This article was posted with written permission form Dan Sherrier, Editor, Herald-Progress.
After 2012 fire, Randolph-Macon frat moves into new home
For Randolph-Macon College fraternity, Theta Chi, the beginning of the new school year didn’t just mean a fresh start, new classes, and mingling with old and new friends.
For this fraternity, it meant moving into a home for the first time in about two and-a-half years. Their previous house from roughly the late 1960s burnt down in the fall of 2012 because of an undetermined reason.
“As a fraternity, we’re extremely excited [about the new house],” said Andrew Schaefer, Theta Chi president.
The new home is bright and shiny. Schaefer said it has nicer bathrooms, a bigger kitchen, and a room for the group to get together for chapter meetings.
“The expectations we had for the house, this new one blew it out of the water,” he said.
And now that the fraternity is back together, they can have a stronger presence on campus.
“We look forward to making a strong impact on the campus again, like we have been,” Schaefer said.
Looking back on that night, Schaefer, who was a sophomore at the time, recalled the blaze breaking out around 1:30 a.m. and chaos ensuing among the members. But, even to this day, he couldn’t really express how he felt during it all.
“I can’t really even explain. It’s crazy—that’s the only way I can put it,” he said.
One thing he does remember is how much the R-MC community came together to help them out. Schaefer said he only took his phone out. Many of the members, like him, lost pretty much everything and the house burnt completely down. Students skipped class to pitch in whenever they could. Others donated items lost in the fire such as school supplies, clothes, and toiletries.
In addition, the university helped the fraternity members find housing anywhere they could, whether on or off campus.
“Through all the sadness of the fire, that was probably one of the coolest things about the whole experience,” Schaefer said.
“It was just unbelievable,” he added.
In addition to the college lending a hand, members of the national fraternity came to help out, too. Schaefer said they really assisted with bringing the group’s spirits back up and taking their minds off of everything that happened with games and team building exercises.
Schaefer said it meant a lot to the whole group to have as much support as they did, especially during such a hard time for their fraternity.
At first, the fire brought the group of young men together. But, Schaefer said as time went on, they had a difficult time.
“After losing the house we had for a while, things were a bit of a struggle to figure out new ways to accomplish the things we had in the past,” he said.
However, Schaefer added that within the past year or two, the group has become stronger and having a new house helps. Most of the fraternity’s members now were not present that day when the house burnt down. And, he said that has helped keep the spirits up.
“I think all the young people are inspiring the old people to get back to where we were,” Schaefer said.
Now that it has been almost three years since the fire, one thing has really stuck with him. He said the experience taught him to not take anything for granted.
“No one can expect a fire to happen. We had a house for so many years and then all of a sudden, that was taken away from us within minutes—it was really eye-opening,” Schaefer added.
Construction on the roughly $1 million house lasted about 12 months. It has eight rooms and suite-style bathrooms.
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