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Founders' Day Message
January 10, 2007
In our early years of the Fraternity, it became a tradition that one of the five Founders would prepare a special message celebrating the anniversary of that night in 1899, when Tau Kappa Epsilon was born. After the passing of our Founders and National Founders, responsibility for preparing the January 10th message passed to the current Grand Prytanis. To honor the legacy of those extraordinary men, I share the following thoughts with you.
Today, like 100 years ago, TKE faces a variety of difficult challenges. Visiting chapters across the United States and Canada, I often hear TKE leaders express their concerns. Chapters find it difficult to recruit new members and pay their bills. Chapter officers and alumni volunteers share that our undergraduates are not motivated and alumni members are uninvolved. Some express concern that it is tough to get our members focused on achieving success in academics, athletics, and community service. Many Teke leaders today see the path immediately ahead as challenging and steep.
To successfully meet these challenges, TKE must refocus itself. We must look to our roots; to those timeless values established by the men who created this magnificent organization. By recapturing that core focus, communicated in our ritual and Declaration of Principles, we can achieve new levels of excellence in Recruitment, Involvement and Achievement. As the sign that Frater Ronald Reagan kept on his desk during his years in the White House says, "It CAN be done!"
The year 2007 will mark the 100th anniversary of a very special event, the birth of TKE as a national Fraternity. As this generation of Tekes grapples with the challenges before us, we should take a moment to celebrate the evening of October 19, 1907, when the concept of TKE as a national fraternity was born.
You remember the story. At the annual TKE initiation banquet, held in a small dining room on the second floor of the Illinois Hotel in Bloomington, Illinois, Frater Wallace G. Macauley, a young attorney and Teke alumnus, gave what became know as the Opportunity out of Defeat speech.
Macauley's remarks that night are have become a Teke classic. But, at the time, they were highly controversial. Until 1907, TKE was still a small local fraternity working to be recognized as a chapter of Phi Delta Theta. What McCauley proposed that night was a radical change of course. In his speech, he suggested TKE abandon its efforts to become a chapter of Phi Delt and, instead, embark on the much bolder course of establishing Tau Kappa Epsilon as a new national fraternity.
The "defeat" Macauley referred to in his remarks was the rejection that the young local fraternity had experienced from Phi Delt. The "opportunity" was the chance to build a different national fraternity building on what Macauley referred to as the unique "Teke spirit."
Following Macauley's speech that night, the undergraduate and alumni members on hand engaged in a heated debate that lasted into early hours of the next morning. Some wanted to continue on with the efforts to join Phi Delt; others were caught up in McCauley's vision of a national TKE.
In the end, the group agreed to a compromise. They would send a simple postcard to Phi Delta Theta with one final request for recognition as a chapter. If Phi Delta Theta rejected their request, the group committed themselves to establishing a national, now International, Tau Kappa Epsilon.
Why is all this important? What is the point in remembering an old speech from 100 years ago? The answer can be found in the words of Robert Penn Warren who wrote, "history cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a full understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so we can better face the future."
On this Founders Day, we need to remember that difficult October night, one hundred years ago. For those young TKE leaders, much like today, the future was filled with uncertainty. There was disharmony in the ranks. The road ahead seemed challenging and steep. And yet, as they refocused themselves around our unique TKE values, and our unique organizational spirit of brotherhood, an incredible success was born.
A small group of young collegiate members and alumni, with limited resources, created the world's largest and most successful college fraternity. As Wallace McCauley laid out in his vision that night -- all they had to do was believe in their dreams and recommit themselves to the unique values and spirit of brotherhood that they had developed together. That spirit would sustain them and bring success. Frater McCauley said:
Interwoven about the sentiments of our name and our pin, and ingrained in the fiber of every member is the TKE spirit -- a spirit typical of our fraternity -- a spirit that does not shrink from sacrifice, that knows no defeat; a spirit indomitable.
McCauley knew then, what we should remember today. In TKE, we share a very special bond of friendship, born in the unique interpersonal experience that we call Tau Kappa Epsilon. As we celebrate this Founders Day, let us remember that bond. Let us also remember our four National Founders who were present that October night. Each helped McCauley create his vision and worked selflessly to bring it to life in the years that would follow; Wallace G. McCauley, Lester H. Martin, our first Grand Prytanis; William Wilson, who wrote our Declaration of Principles, and L. W. Tuesburg, who became the first editor of The Teke Magazine.
Let the legacy of selfless service and deep fraternal love they exhibited throughout their lives inspire us. Let Charity, Esteem and Love, the values and principles they captured in our ritual, our Declaration of Principles, and our Constitution, inspire this generation of Tekes. As members of a Fraternity for Life that stretches all the way back to 1899, let us move forward, confident that the same indomitable Teke spirit will bring us even greater success as we go forward together.
Fraters, I love the Fraternity. Happy Founders Day!