Dekes Observe Their Centennial

WITH the celebration of the centennial year of Dartmouth's Pi Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon on October 17, more than one hundred alumni returned to Hanover to take part in the activities commemorating the Chapter's founding. At the banquet held Saturday night, President Dickey and President-Emeritus Ernest Martin Hopkins, a member of DKE, were the main speakers. George M. Morris '11, former president of the American Bar Association and legal adviser to the United Nations, was the toastmaster. Karl B. Michael '29, coach of swimming, and president of the Chapter's house corporation, William Elder '1B, national secretary of the fraternity, and Joseph G. Migley '54, house president, also were at the speakers' table.

A new lounge and bar decorated with murals by Paul Sample '20 was officially dedicated as part of the centennial program. A banquet for wives, a cocktail party for men and women and a dance were also part of the weekend. Pi Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon was founded in 1853 by two transfer students from Colby University, Moses Daken Brown and Levi Robinson. After having been burned out of numerous chapter rooms in various buildings in Hanover, the Dekes purchased their present house, formerly known as the old Wallace House, on West Wheelock Street. This building which originally was built in 1771 for Eleazar Wheelock's young bookkeeper, Capt. Aaron Storrs, antedates Dartmouth Row and is the oldest house in Hanover. In 1900, perhaps ironically, the Dekes sold a building lot on Webster Avenue which they had purchased, because it was thought to be "too far away from the campus, and to build on it would eventually be found to have been a mistake."

In President Dickey's address at the centennial banquet, he expressed his belief that fraternity life can fill an important place in the undergraduate experience and that fraternity loyalty is in no way opposed to College loyalty. The founders of Pi Chapter would have welcomed such words from President Lord, who was violently opposed to Greek letter fraternities on the campus and frowned on DKE's beginnings in Hanover. A letter from Bacon (1854) to a brother Deke at Bowdoin described Presi- dent Lord's prejudice and then eloquently expressed Bacon's feelings in favor of fraternities. Quoted from A History of PiChapter, Delta Kappa Epsilon, by Clarence G. McDavitt 'OO, the letter reads in part:

"Everything in College tends to make men forget the great common brotherhood and engender selfishness and estrangement to that natural sympathy and dependence of created beings. Man cannot bear his burden alone; he could not if he would. The trial would prostrate his energies and overwhelm him with disappointment and grief. He needs the sweet voices of communion, sympathy and love to charm away his sorrows, and make him feel that he is not a solitary wanderer on the rugged thoroughfare of Life."

At the October 17 banquet celebrating the founding of the Dartmouth chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, those at the speakers' table were (I to r): standing, Robert A. Jackson '19, Prof. Leslie F. Murch, Corey Ford, Karl B. Michael '29 and William F. Elder '18, DKE national secretary. Seated, President Emeritus Hopkins, George M. Morris '11, toastmaster, and President Dickey.