of Organizational Growth. After a brief sabbatical, he rejoined staff in 2019 as a Multimedia Specialist.  

As Director of Communication, Logan will be supporting the Fraternity and Foundation by overseeing marketing efforts, digital content creation, and management of the communication calendar.  

He is based in Chicago, IL.  

Editorial Director  

Lilly Steger  

A 2017 graduate of Wright State University, Lilly joined staff as a Content Strategist & Copywriter in 2018. In fall 2021, she will begin her MA in Political Communication from American University.  

As Editorial Director, she oversees the long-term vision of The Laurel, develops strategic communication initiatives, and generates editorial content for The Laurel, Sidelights, and Phi Kappa Tau News.  

She is based in Washington D.C.  

Associate Director of Chapter Services  

Drake Berlin, Bethany ’16  

Drake joined staff in 2019 as a Success Manager. Drake is a recipient of the Dwight I Douglass Presidents Award for outstanding leadership. He is pursuing his MS in Higher Education from Purdue.  

In his new role, Drake will oversee Phi Tau’s Success Management team, new chapter development, and will serve as a liaison between Phi Tau’s Education committee and the Executive Offices. 

Senior Success Manager  

Hunter Pemberton, Akron ’18  

Hunter joined staff in June of 2020, during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. He successfully navigated a new role while simultaneously coaching his chapters to success through the 2020-2021 school year. Prior to graduation, Hunter received the 2019 IFC Chapter President of the Year Award.  

As Senior Success Manager, Hunter will serve a dual role as senior leadership in the Success Management team and cross-functionally working in the Expansion department. 

Introducing PKT Survival Guides

Introducing, Phi Kappa Tau Survival Guides!

The PKT Survival Guides seek to help undergraduate brothers navigate their fraternity and college worlds. From newsletters, to National Convention, to recruitment, we want to help you succeed.

Vol. I: Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to make alumni and parents feel connected, as well as to highlight the accomplishments of your chapter. See our 5 tips for writing a great newsletter below:

Download as PDF

Summer Recruitment Makes for a Successful Fall

By National Recruitment Advisor Barry Mask, Auburn ’79

There seems to be a common thread among our chapters who do very well with recruitment and those who barely get by or struggle. The more successful chapters have a Summer recruitment ( not “rush’ ). Our chapters who depend upon their University/IFC formal recruitment don’t too well for the most part, yes there are a few exceptions. My first rule has always been - do NOT depend upon formal recruitment.

Meeting and finding PNMs (potential new members) over the summer who are coming to your school is the best way to start filling up that funnel well BEFORE school starts. It is just “making friends”. Making that Summer recruitment plan before the Spring semester ends is critical. For those of you who didn’t do that, there’s still time. June and July offer plenty of time to get going. And for those chapters who have deferred recruitment this still applies.

It also applies to those chapters at smaller colleges. I always hear, “Well we only have 6500 students so for us a Fall associate class of 15 is great.” Fine. But what if you could get 10 more guys? By deploying Summer efforts you can.

The PNMs you meet and make friends with over the summer will be looking for you when they move to campus. Plus, those guys also have a higher retention rate once they become associate members. Mostly because they have made ‘’genuine friendships’’ as Zack Woodruff, Auburn ’16, says who was the Recruitment Chairman at Auburn in 2019, setting the National and Auburn University recruitment record of 66 associates in the Fall of 2019 (initiating 59).

Even more reasons to get busy this Summer. Here are some ways to do it. These are not “theories” or “ideas”. Rather they are tried and true tactics of numerous fraternities all over this country. They work, if you do.

1. Assign “Market Chairmen’’

Look at your current membership and see what hometown or area they are from. I bet you can identify 4-6 main markets your guys are from. For us at Auburn , it’s South Alabama and the Gulf Coast, Birmingham, Atlanta, Huntsville, Nashville, and Central Florida. Lately we’ve even had an influx of guys that started a few years back from Chicago and California . Go figure. And they have kept those “pipelines” from those areas running for us. (As a side note I would say when you have PNMs from a state far away and you find them , they are good prospects because they rarely know anyone else at your college and are seeking “friendships”.)

The mission of the Market Chairmen is to call the guys and invite them for lunch, dinner, etc. and plug them in to any events you may have over the summer. Calls – NOT texts, work best.

2. Reach Out to Alumni and Alumni Clubs

Most colleges have alumni clubs in an area. And many hold “Welcome Freshmen” events over the Summer. Go to their event and meet these PNMs. Phi Tau alumni are also good referral sources. Benny Grosser , Kentucky ’19 , is the recruitment chairman there at UK now. He recently emailed his alumni and received over a dozen names and contacts to add to his list.

3. Small Gatherings or Events are better

Our growth has consisted of Summer gatherings like a river float, lake events, sporting clay shoots, Atlanta Braves games, beach trips, Top Golf, etc. These mostly consist of 8-12 brothers and 8-10 PNMS. Do whatever it is that your members like to do. Think about it – five small events where you have met 5-8 new PNMs means you have met and placed in that funnel, 25-40 PNMs you would not have met otherwise. This is how you Win!

There is much more I can share with you. I am always available to talk with you or do a virtual session with you or you recruitment committee. I also do an important session on what I call the “Red Zone” of recruitment which is that period one week before class starts through the first two weeks of class up to your campus’ formal recruitment period. (Again, for gosh sakes get off the formal recruitment trap.)

You can reach me on Instagram @barrymaskotaub1.

Delaware Alumnus to Speak at University Commencement

Last weekend, the University of Delaware welcomed the class of 2020 back to campus to re-celebrate their commencement in person, which they were unable to do last year. The featured speaker was Phi Tau Alumnus Ty Jones, Delaware ’89.

Jones is an actor and award-winning artistic director of the Classical Theater of Harlem. A Delaware alumnus himself, Jones earned both his BA in Communications in 1992 and his MA in Theater in 1995 at UD.

Jones has acted in five Broadway shows and won an OBIE award for Outstanding Performance in the off-Broadway production of The Blacks. He has appeared in various films and television series including Power, When They See Us, and Nella the Princess Knight.

Jones has served as Producing Artistic Director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem since 2009, a company dedicating to reimagining classic works. Jones initiated Uptown Meets Downtown, a strategic partnership designed to share production costs between theaters and communities. He also led the inaugural Uptown Shakespeare in the Park which brought free, professional theater to Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park.

Congratulations to Ty Jones and to all of our 2020 and 2021 graduates!

Read the original story on the University of Delaware site here.

Read Ty Jones’s IMDB here.

Want to share a story with us? Submit news here.

64th National Convention Registration Opens

The 64th annual Phi Kappa Tau National Convention is open for registration! Here’s what you need to know:

Date: July 23rd-25th, 2021
Location: Miami University, Oxford OH 45056

The Convention floor will be condensed to two days and will take place both in-person and virtually via Zoom to accommodate limited capacity. The floor will be open in person and virtually for voting, voicing opinions, and engaging in fellowship. Priority will be given to undergraduate and advisor representatives. There will be a limit of one undergraduate and one graduate delegate per chapter. Undergraduate chapters may also send one non-voting, in-person delegate.

There are several ticketing options for both in-person and virtual. Please read the ticketing options carefully. For local brothers, you have the option to join us for the Brotherhood Reception or the John Green Classic as à la carte events.

Click Here to Register

More details on the agenda of events will be posted soon. Please stay tuned for updates on safety protocol.

We look forward to seeing you!

In Memory of Captain Shane T. Adcock

Phi Kappa Tau has a long history of Brothers who gave their lives in service to the United States. One of those men was Captain Shane T. Adcock, Longwood ’98, who lost his life in October 2006.

Every Memorial Day weekend, NASCAR honors fallen soldiers by displaying their names on cars during the Coca Cola 600. This Sunday, car No. 42 driven by Ross Chastain will display Captain Shane Adcock’s name. Shane’s childhood friend, Brian Jalbert, is the source of this memorial.

“I thought, man, one of these days I need to nominate my best buddy Shane to see if we could get him on the car,” Jalbert said. “Maybe just some of the extra downtown that COVID provided allowed me to kind of take the reins of it and say you know what, this year’s the year.”

The number 42 marks Shane’s birthday on 5/24 – when the Soldier would have turned 42 years old.

The race will be held Sunday at 6pm.

Phi Kappa Tau has honored Captain Adcock in the past. Last year, Charlie Ball, Miami ’82, wrote a tribute on the Phi Kappa Tau History and Archives page. Read below:

The fourth in our series of Memorial Day tributes is Captain Shane T. Adcock, initiated at Longwood University in Virginia. Adcock is believed to be the most recent Phi Tau killed in combat. He lost his life fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom in October 2006. He is one of at least fifty Phi Taus buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Excerpts from a 2018 newspaper article pay tribute Capt. Adcock and mentions his involvement in the Fraternity and the impact he made on his brothers:

"By all accounts, he was an all-American hero. He loved God, family, country, and all things outdoors. He was a husband, son, brother, uncle, fraternity brother, Soldier, ROTC cadet, and Eagle Scout.

“Shane wanted to be in the military from an early age,” his mother Vera Adcock recalled. “That was partly influenced by where he grew up and the fact his grandfather served 30 years in the U.S. Navy. Shane loved playing “army” and convinced his sister, Shannon, and other friends to participate in his missions.”

Reared in Virginia Beach, an area rich with Navy and Air Force flight squadrons, Shane loved identifying the military aircraft he saw overhead, said Vera.

In 1992, the Adcocks moved to Mechanicsville where Shane became active in the church youth program, soccer, wrestling and working as a volunteer firefighter.

In January 2001, Shane joined the Virginia National Guard and attended basic training at Ft. Sill, Okla. Even though he was destined for ROTC at Longwood University and an officer’s commission, Vera said he wanted to understand what an enlisted Soldier went through so he could be a better leader.

At Longwood, Shane was in the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity. According to his mom, he encouraged young fraternity brothers to hold their heads proudly and be confident in what they were doing. “His grandfather told him to always ‘keep your head up and your chin down,’” she said.

The message resounded with fraternity brothers, Todd Tinsley and Dan Gauvin.

“Shane believed in me before I did,” said Tinsley, now the band director at Hungary Creek Middle School in Glen Allen. “He knew I was hard on myself, and I took the blame for too much. Shane always quoted a line from the movie ‘Swingers’ to me: ‘You’re so money and you don’t even know it.’”

“Shane taught me a lot about speaking up, being confident and well-rounded,” said Gauvin, an administrative support specialist at Fort Lee Family and MWR. “He took a shy, insecure person and turned him into someone who is confident and outgoing. Shane brought the best out of everyone he met.”

“He had a special gift of making everyone feel important and of making you smile even when you didn’t feel like it,” said Vera.

Shane Adcock graduated from Longwood University in 2003. “His grandfather was able to administer the Oath of Office to Shane on his papa’s 80th birthday,” the officer’s mother proudly recalled.

Soon after, Shane was assigned to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, as part of the 25th Infantry Division. He served in two combat missions with the 25th ID. He spent 14 months in Afghanistan on his first deployment and returned to Hawaii where he enjoyed a year of sun, swimming, and surfing, Vera said.

“One of my favorite memories is the homecoming party after his first deployment,” said Gauvin. “He told us all about his experiences while deployed. That was when I realized he was a true American hero.”

Just before departing for a second deployment to Iraq in July 2006, Adcock married and was promoted to captain.

“Shane always said he had a really bad feeling about his last deployment,” said Tinsley, “but he didn’t take anything for granted, and he told me he had no regrets and was ready if it was his time.”

Shane – born on May 24, 1979, to parents Vera and Maris Adcock – died at age 27 on Oct. 11, 2006, in Hawijah, Iraq, after his Humvee was hit by an armor-piercing grenade.

Tinsley was at home when his fraternity brother called him early in the morning. “I knew it had to be important because he was calling at 6:15 a.m.,” he recalled. “I was in complete disbelief because, in my eyes, Shane was invincible.”

“It was a shot to the gut,” said Gauvin, who also considered his close friend to be indestructible.

Shane’s sister went into labor with twins shortly before his final mission. The family wasn’t sure if he had received the news before he died.

“When the Adcocks received Shane’s personal belongings and turned on his laptop, they were comforted to see the desktop photo was of his newborn twin nephews,” Tinsley recalled. “We all felt better knowing he was able to virtually meet them while he was alive.”

The Adcocks said they heard from many Soldiers who served with Shane and described his propensity for sharing moments of faith and praying with them before each mission.

“He touched the lives of many with whom he came into contact,” said Vera.

That resonates with his fraternity brothers.

“Although I only knew Shane for six years, he had a huge impact on my life and still does to this day,” Gauvin said.

“Shane was the little brother I never had,” said Tinsley. “He was like ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ – the person we all wanted to be.”

Tinsley remembered a time when he first started teaching and his band was selected to march in the inauguration parade for Virginia Governor Mark Warner.

“As we marched close to the viewing stand where the governor was, there was Shane in uniform guarding him. Even though I didn’t expect to see him that day, it made sense that they picked Shane to protect him. That’s who I’d want watching my back.

Triumph & Tragedy

By Lilly Steger

Download as PDF || Read the Full Laurel Here

Last July, Jeremy Humphrey, Kent State ’98, woke in the middle of the night to tumultuous thunderstorms outside his window. Waiting for the storm to pass, his wife checked Facebook and discovered a woman had gone missing in the nearby wilderness. Drawn to the obligation to help someone in need, Humphrey set out on foot to run the forest until he found the woman and her dog. The victim’s name will not be used to respect her privacy.

McCall, Idaho || Photo by Bob Goren via Flickr

McCall, Idaho is a small town of only 3,350 people nestled in the state’s Payette National Forest. It’s idyllic and a hub for people who love to hike, run, ski, or climb – part of what drew Jeremy Humphrey, Kent State ’98, to it in the first place.

Humphrey is an ultra-runner, a high-intensity footrace that dwarfs a marathon’s standard 26.2 miles. Ultra-marathons – or “ultras” – can be upwards of 150 miles and run consecutively to the finish line. These races are all-terrain and often take place in harsh conditions to elevate the competition, such as the Hardrock 100 across the Rocky Mountains, or the Badwater Ultra, the 135-mile July race across California’s Death Valley. Then there’s the 103-mile Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc across the Alps, or the 153-mile Spartathlon from Athens to Sparta.

For ultrarunners, a marathon is the warmup.

***

An Ohio native, Humphrey grew up running. At five he was already extraordinarily competitive and had his sights set on the Olympics. His father, a steel mill worker, rearranged his own life for his son’s training and saw the Olympics as a ticket to a better life. He pushed his son, applying pressure to run faster, train harder, and win. “He tried to hold me to a standard I professed I wanted, but you can’t hold the words of a child to an Olympic standard,” Humphrey shared.

Dedicated and talented, Humphrey ran himself to burnout. The years of high-pressure training wore him down, as did injuries. Short-term, he endured a stress fracture that landed him in a cast for months, derailing his training, and long-term he battled exercise-induced migraines. “Becoming a champion at a young age is damaging, at age 12 I basically quit,” he said. He didn’t compete in high school or college and the shelved potential strained his relationship with his father. He continued to run in private, enjoying the solitude and closeness with nature that it brought.

In college, Humphrey joined the Beta Mu chapter. He was drawn towards the older members of the chapter, the ones who had life experience he could rely on. “It was good to be around people who had been living their life for a while, not kids straight out of high school,” he said. “I’m kind of a hermit by nature, I spent a lot of time alone running. It was a really good influence for me to be around positive role models that kept me social.”

Humphrey moved to Colorado and passed the bar. While practicing law, he discovered a love for mountain climbing and learned that running was the quickest way to get from peak to peak. Through climbing and a mutual love of the mountains, he repaired his relationship with his father. “That brought us back together,” he said. “We wouldn’t be competitive running, but we were pushing our standards as climbers.”

Then, in 2005 he lost his father to a climbing accident on Mount McKinley. “He passed as I was becoming very good at climbing, it was a big piece of my running journey,” Humphrey said. Running and hiking brought them back together, then he was gone. “The gift he showed me was I could marry the two – you can run in the mountains,” he said. “There’s this whole other sport.”

“More and more, I began to value endurance and moving fast, and linking lots and lots of mountains together and using running to do that,” he explained. “One day I was bored at work and I signed up for the Leadville 100. I wasn’t running consistently; I was built like a climber. But I finished in 28 hours or something.”

This was the start of the transition. Humphrey and his wife, Brandi, moved to McCall and he walked away from his career as a lawyer to build a life as a professional athlete. Now, he runs competitively again (and often wins), coaches other runners, organizes races, and manages sponsors. He trains hard for these races and spends more time than ever running in the mountains. “It’s my whole existence and it has been since I dived back in,” he said.

***

On July 9th, Humphrey woke in the dark to a howling thunderstorm and hail pelting the window. As he lay awake waiting for the storm to pass, his wife, Brandi, checked Facebook and saw the Sherriff Department posted a notice about a missing woman. There was no indication of how long she has been missing or under what circumstances. All they knew was the trailhead where she left her car.

Humphrey knew the spot well. He runs the area frequently and organizes the IMTUF100 (Idaho Mountain Trail Ultra Festival) through the region. “I’ve climbed all the peaks above that basin and looked down on it from above. I’ve seen from a perspective most people haven’t,” he said.

He decided to find her.

“I just had this really strange feeling,” he said. “I could see the whole day play out in an instant. I absolutely knew I was going to find her.” As someone who has spent a lot of time alone in the wilderness, Humphrey is more in tune with the wild than most. “I have a lot of intuition and sense about how things happen in the mountains,” he said. “I could just see the scenario inside her head even though I had no idea who she was.”

He threw some energy bars, powdered drink mix, and some binoculars in a small pack. “I told Brandi, ‘I’m going to find her’ and I was out the door.”

The plan was already to go on a long run that day. Although the races had been canceled due to COVID-19, Humphrey was training by seeing how far he could push himself. “I figured it was going to be a 40-mile day. The week before I had done a 50, so it’s not unheard of,” he said.

Setting out, he knew very little. He knew that the woman liked to hike to lakes and that a search and recuse crew had started at the area near her car, the north end of the trailhead. They were doing good work, but they have their disadvantages. “They’re heavy, they work in teams,” Humphrey explained. They moved slower and cover less ground, but Humphrey is quick. He could eliminate more terrain.

He started at the south end and ran north 20 miles, growing ever more-detail oriented as he approached the trailhead with her car. “Eventually I get within five-six miles and I know this is the real hot zone,” he said. “I wasn’t far from where I thought the search and recuse teams would have gotten to, but they rarely search off-trail.”

As he approached an area called Box Lake, he tried to get into her head. “It was COVID time, so I could anticipate her not wanting to go to the popular spots. I started to envision scenarios someone would take to get to a lesser-known lake,” he explained.

At Box Lake he found nothing. Running around 7,000-ft elevation, he was already at a high altitude, but he needed a birds-eye view. “At that point, I realized I needed to get higher,” he said. Humphrey scrambled up Rain Peak, an 8,500-ft granite-face mountain, to scour the area. He searched for tents, smoke – anything that would indicate where she was. But even with his binoculars, he couldn’t see anything. “The day was grinding on me, but I had a talk with myself to just go around one more time,” he said. “I knew that if I kept going it would work out.” He decided to check one more lake before making the 20-mile run back to his truck.

Humphrey moved down the mountain, shouting. “I’m yelling her name - calling and pausing, taking time to look instead of just moving,” he explained. The land he was covering was overtaken with brambles and bushes. “The lower you go, the denser the foliage is, it’s almost jungle-like. The thickets are big and there was a fire there a long time ago, so there’s dead timber everywhere.” Humphrey drops another 100 feet still calling her name – then he hears a woman’s voice.

“I start sprinting, bounding full of adrenaline down towards her through all these brambles, tearing myself up,” he said. “I couldn’t understand what she said, but I heard it and went in that direction.” First, he spotted a dog, then he spotted a single woman.

“I get 20 yards away and ask if it’s her, and she says yes,” he said.

He approached the woman and learned she had been lost for a week and hadn’t had food in four days. Destroyed by sunburn with deep red bubbles covering her skin, the woman had no shade under the telephone-like pine trees in the relentless July sun. But her hydration was the immediate problem. She was surviving off water from a swampy, pothole pond nearby. She was filtering it, but it was still warm and brown.

For the malnourished, refeeding is a critical concern. A sudden onset of food or water to the system can induce an extreme reaction, even death. Cognizant of this, Humphrey was cautious. “I took a little envelope of 200-calorie sports drink and mixed it into some water,” he said. “I laid out the energy bars I had in my pack and said, ‘Don’t touch this until you finish the whole quart.’”

As she drank, Humphry wandered around the basin searching for cell reception. A hundred yards away he got a bar but continued to shout back instructions. “I kept yelling at her to do stuff, I was really trying to pump her up. In my mind, we were going to have to walk out over this impossible foliage. I didn’t want her to have to spend another night out there,” he said.

When he got dispatch on the phone, 911 helped triangulate a call and arrange for a helicopter. There was one nearby, but they had no place to land. “I seriously doubted they were going to be able to land,” he said. “I thought they were going to have to do a crazy long-ling rig to get her up and then they had too much fuel, so they circle and circle to burn it off.”

It took thirty minutes of circling to burn enough fuel and find a place to land. They finally found a spot on a small peninsula of land wedged between massive trees and a cliff.

Humphrey traded the woman his empty backpack for her 60-lb hiking pack, and the trio bushwhacked through the foliage to the helicopter where the pilots helped her and her dog climb in. They offered a spot to Humphrey, but he refused it. “I’m pretty big on self-sufficiency, if I can finish I’m going to. I don’t want to be rescued, I want to exit on my own power,” he said.

Moments before take-off, they remembered the car and she gave Humphrey the keys. It’s a long drive from McCall to the trailhead, so Humphrey drove the car back to town. “The north trailhead was much closer and an easier end to my day,” he said.

The woman was flown to the McCall fire department where she elected not to go to the hospital. They checked her for injuries, but at the end of the day, she returned home to sleep in her own bed.

***

Humphrey did not see or speak to the woman until the day before his interview with Phi Tau. “I was on my run and there she was. I could have missed her so easily. We had a lot to talk about and it was neat to do it in person,” he said. The woman and her dog recovered fine and were back to enjoying nature.

The woman was an experienced hiker. She had been exploring those woods for years, but once you get turned around, Humphrey explained, maps don’t help. “You walk in circles and all your landmarks start to look unfamiliar. You get dazed and your brain doesn’t work,” he said. After a few hours, her phone had died, and she was left wandering to find her way home.

When the story broke, Humphrey didn’t think it would be a big deal. “I thought it would just be a local thing, but the requests kept coming,” he said. He gave an interview to Runners World and Backpacker Magazine – publications where he thought his message about outdoor safety would be heard. Humphrey wanted to share the collective knowledge of how people get lost and what it means to find someone and get them help.

But the story struck a nerve. He was asked to go on national talk shows, to share the experience with a huge audience. He declined. At the time it was disorienting, but now he understands why it caught traction. “Taking a step back now, all the news was terrible,” he said. “There was nothing good happening that anyone knew about. I kind of warmed to it, I thought it would be a little bright spot in the triumph and tragedy of 2020.”

For Humphrey, it was validating that all of his training and dedication to this sport could help someone. “Running usually doesn’t feed the hungry or cure cancer, but it was good to do something useful for someone,” he said. “I used the skills I selfishly honed over a lifetime and ultimately it felt good that all that self-interest and self-pursuit benefited someone.”

His decision to be a Good Samaritan was organic. For a man who lost his father to the mountains, he couldn’t ignore the opportunity to help. “You see someone in immediate peril, most people are going to do something, you’re almost not human to see someone in need and not want to help them,” he said. “But on a bigger scale, I want to do my part. I want to play a good role in society and foster better relations with my fellow citizens.”

Care and empathy are what bind us together. “If you don’t care about your fellow humans, our society crumbles and we have nothing. That’s what being a Good Samaritan means to me,” Humphrey said. Being a good Samaritan is an obligation to help someone in need, and for Humphrey, when he woke up planning on a run, he seized an opportunity he couldn’t ignore.

Jeremy and Brandi welcomed their first baby this spring. Humphrey is organizing races for 2021 and training for a 100-mile race in Colorado this July.

Undergraduate of Distinction Spring 2021

Twice a year, Phi Kappa Tau highlights an Undergraduate of Distinction in the Laurel, a young man we believe deserves recognition based on his dedication to leadership, philanthropy, or service. This spring, we featured Dylan Tinz, Chapman ‘18, who helped lead Epsilon Sigma through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dylan Tinz
Chapman ‘18
Orange County, CA
Epsilon Sigma Chapter President

“Where to even start? It was a tough year for everybody. I don’t think any chapter had it easy,” said Dylan Tinz, Chapman ‘18, the Epsilon Sigma President.

Along with the rest of the country, Tinz and the Epsilon Sigma chapter brothers faced massive uncertainties last spring. “In March 2020 we were all sent home,” Tinz said. “We had to cancel everything, we lost some of our down payments. Initially, it was very discouraging. We just told brothers that we’re operating on a very low level.” They faced big, long-term problems like recruitment, retention, and finances. But Epsilon Sigma wasn’t down for long. Shortly after being sent home, the chapter adapted to life virtually. They hosted Call of Duty tournaments, Zoom hangouts – they even rallied the entire chapter to submit videos for a Chapman dance contest. “We wanted to give guys the same experience they would have had during a normal semester,” Tinz explained.

Now that a return to normalcy is on the horizon, Epsilon Sigma is looking forward to the future. “It’s been a long year and very difficult, but we’re ready to come back on top,” Tinz said. “Our last President Cameron Graylee did a really good job at keeping the chapter alive,” Tinz said. Now as sitting President himself, Tinz is ready to lead. “Last term we focused on survival, now we’re trying to adapt and grow.”

See Dylan’s story and read more here!

Ross Roeder Enters Chapter Eternal

Phi Kappa Tau is deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Ross Roeder, Michigan Tech, and Michigan State ’58. Roeder was a Hall of Fame member, a Palm Award winner, and a Distinguished Trustee of the Phi Kappa Tau Foundation. He passed away on May 11th, 2021, at St. Anthony’s Hospital from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.  

 Roeder was born on February 25th, 1938, in Bay City, MI. He was a founding member of the Gamma Alpha chapter at Michigan Technological University. He later transferred to Michigan State and joined the Alpha Alpha chapter. Following a year on the Phi Kappa Tau staff, he earned an MBA at UCLA and served in Army Intelligence. His career was expansive; among other roles, Roeder held executive-level positions at Baskin-Robbins, Denny’s, and the NBA. He served as CEO of Fotomat, Federal Construction, and Smart & Final. 

Roeder was generous with his time and treasure, especially to Phi Kappa Tau. He began his distinguished career as a Field Secretary on the Phi Kappa Tau staff. He was elected to the Fraternity National Council in 1983 and served to separate stints on the Foundation board, serving as chairman twice and as a member of the steering committee for the “Decision for Phi Kappa Tau” capital campaign in the early 1980s.  For decades, Ross played critical roles, many behind the scenes, in defining the strategic direction of the Fraternity and Foundation. Roeder was honored with the Palm Award, the highest recognition of a Phi Tau alumnus in 2004 and the Centennial Convention in 2006, he received the Taylor A. Borradaile Award and became one of the inaugural members of the Hall of Fame.  

Roeder was involved in several other organizations including the Bayfront Hospital, St. Peterburg Area YMCA, the Michigan Tech board, and the Coast Guard Foundation. Michigan Tech’s Board of Trustees awarded him the Silver Medal and in 2012 he was presented with the Spirit of Hope award at the Pentagon.   

Roeder is survived by his wife, Mary Anne Reilly, his daughter and son-in-law, two grandchildren, two brothers-in-law, and many relatives and friends.  

A mass will be held on Wednesday, May 19th, at 4pm at St. Raphael Catholic Church, 1376 Snell Isle Blvd, St Petersburg FL. Full details here. 

Reunion for Psi Brothers

Thanks to Mike McClelland, Colorado ’60, for this member-submitted news!

From Mike:

Octogenarians Still Gathering.

Over the weekend of May 1, 2021, six members of the Psi Chapter at the University of Colorado in Boulder, now all in their eighties, came out of Pandemic confinement to gather with wives for a min-reunion in Rancho Mirage, California.

Over many cold bottles of Coors beer, these friends/brothers of 60+ years recalled antics in the house and on campus, stories that have been told and retold as this group and more have attended dozens of reunions over the years. As the weekend came to a close, plans for the next reunion began.

Photographed (left to right): Bill Wells, Colorado ’59, Dave Handy, Colorado ’59, Mike Reber, Colorado ’58, Mike McClelland, Ken Dulany, Colorado ’59, Ken Arthur, Colorado ’59

Want to share a story with us? Submit news here.