'69

A great portrait of the chapter at the end of 1969.  Thanks to Rich Johnson for the picture and Truba Cooper for helping identify (most) everyone.  Anyone that can help fill in some of the blanks, post the names in the comments and I'll update.

Front Row (Left to Right):
1 – Harry McClaren
2 - Brian McCahill
3 - Rodney Hicks
4 - Page Bradford
5 - Eddie Godsey
6 - Mike Plant (?)
7 - Bev Holt
8 - Sam Graham
9 - ?
10 - John Lashon (?)
11 - Craig Poole

Middle Row (Left to Right):
1 - Tom Redfern
2 - Sam Atkinson
3 - Truba Cooper
4 - Mike Williams
5 - Dr. Mac
6 - Wayne Leake
7 - Sam Price
8 - Rob Nicol
9 - Charlie Cosby
10 - Cary Ralston
11 - Keith McGrath
12 - Donnie Ward
13 - Randy Walter
14 - Mike Vandeweghe

Back Row (Left to Right):
1 - ?
2 - Jack Moore
3 - Bill Wilson
4 - Walter Owings
5 - Preston Hicks
6 - Wayne Warren
7 - Mike Harrington
8 - R.C. Moore
9 - Ray Blackmore
10 - Andy Swinson
11 - ?
12 - Penn Pendleton
13 - Stan Gasiorowski
14 - Jack Cocke
15 - ?
16 - ?
17 - ?
18 - Rich Johnson
19 - Bob Barkley

A couple great shots of the lodge - inside and out - from around the same time.  Note the classy padded bench seats.  In the far corner is the wooden scrapbook put together by Brother Bradshaw earlier that year.

The Donne Witch Project

From the Donfather himself:

I lived in the lodge for a while with Brother Joe Baird (Chapter Celestial). It was a weird Summer indeed. Joe and I had been reading the demented tales written by the other-worldly H. P. Lovecraft. Ghouls and critters from other dimensions and all that. Really spooky stuff. On several occasions, we heard strange noises "out back" and more than once found doors that were closed, wide open. It was the time of The Haunting of the Lodge. Or perhaps it was the beer and grain alcohol punch.



It was also the time of the hamburger. Joe and Brother Bill Powell were working Channel 12 block parties, and Joe would bring back literally boxes of frozen patties. I swear we ate hamburgers for every meal for months, and I mean nothing else. It became a real mission to stick to our "diet."

Brothers would drop in all the time for hijinks and hanging out. The lodge during that time was a real hangout where brothers would congregate. Often times we would cook up pranks to pull on other frats or UR in general.

At one time, we had brothers living in the brother's room and the girl's head, as we called it. There was a closet with a pull-close wooden curtain where the bar is now. I believe it was either Brother Jim Soyars or Pete Kucera that were living in that space. Also, the doors were never locked (different times). There was always someone in the lodge. It was used constantly, 24-7.

 
I still have great nostalgia for The Grand Old Lady, and still cannot go there without waves of memories coming back.

The Final Summer

10 years ago this week, the last brothers to live in the lodge moved out. It marked the end of a long-standing tradition of rent-free accommodations for those with summer jobs in Richmond. The next summer, fraternity row would be under construction, as the old Lambda Chi, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Sigma Chi lodges were torn down to make way for an expanded Robins Center parking lot. The summer after that, our own lodge would undergo a renovation that would forever limit it's ability to house (the kitchen & shower were both displaced).

For that last summer, three brothers called the backrooms home: Christian Shwarzkopf' '99 and yours truly in the Brothers' Room; and Tommy Hayes '00 in the Little Sisters room. For May term, six additional brothers somehow found a place to sleep inside. The beds & dressers were rented; every other bit of furniture was taken from whatever the brotherhood had chosen to store up there for the summer. That meant futons and crate furniture galore. The decor was dorm room chic. If memory serves, that's Miss February 1998 alongside my bed:

A summer at the lodge entailed unbearable humidity, a shower that actually made you feel dirtier, and a fantastic venue for weekend beer pong. With no cable, televised entertainments were limited. But there was always something going on at the Row. One guy living at Sigma Chi asked if he could use our shower once a week (what did he do the other 6 days?) and another guy living at Fiji taught me the two chords necessary to play Every Rose Has Its Thorn on the guitar (thank you, Russ).

From Brother Hayes:

Lots of memories from that summer. The 3 day power outage. The attempt to watch the 100 greatest movies of all-time. The futility of keeping the lodge clean, even after ponying up however much cash for the pre-move-in professional scrubbing. Drunken stumbling back and forth to the pool house. Your eviction of Joe Manning's junk onto the front sidewalk. . Trying to string a line of blankets from the ceiling so that the cool air generated by that measly window A/C unit in the brothers room not only stayed in the back of the lodge but also flowed over to the sister's room. Schwa cooking strange concoctions of mushrooms and onions. Random brothers from the 1970's stopping by looking for drinking buddies.

Outside of evicting Brother Everlasts' belongings in a fit of anger, it was a fantastic way to spend the summer. Any of our predecessors have their own memories of living at the lodge?

Finished Product

This will complete our summer photo series, Lodge At Rest. The next images you see of the old Lady should include teeming masses of undergraduates. Enjoy the new accommodations, boys.
Just don't fall off the railing.

The Treehouse

Checked in on construction yesterday. The front is pretty much finished. They were working on the benches along the side while I was there. They haven't started on the back patio yet. The full seat back on the bench makes the whole lodge look a bit more imposing from the front yard. From up on the deck itself, it's feels a bit like a treehouse crossed with a cruise ship.

The rotting railroad ties under the deck have been removed. Not sure if the plan is to put new ties in or just make it all into one big mulch bed. Might be best to put something in that offers a soft landing, since sitting up on the railing once again seems possible.

One challenge posed by the new deck: getting into the hose room. No longer accessible via stairs, one has to walk all the way around the yard to get down there. As a result, that shed outside the Brother's Room might come in more handy this year. It's just a more convenient place for one's hose.

"Room for 40,000 Girls"

Made it up to the lodge Friday to check on progress. What a difference 5 days makes. The new deck is framed up from the front door all the way around to the back deck. From every angle, the thing looks massive. Especially looking at the new add-on along the KA side. In the words of one of the workers that greeted me, there was "room enough for 40,000 girls back here". Indeed.

The workers thought they'd have the job done by the middle of next week. So I'll make one more trip over there to capture the finished product.

Sunshine in the Hose Room

This summer's big capital project is the replacement of the deck. Because the old deck had become a safety concern, the University is covering the cost of the replacement. An add-on is being funded by the undergraduates (with a small financial assist from the Foundation). The add-on will wraparound the KA side of the lodge, seamlessly connecting the front and back decks without the steep stairs of years past. Construction is expected to be completed before students return next month.

Rainy Day on the Row

Pictures of the lodge from May of 2008.