6 minute read
Frat Facts
FRAT FUN THE BROTHERS OF MU LAMBDA CHAPTER
PART ONE
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As we all endure the much necessary social distancing and quarantining to which the COVID-19 virus has subjected us, I thought that I would reminisce about some of the brothers and incidents that I have encountered as a brother in the Mu Lambda chapter. These remembrances are offered tongue in cheek and in the spirit of brotherhood. Hopefully those recognized will be forgiving in nature!
Mu Lambda Chapter was chartered in 1923 and over the years has distinguished itself as one of the more outstanding chapter in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. It has been home to Jewels Callis and Ogle, Alpha historian Charles Wesley, Belford Lawson, C.C House and many other fraternity luminaries. It was a chapter known at one time for its elitist orientation, never subscribing to any egalitarian doctrine, often using the brown paper bag is a frame of reference for admission. It was believed by all who abided there within that they were a cut above the rest, the crème de la crème of black Washington, DC society and in some cases they so manifested. It was reported that this attitude resulted in the formation of Iota Upsilon Lambda chapter in Montgomery County, Maryland and Theta Rho Lambda chapter in Arlington, Virginia. Indeed the Mu Lambda chapter has come a long way since those days. This occurred mainly due to one event. In 1981, Brother Norment was unable to supervise the chapter’s initiation, so he advised the Mount Rushmore denizens of Mu lambda that as Area Director, I was capable and competent to do so, having supervised several in the area. Grudgingly they allowed me to do so. At the end of the ceremony one of the luminaries approached me to say, “Man, you certainly conducted a very good initiation ceremony. I was skeptical because I didn’t think that you knew what you were doing but it’s the best one that we have had in Mu Lambda in many years!” With bowed head, due respect tendered, I accepted his laudatory comments and thereafter was able to speak freely in Mu Lambda meetings without the possibility of derision and dismissal or possibly bodily harm!
Over time I got to know many of these brothers and learned that their version of the Fraternity revolved around what happened in Mu Lambda, as most never attended area meetings nor regional or general conventions. They are a few, however, who attended and I got to know them quite well.
Brother John D. Roper was a diminutive and always impeccably dressed brother, replete with fedora, jacket, shirt and tie, vest and pencil mustache. The remaining six hairs on his scalp were always well aligned and properly brushed into parallel strands. Always attendant with him at these meetings and conventions was his “nurse” who saw to his health and well-being. He was a delight to be around and often regaled me at staff meetings and conferences with stories of the old days. He was a peripatetic individual who could be seen in, it appeared, several places at one time. He scurried around, head bent forward, from meeting to meeting taking copious notes that no one ever saw afterwards, but he was well versed in Alpha affairs. In Mu Lambda he acquired the appellation of “Jewel of the East!”
I came to Mu Lambda chapter in 1979, as a lowly Assistant Area Director for Delaware, Maryland and DC. Even though an Assistant Area Director, I had been advised by Brother Norment, the District Director, to attend the chapter meeting, sit quietly and say nothing unless asked or risk being dismembered and or eaten alive. Dutifully I complied and thus survived to eventually earn the respect and trust of the senior directorate of the chapter. Joining him were Brothers Brice and Hunnigan. I mention them together because they always showed up as a duo. Hunnigan, the shorter one, was always the more vocal of the two. Actually it was he who engendered my membership into Mu Lambda chapter. As Area Director to Washington DC, a post that I acquired a few years after serving as Assistant Area Director, I attended Mu Lambda meetings as a part of my responsibilities. While waiting in line to receive a plate at a repast at the beginning of meeting held at the Howard University faculty dining room, Hunnigan who was standing behind me, allowed me to know that he had witnessed me coming to Mu Lambda meetings regularly and “eating up all the chicken, and if I wanted to continue doing so, I should pay dues.”
So even though I was a dues paying member of Omicron Lambda Alpha where I was initiated, I started paying dues to Mu Lambda and have continued for now some thirty seven years, just to avoid Hunnigan’s harassment.
Hunnigan was a bachelor, but Brice was married to a lovely and rather diminutive lady with quite a fiery temperament. Hunnigan always presented to conventions with at last two or three members of the distaff side with whom he arrived or knew in the area where the convention was being held. He was always trying to get Brice to be a wing man and entertain the extra lady, or that it is the way that they both made it appear. Brice for the most part was able to fend off Hunnigan’s overtures mostly because of the exacting vigilance of his fiery tempered spouse. Occasionally, falling prey to testosteronic weakness and captured by the eagle eye of his vitriolic mate, he could be observed in the halls of a convention, walking chastened beside her, head down, or hemmed up in an elevator car, subject to a controlled volcanic yet whispered, tirade as he was berated by his charming better half who had apparently observed him from a distance, dallying with one of Hunnigan’s “friends” in quarters too close for marital propriety. Eventually Bro. Brice had to eschew this role as his life was too often placed at risk and his well-being jeopardized, for while his wife was half his size, he knew better than to trifle with her. Concurrently, Hunnigan’s ability to convince these denizens of femininity to deliver the goods without matrimonial reward waned over time, as did his prowess which declined because of advancing age. Often he was not only unable to pick up the slack but found himself wanting in satisfying his own personal paramour’s demands. a veritable contradiction in terms. The result was a train wreck of a cacophony of voices, all off key, led by the most unharmonius Hunnigan. Screeching and caterwauling were put to shame! Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum but I am certain that it abhorred the chapter’s rendition of the fraternal hymns which he directed, even more!
In the next offering, I shall try to do justice to some other of my Mu Lambda brothers as they move onwards and upwards!
Brother Ryle Bell
Brother Brice was a fountain of information for all things Alpha, as he had been well tutored in the politics and machinations of the fraternity by Belford Lawson and others. His passing has left a great void in Mu Lambda, not only because of his vast knowledge but because of his willingness to speak up when he saw wrong and his predilection for mentoring younger brothers.
The ebullient Hunnigan is still present with us, though now more sedate, as the exigencies of time have somewhat quelled his exuberance. In exchange for his Valentino-like activities, he decided to turn his talents to conducting the Alpha Phi Alpha hymn at chapter meetings. Unfortunately the word “talent” was a misnomer in his case, as maintaining pitch was foreign to his sonorous abilities. Melody was oxymoronic,
