[FKT AO]

Phi Kappa Tau
AO Chapter






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-----Henry Ryder wrote (Feb 24, 2023):
Phi Kappa Tau brothers,
I thought you would be interested in the article forwarded to me by Hal Crane. Note that the article is dated 2018.
Did any of us ever drive to campus because the walk was too strenuous? I often made 3 round trips a day and never thought much of it.

-----Richard Sappelli wrote:
Senior year I lived in a private residence on Clinton Ter. It was run by a single lady named Miss Frauenfeltrr and her elderly aunt. It was just around the corner and down the block from the PKT house across from Parker. We always walked to where we wanted to go. That was in 2957, the year I graduated.
Richard

-----Mark Pashayan wrote:
July 2019 I stopped by for a picture--->
Mark (lunch dishwasher 1971-72)

-----Jack Sheets '70 wrote:
Thanks. I lived in the 2 nd floor triple for 2 years. Great memories. Hard to believe it;
A. Is still standing
B. Was used by LAF for student housing. They must have really fixed it up I inside.

-----Stan Grubman wrote:
I attended Lafayette from '69-'73. I have great memories of both Reeder Street and its successor at 718 Hamilton Street. I enjoyed the walk, especially in the winter after a recent snowfall. I remember the way the snow clung to the branches and leaves of the trees around the Quad. It was beautiful.
Regards to all.
Stan Grubman

-----Bob Singer '65 wrote:
I believe we moved to Reeder Street mid year, that would have been Feb,1963. Let me know if that is anyone elses recollection. Walk was never a problem.
Bob Singer '65

-----Clarence Curry wrote:
I lived in that house for two years. I never had a car on campus so I walked. Most of the guys who had cars still walked. One year was in the second floor triple.
Clarence

-----Ron Margolin wrote:
Nice to hear from you, Clarence, and to see so many guys I knew that are on this email list.
I lived in the Reeder St. house for the 1st 2 years it was PKT September 1962-June 1964, which were my junior and senior years. I had one of the singles on the 3rd floor. It was tiny but it was a single, which was very convenient at times, although my window looked out on the dean's house. I don't remember ever being concerned about the walk. The house was great.
My sophomore year I lived in the previous PKT house right on the corner where you turned into the college from the main drag. That summer the heating system, an old coal fed furnace, broke and we moved to Reeder St. That house was torn down shortly thereafter. Sorry, but I don't have a picture of it.
Ron

-----Bob Singer '65 wrote:
I believe we moved to Reeder Street mid year, that would have been Feb,1963. Let me know if that is anyone elses recollection. Walk was never a problem.
Bob Singer '65

-----Michael Stillman '63 wrote:
I believe Bob is correct. I was living in an apartment a few blocks away with Bob Domish and Marty Barschi. We lived in the old house near Pardee for our Soph and Jr years and then the house was moved to Reeder St early '63. We all graduated in '63 so we never lived in that house but do not recall the walk being a big deal. Michael Stillman '63

-----Sappelli 57 wrote:
I lived in the house up the street from Zeta Zsi small house with a frontbporch justvacross the street from the street from the right end of Pardee Hall
Long gone now due to other buildings built on the site
We walked x the street and were on campus Will have to locate my old catalog from the time and see if i can find a campus map
Interesting news. Thanks. Sappelli 57

-----Robert Natelson '70 wrote:
I attended Lafayette from 1966 to 1970. I pledged Phi Tau in early 1967 and lived in the Reeder Street house for three years. During my sophomore year I lived in the second floor triple. During my junior and senior years, I had a third floor single.
The house was a lot of fun to live in, and I think the fact that it was off campus and not in the middle of things helps explain why Phi Tau was always at, or near, the top of all fraternities academically.
I was Treasurer in 1968-69 and President in 1969-70, so I have some insights into how we lost the house that may interest some.
The house belonged to the college, and in the late 1960s the Dean of Students (Herman Kissiah) informed us that it was unsafe for residence, and that we'd better raise the funds to build a new house on campus because the college would be ending our lease and either selling the house or (more likely) tearing it down.
We were, however, unable to raise sufficient funds to build an on-campus building to the college's exacting specifications.
The college also denied us the right to renovate instead of moving out.
So we were forced to leave around, I think, 1972. Our remaining brothers moved in with Phi Lambda Phi. Not having a home of our own made the continued existence of our chapter non-viable, and, as you know, it disappeared.
The fact is, however, that college administrators either lied to us or were careless about the truth. After the college cancelled our lease it did not demolish or sell the house as we had been told; instead, the college continued to use it for student residence. To this day, I find the college's actions inexplicable, because we were one of the most responsible fraternities at Lafayette and produced more than our share of academic stars and student leaders.
Although I look back on my days at Lafayette fondly, I regret to say that this episode is one of the things that soured me on the college, and therefore has kept me from participating in alumni activities or donating to the college or to Lafayette scholarships. For me, the whole memory is tinged with sadness.
I have lived in the West since 1977 and I have seldom been back even to visit, but I did stop by on May 5, 2016 and took the pictures:


snapshot of myself
Rob Natelson '70

-----Jack Sheets '70 wrote:
Rob,
Thanks for the info. I was not fully aware of the path of house after our graduation.
I have attached a photo --> of some party weekend, I think during our sophomore year [based on who is with who in the photo]
Hope all is well with you and everyone on this thread.
Jack Sheets [1970]

-----Hal Crane '68 wrote:
Dear Brothers.
I'm delighted that the article and photo I found in the Lafayette brought such renewed interest and shared memories. I never knew that ØKT was forced out of the house by Dean Kissiah but I'm not surprised. The house was still there last year and became Reeder House after being a sorority house.
The picture Jack Sheets shared was from the Fall 1967 IF weekend. The outgoing PKT senior leadership was Ernie Wynne, President, Chuck Hacker, VP, Bob Tropp, social chair and I was the treasurer. My roommates in the "horrendous triple" the prior year were Henry Gotlich who was the pledge master and Jeff Marx who was the secretary. They are both in the photo.
During that time period we regularly had the highest or second highest group GPA at Lafayette (including social dorms) and even received a trophy from national ØKT for having the highest GPA among all ØKT chapters. The trophy graced the fireplace mantle.
It is hard to believe the 55th reunion for the class of 1968 is in a few months. I wish many of my classmates and fraternity brothers were still here to be able to participate.
All the best,
Hal

-----Roger Pommerenke '68 wrote:
Rob,
Thanks for the update on the "final" days of ØKT. Indeed, the house was not demolished or sold. In fact when I visited it in 2015 it was a sorority (as Jim Strauss mentioned). I was allowed to visit some of the house, but I could not access the third floor, where I had my single, because the staircase had been sealed off. I was told it was a fire hazard because there was no emergency escape.
I believe this is a photo ---> of you taken in 1967. Also Stan Carroll (?) and Bill Raver (?). And someone holding a pledge paddle. It been over 50 years. Please correct me if I am wrong..
Roger Pommerenke '68

-----Bob Coraor '70 wrote:
I never thought much about the walk. It wasnt all that far to campus. It also gave you the chance to stop at Pops Place.
A couple of pictures:

For those of you in the '68 to '71 vintage I put up a few photos from that time on my website.
Cheers to all
Bob Coraor

-----Ken Ross '74 wrote:
Great pictures (Klondike) and thanks for the memories. I recognize everyone so I'm guessing this was taken in 1970 or 71 before the class of 74 ( my class) became brothers and moved to Reeder St.

I have an interesting (but somewhat sad) story regarding Dan Shriver. As you may recall, Dan left LC and moved downtown when Mimi was pregnant with Joni (my recollection is fuzzy). Twenty years later I received a letter from Joni - actually intended for "Big Ken" Ross '72. Apparently Dan had passed away when she was still young and she was reaching out to Dan's friends to learn more about him. I told her what I remembered and forwarded the letter to Ken '72 who contacted her. Big Ken knows much more about this than I.
Best regards to all, Ken Ross '74

----- Dick Bondy '71 wrote:
"Ah yes, I remember it well..." (Apologies to Lerner & Loewe).

These photos and all the emails are great! It's so good to hear from everyone. I agree that it's incredulous that anyone thinks it's too long a walk from Reeder Street to Campus. Unless they've put in a multistory parking garage, it would likely take far longer to find a parking space on campus than to walk the two blocks. For those older than '68 or '69, I succeeded Rob Natelson as PKT President. Sadly, In was the second to last president of the Alpha Omicron chapter, before it succumbed to Lafayette's no off-campus fraternity policy. Strange, but my recollection of PKT's demise at Lafayette is a little different than someone posted on this chain. I recall that the administration notified all off-campus frat houses that they were required to move on campus before a specified date, or go out of business. The college offered to finance the money to build houses. We couldn't afford the terms being offered and our parent organization couldn't provide funding. So, one day in the spring of 1971, I and the recently elected fraternity president for '71 - '72, had an appointment to meet with Dean Kissiah to ask for an extension on the deadline to raise the funds. His answer, verbatim, was "Mr. Bondy, I am not in the business of keeping fraternities in business at Lafayette." So that was it all over. It is particularly galling to learn from these emails that the college continues to use the house for student boarding even housing another fraternity there for a while.

But it was sure fun while it lasted. In spring of my Sophomore year, I moved from a dorm to the third floor triple at Reeder Street. My roommates were Jim Forbes and Tim Church, both Juniors. The next year, Church took one of the two third-floor singles and I think it was Keith VanDerBeek who replaced him in the triple. Then in my senior year, I moved into the other single, in the hallway going towards the fire escape. (Who says there was no emergency exit from the third floor?) However, I vividly remember, in that last year, helping the then occupants of the triple "redecorate" the room. One of the pieces of furniture that had to go was an ancient couch that sat under the big window facing Reeder Street. The only way to get rid of it was to drag it down the hallway and eject it off the top of the fire escape. Not being engineers by any stretch of the imagination, we tipped it off the top, unaware that it would catch on the second-floor railing of the fire escape, in the process, temporarily un-attaching the moorings holding the top of the fire escape to the wall of the house. The couch landed on the lawn of our neighbor to the north who was a Dean (not Kissiah).

I will never forget the many "McSorley runs". Who, in their right mind, would jam far too many people into a car on a Friday night to drive 90 minutes into Manhattan to wind up in a dive, drink not so great beer, eat saltine crackers and cheddar cheese? I was the driver (we didn't even know the meaning of "designated" those days) on several of those expeditions. We would crowd three people into my Triumph Spitfire. The third was Tim Church and since he was the smallest, he'd sit sideways in the miniscule space behind the seats - in case you don't know Triumphs, that's actually not a seat at all. After drinking far too much beer, we would somehow miraculously "hold it" until we reached Key City Diner on the way back.

Finally, there was the time that I was given the assignment of procuring the house Christmas tree. Bruce Swoyer and I set out on a December afternoon to buy an appropriate tree. And yes, in the Triumph. However, Bruce insisted that we find a tree to "borrow" rather than spend good money on something we could just harvest with his axe. We found a farm a few miles north of Easton with a small stand of good looking trees. We drove in and proceeded up the hill behind the farmhouse, selected a worthy specimen, and Bruce started chopping. In no time, I saw a red pickup start up the driveway after us. We jumped into the car, the tree still standing and really not much worse for wear, to make our escape. The pickup decided to play chicken and headed right at us on the very narrow road. So I swerved right and got around the truck somehow without tumbling into the ditch immediately to the right. When we hit the main road I was relieved to see the truck trying to navigate several three point turns to get around and after us. On the way back to campus, we stopped at a tree farm and procured a tree worthy of Phi Kappa Tau.

It was all a lot of fun, and we're still alive and out of jail!
I'd love to hear some of your stories.
Dick Bondy, 1971
Mt. Pleasant, SC

-----"Steve Sharp '70 wrote:
Hey Bobby Here's one of you and me. Those were the days. My guitar was stolen after I moved to CA. But the music continues. PEACE, brothers.

Steve

-----Bob Coraor '70 again wrote:
Dick I remember a trip into NY to see the folk singer Tom Rush. I don't recall who was in the car although I seem to think Larry Cook and Sid Pomper were there. It was a spur of the moment excursion which I thought was pretty exotic.

Another time I recall a scavenger hunt we had to go on. Don't recall all the things we were supposed to bring back but one was an autograph of some female celeb. With no chance of finding her we convinced some girl on the street to sign a fake autograph which we convincingly sold to the senior brothers on our return. Again I don't recall who was with me on that trip but it might have been Jerry Wien, Roger Weinreb and you.
Old memories!
Bob Coraor

-----Pete Thurlow '69 wrote:
Thanks for the history, remembrances, and photos. Here's my contributions:

Re history:
-Article from The Lafayette about the house
-Built in 1900 per Re/Max
-100th game vs Lehigh in Nov 1965. We tied 6-6 at home. I think Lehigh was heavily favored. The game made it into The NY Times. See link below. Note, we had a parade downtown the evening before and we tried to stop traffic on Route 22. My RA got us off.
-Co-Ed In September of 1970, Lafayette College welcomed its first official coeducational class with 146 women (123 freshmen, and 23 transfers).

Re personal remembrances:
-Mike Silverman's very long Monster With Yellow Fingers joke, which I loved retelling.
-My upset wrestling win against the senior who lost in the final match the prior year. My worn tee shirt, skinny hopeless appearance fooled him into thinking I would be a pushover. I hooked his elbow when he was on top, flipped him over and pinned him. I lost the next match vs a fellow freshman. It was one of the very few highlights my athletic "career", easily overshadowed by my son and now young grandsons.
-working in the kitchen with Henry Tron.
-My having to swim 2 lengths of the pool in order to graduate. I hadn't completed my sophomore PhysEd course because I couldn't finish the 15? minute floating with ankles tied exercise.
-My fainting during the military full dress ceremony at Fisher Field on a hot spring day. And I wasn't the only one that day.

Re coincidence: the day before the first PKT email, I was figuring out our address in the early 1980s at Lake Mohawk (Sparta, NJ). My friend had sent me a newsletter about when he swam the 1.2 mile length of the lake with his grandson in September. And I wanted to tell him that we lived there. After doing that I thought I'd figure out via Google maps all the places where I lived. This took me to 225 Reeder St. And Marquis Hall 3rd floor and 420 Paxinosa Ave.

Thanks,
Pete Thurlow '69
Ps, it's a weird time warp writing this today about PKT while babysitting our two young (3+, 5+) granddaughters

-----Jim Strauss '68 wrote:
I am delighted to share these memories and pictures from Phi Tau brothers who bonded in the 60's and early 70's. Thanks to Hal Crane who started the memory chain. I often come across the IF party pictures in my basement and somehow have several late 1960's original member picture boards in my garage. After 55 years, it still seems like yesterday!

Best wishes to you all.
Jim Strauss '68 (still a NYC guy)

-----Jack Sheets '70 again wrote:
Bob,
I LOVE your "corner of the internet" web site. I recommend ALL visit it, not just for the LAF/PKT photos, but all his pics.
Bob, since I have been in the Chester County, PA/Wilmington, DE area for 40 years, and now living in Lewes, DE, I have stood on the very spots some of your PA/DE photos were taken and seen these views live. So nice to see them captured.
Jack Sheets ['70]

----- Dick Bondy '71 again wrote:
Rick & Rob,
Thank you both for clarifying all of this. Rick, I searched my memory, unsuccessfully, for your name. Yes, you were my successor as President. Indeed, I did not know that PKT lived on for at least a little while, in a new location. I do not recall the Pi Lam house on Hamilton Street. I guess the demise of our chapter may have had more to do with coeducation and the waning of fraternities than Dean Kissiah. Interesting, I did not know that the on campus fraternity "edict" may not have been a formal college policy. Sounds like you did Yeomanly duty to keep Phi Tau aive for several more years.
Dick

----- Gil Long '70 wrote:
Wow, memories from 50+ years ago! One of the oddest memories for me was going into NYC on the scavenger hunt with Jack Sheets and Larry Cook (I think- memory is getting a bit fuzzy), wearing our inverted Navy caps. Jack took off his cap and less than a minute later, a car full of brothers made him do 10 pushups on 6th Avenue. We figured that if we ever got lost, we'd just take off our caps after that...
It's a great warm glow to read all this and remember.
Blessings to all of you,
GIl Long

----- Roger Pommerenke '68 wrote:
Gil,
Yes, that actually happened. And, unless is happened twice, I was there. Here is a photo I took on April 16, 1967, at/near Rockefeller Center of two pledges caught w/o their pledge caps.
I am embarrassed to send this photo -->. Today I would NEVER ask a pledge to touch the NYC pavement.
Roger Pommerenke '68

----- Jack Sheets '70 wrote:
Roger, Oh it happened and you were there! I remember the NY'ers seeing a car, shouting, push ups and then the car departs. Oh well, NY'ers have seen it all. No one asked any questions of me or anyone.
My dearest memory was PKT pledges winning the campus talent contest, held our Sophomore year. [was it held other years? I forget]
With many pledges from the Glee Club and band, it was no contest with the other houses.
We put on a 2- act musical about Dean Kessiah[?] shutting down the Greek system at LAF.
Gil Long singing "I'm the only pledge in the college" - to the tune of Old Man River from Porgy and Bess
Steve Sharp charging on stage, ripping off home-made tear-away pants and shirt to reveal a super hero costume [compete with cape] and singing "I am I, Dean Kassiah" from the Man of La Mancha

Roger, you were also at the center of another defining moment. And a demonstration on how the culture changed from Freshman to Senior year [1966 - 70]
Sophomore year Roger was the object of a chapter "trial" [I forget what it was called] for smoking weed and "endangering the chapter". Ultimately, no action taken against Roger
By senior year, pot was all over the campus and no big deal.
My time at LAF was great, thanks, in part, to you all.
Jack Sheets

----- Roger Pommerenke '68 wrote:
Jack,
Yes, that trial. I remember how the meeting began. We were required to give the secret handshake to enter the meeting room. Trouble was, I honestly didn't know, or forgot, the ritual. Somehow I was allowed into the meeting room anyway.
Roger Pommerenke '68

----- Neil Meade '67 wrote:
Speaking of kidnapping I remember the fake kidnapping of myself with the 1967 pledge class with the brothers freaking out and an epic meet and exchange on the quad foreshadowing a scene in the movie revenge of the nerds
Neil

----- Rick Beltram '73 wrote:
Rob:
Thank you for your details on the move from REEDER ST. (btw, you were my mentor for Conservative politics)
However, as President of the Fraternity (1971-1972) in my Junior Year-----it is true that we were given an "eviction" notice to leave Reeder St by the end of the school year (May 1972).
We were given a "life raft" to move to the HAMILTON ST house.
If we agreed to a mortgage from the College and worked with the Alums to do the necessary upgrades to meet Code.
I remember traveling with George Rossman a few times to Harrisburg to get the necessary permits.

So, we proceeded and moved into HAMILTON during the FALL of 1972.
To get our location better known (and fundraise)----we even had a beer drinking contest (open to the entire LC population). It was sponsored by PABST.
We made money and were able to sustain ourselves in the short term

As the female population grew and the male population shrank-----LC could not support 18 Fraternities.
The Hamilton House is still open today-----but, as a Sorority.
So, Dean Herman did not kill us-----only make things complicated for a couple of years.
Finally, the experience of servicing a mortgage and supervising construction has been a lif-long asset for me.
Rick
P.S.: We are still have a very much of a presence with our Scholarship Fund (thx to Henry Ryder)

----- Robert Natelson again wrote:
Dick, thanks for the recollections: Regarding the demise of Phi Tau, you wrote:

I think I was the "someone" in your passage. Actually, though, your recollection and mine are consistent. Dean Kissiah DID tell us we couldn't stay in the house, even renovated, because it was a fire trap. At another time he announced, as you say, that ALL houses had to move onto campus. The Alphi Chi Rho alumni were able to raise funds, and Kissiah's announcement triggered a fundraising campaign that allowed them to build a new house on campus. But subsequently, I don't think the on-campus announcement was really enforced, and the decree about the Reeder Street house being vacated certainly wasn't.

Perhaps two years after I graduated, one of our brothers (I don't remember whom) told me that he'd been in contact with a member of the Board of Trustees about the Phi Tau issue. He said the Board was entirely unaware about any policies about forcing fraternities onto the campus or about forcing us out of the Reeder Street house. On the contrary, he told me the Board was very favorably inclined toward Phi Tau (and for good reason). But by that time, I think we had been forced into the Pi Lamb house and were on the way to extinction.

Dean Kissiah went on to serve 33 years as Dean of Students at Lafayette, but he was a very young man (still in his twenties) when these events occurred. I think he had his own (hostile) preconceptions about fraternities---which your recollection confirms. Either he issued these edicts on his own, or they came from higher up in the administration. But I'm inclined to believe my source's report that the Board of Trustees was not consulted---especially because I have reason to believe all sorts of things were done at the college about which the Board was not consulted.

This stuff is arguably irrelevant now, but I'm a historian, and I find the inquiry interesting. Adding to the interest is that these events likely changed all of our life trajectories at least somewhat.

Robert Natelson

P.S.: Gil:
I remember that expedition well. It was a scavenger hunt as part of our pledging.
I remember driving around the Cloisters at something like 5 am the next morning.

----- Ed Bartosh '70 wrote:
Greetings Brothers
This has been great to read all the memories and see the pictures. Great shots on Bob Coraor's web page. Rofer set up a Facebook page a while ago; and I did a web page back in 1996 that has not been updated for a while (until now). Nice trip through memory lane and here's the the 1970 Alphachron.
Great to hear from you. I'm loving life in a small community and wine-growing region outside Melbourne Australia. Life is good. However, it is also good to remember, in no particular order, 225 Reeder Street (I was House Manager for a while), walks to campus past Pop's, parties with Don on the piano and Steve on the guitar, Henry Tron, Star Trek in the TV room, egg's in the kitchen after library hours, the scavenger hunt to NYC, Mike Silverman's jokes, Henry Ryder's "MWOP!", Octopus's Garden and so much more. Thanks Hal and Henry for starting the thread to get us connected again.
Ed