PEACE PRIZE DAY IS ALSO MY COLLEGE FRATERNITY INITIATION ANNIVERSARY.........

I went to bed early last night after dinner and the Advent Penance Service and Confessions at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Carmichael. I am up at a super early 3:30 am to watch the live coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies from Oslo, Norway. As I blog, President and Mrs. Obama are entering the grand hall followed by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. The news analysts and pundits are debating the politics of the Nobel Committee's awarding of the Peace Prize. Worldwide, if the significant focus of this date annually is the Nobel Peace Prize, then for me and my fellow founding members of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity at CSU-Sacramento, December 10, 1977, took on even further importance as the night we were initiated as the first six members of the upstart, nine and a half month old colony of Lambda Chi Alpha at Sac State. Tom MacKenzie, Troy Powers, Jon Salinger, Kevin Stevens, Robin Blair, and the late Bob Butcher, we had been recruited, associated and undergone fraternity education, under the brotherly leadership, first of Director of Expansion Jon Doak, New Mexico 1973; from the General Fraternity Headquarters in Indianapolis, and then being formed and guided by his fellow New Mexico '73 alumnus, Bil Cinnamon, who was then living and working in Sacramento. Bil was our collective, Big Brother and overseer of the development of the colony on campus. Only three out of the six of us, had known each other before we were recruited to join the fraternity. Four of the six were graduating seniors, one a graduate student, and yours truly, a junior; so as a small, neophyte, colony of the then leading reform, trailblazing, social fraternity in North America, we were officially Associate Members, not Pledges, prior to our initiation and Fraternity Education, not Pledgeship, was our reality, as Lambda Chi Alpha pioneered an improved way of recruiting and shaping new members. Founded on November 2, 1909, at Boston University, by Warren Cole, 100 years later Lambda Chi has well over 200 chapters at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, which has included chapters at not only CSU-Sacramento, but UC Berkeley, Fresno State, UC Davis, and Chico State, as well as numerous other chapters in Southern California. The Sacramento State chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha was chartered as the Phi Pi Zeta, on September 27, 1980. Having initiated more than 500 brothers on our Sacramento campus, the chapter closed for now at least, at the end of May 2009. But the spirit and truth of the fraternal endeavor we forged nearly a third of a century ago, will go forward through the devoted local alumni of the Superior California / Phi Pi Zeta Alumni Association. Monthly gatherings and shared experiences of brotherhood will continue. Next September we will commemorate and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Charter of the Phi Pi Zeta, at a festive, fraternity social. So even as I watch and listen to President Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, I fete and lift up my Brothers of Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, in Zeta Alpha Chi.........Fraternally Yours in the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Humankind, Brother Father Troy (Colony) Phi Pi 2.