HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA ALPHA CHAPTER 

OF PHI LAMBDA EPSILON

By John J. Coates, Jr.

Phi Lambda Epsilon was a National Junior College and High School Fraternity founded in 1892 at The Clinton Academy in Clinton, Missouri. The Academy was a college preparatory school that also had in connection with the school a military company. Clinton Academy graduates were accepted into universities such as Missouri University, Westminster, Washington & Lee, Wooster, and others. On the night of February 12, 1892, the first regular meeting was called to order by the fraternity founders: Charles F. Lamkin, Ralph H. McKee, F.Y. Nichols, and Frederick B Owen. At its inception there was not the slightest idea that the fraternity would ever attain national scope. When the fraternity was hardly a year old an opportunity presented itself to establish a chapter at the Warrensburg State Teachers College, and Missouri Beta Chapter became a reality on January 26, 1894. In the years that followed, chapters were established in numerous locations across the United States.

Oklahoma Alpha Chapter in Oklahoma City was founded June 11, 1909. One of the fraternity founders, Frederick B. Owen, had settled in Oklahoma City and wasted no time in establishing a chapter in this growing city. The charter members were John Kilpatrick, Neil Halleck, Burt J. Austin, and Harper Craddock. Founder Frederick Owen became a partner of a well known Oklahoma City Law Firm, Snyder, Owen and Lybrand. He also was a member of the college fraternity Phi Gamma Delta and was one of the founders of that fraternity’s chapter at the University of Oklahoma. Fred Owen died in Oklahoma City on November 27, 1935, and was buried in Clinton, Missouri.

From the beginning Oklahoma Alpha’s roll of members would include some of the most influential leaders of the Oklahoma City community. Those early members included John Kirkpatrick, John Kilpatrick, Roy Hoffman, John C. Harrington, Ed Overholser, Charles Schweinle,  Harry Mee, Bob Rainey, Edgar Van Cleef, and William Crowe, Jr, who was a United States Navy Admiral who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and as the ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Bill Clinton, and many others. In the early days the members generally attended Oklahoma High School that would later become Central High School.  Classen School was completed as a junior high school in 1919 and was converted to a high school in 1925 and graduated its first class in 1926. The membership of Oklahoma Alpha would move to Classen where it remained until Northwest Classen was opened in 1955. Its first graduating class was the class of 1956.

The fraternity’s national conventions were called Grand Conclaves and Oklahoma Alpha would host several of these over the course of the chapter’s existence. The first to be held in Oklahoma City was the 26th Grand Conclave in 1917, followed by the 43rd Conclave held at the Biltmore Hotel in 1935. It was at the 43rd Conclave that the Fraternity’s Endowment Fund was established, which as of 2011, funds a partial college scholarship to an outstanding male graduate of Clinton Missouri High School, the city where the fraternity was founded. M.B. Breeding of Oklahoma Alpha was one of three original trustees of the Endowment Fund.

Other national high school fraternities with chapters in Oklahoma City, with which Oklahoma Alpha regularly competed, were Alpha Omega, Delta Sigma, and Kappa Alpha Pi. There were others but the named organizations were the most substantial. Competition was keen not only for members but also on the athletic fields. Intramural football, basketball, and baseball were regularly contested, and often drew large numbers of spectators. Oklahoma Alpha’s 1936 football team won the intramural championship.

Many Oklahoma Alpha members achieved success in sports at the high school and college level. Richard “Richie” Norville became a well known highly ranked amateur golfer and Dave Wallace was a star quarterback for Bud Wilkinson’s University of Oklahoma Sooner football team in the early 1950’s. Bob Berry, class of 1946, became well known as the voice of the “Sooners,” calling football and basketball games from 1961 until 2011, retiring at age 80.

World War II greatly impacted Phi Lambda Epsilon and Oklahoma Alpha chapter as well as the entire country. In 1942 the National President joined the U.S. Army and most fraternity activities on the national level were suspended. Several prominent members of Oklahoma Alpha at the time were Boston Smith, Ed Fretwell, Stanley Lee, and Sidney Upsher. Smith would become a well thought of District Judge, Fretwell an automobile dealer, and Lee and Upsher executives with the Lee Way Motor Freight Company. A Silver Star recipient was Lt. Colonel Dwight Funk, for heroic action in Italy.

Fraternity and sorority dances and parties were the social highpoints of those years and Oklahoma Alpha was known for its elegant banquets and dances. Often parties would be co-sponsored with one of the high school sororities at the time. Two of the more prominent of the day were the BVG’s and Merry Maids. The site of the dances was usually well known and often in the exclusive clubs existing around the city. A favorite spot for Oklahoma Alpha was the Beacon Club which sat at the top of The First National Bank & Trust Company building in downtown Oklahoma City.

Chapter meeting were held weekly in the homes of the members of the chapter, usually on Friday nights. The meetings were opened in accordance with the secret ritual of the fraternity that included prayer and expressions of honor for the fellow members. The agenda of the meeting was set forth in the ritual of the fraternity and included such things as committee reports, papers on events of interest, literary exercises, new business, etc. The fact that fraternity rituals were confidential lead to the perception by many that fraternities were “secret” societies.

In 1955 Northwest Classen opened, in a new building located at 27th and North May Avenue across the street from Taft Stadium where the city’s high school football teams did battle on Friday nights. Almost the entire student body from “old” Classen High moved to the new school which included most of the membership of Oklahoma Alpha Chapter. With that move however, membership spread to other schools in Oklahoma City and elsewhere including John Marshall, Putnam City, Casady, Harding, and interestingly New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico. Oklahoma Alpha of Phi Lambda Epsilon was no longer a one school fraternity.

In the early 1950’s public opinion began to turn against high school fraternity organizations, or secret societies as the media liked to refer to them. In 1953, after much heated and often passionate debate, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a state statute which gave the Board of Education of each school district the power to regulate, control or prohibit any fraternity, sorority, or secret society composed of pupils enrolled in high schools of the district. The Oklahoma City School district banned fraternities on a “slow death basis” allowing current members to continue until graduation. The last recognized class was the class of 1955!

Oklahoma Alpha continued to rush, pledge, and initiate members after 1953 and the chapter continued to operate until 1967. The school board continued to punish members who were discovered to be active which resulted in loss of parental consent and approval. Slowly a grand fraternity organization disappeared from the high school scene in Oklahoma City. There were hundreds of alumni of Oklahoma Alpha Chapter of Phi Lambda Epsilon living in the Oklahoma City area in 2011. Many were leaders of business and government who received their early leadership skills and values from their beloved Phi Lamb!
 
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT FUND OF PHI LAMBDA EPSILON
The 2010 recipient of the Endowment Fund Scholarship was Michael McQueen who is attending Arizona State University. The total value of the fund now exceeds $71,000.00! Anyone wishing to make a contribution to this fund should send a check made payable to “Phi Lambda Epsilon Endowment Fund Trust”, Hawthorn Bank, Attn: Trust Operations, P.O. Box 646, Clinton, MO 64735. Annual Fund earnings pay this scholarship each year. It was $1,000 in 2010.