April 2017 Washington and Lee Fiji Z e t a D e u t e r o n C h a p t e r Frank Norris Pig Dinner We the brothers of Phi Gamma Delta’s Zeta Deuteron Chapter invite you all to join us on May 13th for our annual Frank Norris Pig Dinner. Come meet other ZD brothers, alumni as well as undergraduate, as we roast a pig and drink in accordance with one of Fiji’s finest traditions. We especially invite those from the classes of 2007, 1992, and 1967 to come and celebrate their reunions with us at the house. Bring a date and be ready to party! Scenes from last year’s Pig Dinner Chapter Leadership Inside this Issue Pig Dinner Message from the President Letter from Kelly VFA: A Fiji Tradition 1 2 3 4 President: Nelson Helm ‘17 Treasurer: MacKenzye Leroy ‘18 Corresponding Secretary: Isidro Camacho ‘17 Recording Secretary: James Hayes, ‘17 Historian: McCollister Everts, ‘17 Rush Chairs: Joe Wen, 19 & Justin Hart, ‘18 Pledge Educator: Chris Cardon, ‘17 Risk Management: Corey Guen, ‘17 \r\nMacKenzye Leroy: ZD’s Incoming President Brothers of Zeta Deuteron, standards we’ve come to expect for Fiji pledges. I hope this letter finds you well. My name is MacKenzye Leroy, and I will be the proud president of the Zeta Deuteron chapter of Phi Gamma Delta for the 2017-2018 academic year. I’d like to use this letter to introduce myself, give a brief year in review, and provide you with our vision of Fiji at Washington and Lee moving forward. Lastly, I’d like to thank you, the alumni of our proud chapter, for all of your support. This past year was a pivotal year for Phi Gamma Delta at Washington and Lee, and we could not have achieved what we did without your continued help. Whether this was in the form of monetary donations, time, or words of encouragement and wisdom, we cannot thank you enough. We hope to see as many of you as possible on May 13th, for our annual Frank Norris Pig Dinner. We’d like to extend an open invitation to our house and hope many of you will visit us. I look forward to meeting many of tyou over the next year and am truly honored for the opportunity to represent this great chapter as president. I’m originally from a small town in upstate New York, but I’ve had the pleasure of calling the Fiji house my home for the last two years. I am a Physics major with a German minor. I am also a varsity cross country and track and field runner as well as an active member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. Through all of my academic and extracurricular activities my Fiji brothers have always been my closest friends. Sincerely, MacKenzye Leroy’18 This past year has been a very important one for our chapter. Our Rush Chair, Justin Hart ’18, did a fantastic job of recruiting a group of 12 eager new members. Keeping with Fiji tradition, this group is extremely diverse. It consists of 5 varsity athletes, a Bonner Scholar, and a wide variety of academic interests. I’d also like to personally thank Nelson Helm for his immeasurable contributions to our chapter this past year. I witnessed first-hand how hard Nelson has worked to better our fraternity. Moving forward I am very excited to work closely with our new cabinet, especially Joe Wen ’19 and Beau Merhige ’20, our incoming Treasurer and Social Chairs. This year’s top priority is continued growth. Our goal is to bring in an even larger pledge class this year, while simultaneously maintaining the high Brother Leroy’18, left, with Brother Mark Gensburg ‘16 \r\nA Letter From ZD House Mother Kelly Harris Often I’m asked what exactly my job is as a house mom for a fraternity. I describe it as a hall monitor who works 24/7 with flexible hours. About to finish my second year, I realize that I do a myriad of things every day where some are visible and some not. Over the past two years I’ve spoken with most departments from facilities to administrative to academic for questions, fixes or general information. The heat stopped working. There was an icky smell in the house. The pipes leak. The landscaping needs serious work. The band needs to be hired. Oh, Waitstaff, tables, chairs, centerpieces, grill, pig need ordering, outlets blow, flag catches on the light and rips, meetings with facilities to get things repaired, keys, decorations for events, flowers and on and on. I realize that in two years I have more than 500 emails to different departments for fixes and questions. We’ve gotten a lot done and there is still more to do. By accident the summer I began here, I found a box of old papers from the 1980s and 1990s. The owner of the box gave me permission to research, post and ask questions on anything I found. So one of my big and ongoing projects is documenting and organizing all history, photos and documents I run across. Many times I find one thing that leads me in another direction so it is a slow process. I wasn’t sure the current guys would appreciate the research and organization. My thought was that at least older alumni could come back for reunions, look through the albums and recapture amazing times in their lives while they were in-house Fiji brothers. I enjoy walking through the house seeing the guys looking through the new pictures I’ve added. Recently I contacted the Rockbridge Historical Society, Lexington Clerk and Historic Lexington Foundation to see if there were more records of this property and its history. I met with Don Hasfurther, executive director of Historic Lexington Foundation recently. He walked the property with me and I asked him questions and he asked me some, so the search continues. If any of you older alumni remember the house before the 1984 fire and remember a window on the cottage side of the main house, let me know. I have pictures from the time of the fire and older ones, but nothing shows that angle. Also if any of you have tidbits of history that I can add to our memory book either tell me or send me an email with the info. I believe we all agree that this property is an amazing one. I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall in each decade of this house’s history! \r\nPhiGammaDeltaFraternity Zeta Deuteron Chapter Washington&LeeUniversity 112 West Preston Street Lexington, VA 24450 VFA: A Fiji Tradition This year, senior brothers Corey Guen and Mina Shnoudah find themselves part of a new ZD legacy. After a rigorous interview process, both were selected to join Venture for America’s newest class of fellows. They were 2 of 3 W&L seniors chosen to join the prestigious program. VFA was founded in 2010 and it pairs college gradates in start-ups around the country where they are placed in leadership roles. Brother Shnoudah, a Computer Science major and a Math minor, will use his full-stack coding skills at a technology company. Brother Guen, an Economic and Chinese major and a Poverty and Human Capabilities Studies minor, hopes to employ his background in research and marketing. Neither Guen nor Shnoudah have committed to a company yet but both hope to join businesses in Baltimore. They join the growing line of Fiji VFA fellows, which include Dillon Myers 14’, Marino Orlandi ’15, and Tyler Kaelin ’16. We hope that the tradition continues in next year’s graduating class! Brother Shnoudah, left, and Brother Guen, right, were roommates freshman year.