[Editor's note: the following letter originally appeared in the summer 2011 edition of Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine. In it, a brother recalls how some unexpected car trouble led to a great brotherhood experience in Bloomington, IL. The letter is reprinted with permission from Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine. The editor would like to thank Bill Harter (Delta Phi/North Texas 1962) for sharing his story with us.]
I was driving my 1960 Austin Healey to Chicago to attend a marketing training program with Florsheim Shoes and Hart Schaeffner Marx, the clothing company. It was early February of 1963 and I had left Dallas a few days prior to driving through Illinois.
As I reached the outskirts of Bloomington, I began to hear a shrill sound. I pulled into a service station on Highway 66 to find out the trouble with my precious Healey.
After a few minutes on the rack, the attendant told me that I had a bad rear wheel bearing. Not a big deal. BUT ... that part would have to come out of Chicago on the next day's Greyhound.
I remembered that Bloomington was a college town, much like my old alma mater, North Texas State University (NTSU) in Denton, Texas. I checked the phone book, and there it was! Theta Chi Fraternity on Main Street. I paid for the wheel bearing and got directions to the Theta Chi house.
When I pulled up to the elegant, two-story frame house, with the big Theta Chi crest over the door, it struck me how similar it was to our house at NTSU (now the University of North Texas).
The short of it was that I was most welcome, and I found out that Brotherhood does reach across the United States.
I spent a couple of days at the Theta Chi house, and left for Chicago ... without a whining wheel bearing.
During the next few months, I returned to Bloomington for different campus activities and really learned what a terrific school IWU was and how special the brothers of Beta Rho were, also.
The Healey was just the right size for four of us to fit in as we drove down the sidewalks of Bloomington snatching Sigma Chi derbies and getting smiles from the beautiful coeds of IWU.
I remember some of the guys: Bill Hartel ('68) was president of Beta Rho (our names were identical with the exception of the last letter of the last name); Scottie Scrimshire ('64; who I later learned had passed away); and the Coates brothers, Gary ('64) and Michael ('67).
There were other great guys whose names have slipped my memory, but those fun times in the spring of 1963 are indelibly etched.
Bill Harter
Dallas