News Detail
11/19/2014
Members of one of SUNY Cortland’s oldest Greek organizations, Theta Phi sorority, annually combine a mini-reunion in the Adirondack wilderness with some inspired College fundraising.
Over the recent Columbus Day weekend, 40 of the former sisters continued an almost 50-year tradition of meeting on Raquette Lake during that particular autumn-drenched holiday.
“It’s just such a beautiful place to get away, to breathe, to think a little,” observed member Karen Keegan ’71. “Those are the things that keep me going back. And connecting with people who are special in your life is important.”
The Theta Phi women trek from wherever they happen to live and, catching the College’s pontoon boat from Antlers at the William H. Parks, Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education that Friday afternoon, land at the Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education’s more remote Camp Huntington on Long Point to spend three blissful days of canoeing, hiking and reconnecting on the site, which is listed with the National Register of Historic Places.
Against the ravishing boreal backdrop of the lake’s crooked shoreline and punctuated by the mournful cries of loons, the sisters undertake a variety of activities: a quiet hike or paddle, a costume dress-up party, a raffle fundraiser, a letter-writing campaign to classmates or a volunteer camp or woodland work project.
The sisterhood was dissolved in the mid-1980s due to dwindling membership but, amazingly, currently flourishes with between 200 and 250 active members operating as Theta Phi Sorority, Inc. (TPSI), a nonprofit organization.
“When I tell people what we’re doing and that we haven’t been active since the mid-80s, they’re in shock,” said member Kathy Solano ’78. “We’re very healthy. It’s just a testament to how we have managed to keep the sorority going.”
One person who has always understood the role Raquette Lake plays in the sisterhood’s Adirondack experience is member Joanne “Jodi” Schmeelk ’73.
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| Barb Hemink '72, Jane Kindlinger Abrams '71 and Karen Keegan '71 enjoy a moment together on a porch at Camp Huntington. Above left, Kathy Solano '78 practices fly fishing. |
“It has nothing to do with learning how to kayak or carry a canoe over a portage,” said Schmeelk of Canandaigua, N.Y. “It had to do with our experience of working with people and the emotional bond we formed over our common experience.”
Like many of her fellow sisters, Schmeelk recalls fulfilling her two-week physical education major requirement there, then returning the next two summers as junior counselor and eventually a staff member. But after graduation, many sisters just kept coming back on that special weekend.
Many can hardly wait to push off canoes and kayaks to explore the daily mysteries of the lake’s squiggly edge: to watch a family of Merganser hatchlings trailing their mother, to spy a small grove of water lilies displaying their flowers amid the ripple of black water or to startle a jeweled frog into sudden motion.
“It’s not just at Raquette Lake that we get together, but Raquette Lake is a huge magnet for that,” said Solano, who resides in Columbia, Md. “Other sisters do smaller get-togethers elsewhere. Then that five-year reunion on campus is huge, because that’s when we all get back together.”
Many Theta Phi sisters find the interval is too long between these major, special sorority reunions on campus.
“This coming reunion in 2015 is a celebration of some of our sisters’ 50th reunion,” said Schmeelk. “These were sisters who came to Raquette Lake in college. I don’t think anyone has come back to Raquette Lake every year but every year there were people from the sorority coming back to Raquette Lake.”
Their longevity as a sisterhood also arises from their dedication to supporting the institution that gave them an education.
One source of their funds are the existing investments that TPSI controls, created in the 1980s from the proceeds when the sisters sold their house on West Court Street in Cortland.“Basically the function of the sorority is to raise money and find ways to donate the money,” said Schmeelk, the current president of TPSI, which exists primarily to manage its endowed monies. “We don’t have many operational costs because we don’t have a house. So we raise money and find ways to donate the money.”
Also, according to Solano, the past president of TPSI, for the past decade the sisters have generated about $1,800 from an auction they have held annually at Camp Huntington. The membership will sell nearly anything to drum up money for the sorority’s operating fund, which keeps the sisters connected through an online and twice-annual newsletter. The funds also support worthy causes like upkeep at Raquette Lake facilities of the Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education.
“We are raising money for specific things that have to be done at (Camp) Huntington,” Schmeelk said. “It’s just a way to give back to (Camp) Huntington.”
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Michelle Widdel '78 gives Ellen Potrikus Barber '71 some pointers on the art of fly fishing. |
Members place homemade treasures including artwork, quilting, photography and baked goods on the selling block.
“We have sisters who are quite accomplished photographers,” Solano said. “The members are generous in the gifts they put up for auction and generous in raising funds.”
“People will pay $200 for a walking stick that was found in the woods and worked on while we were there,” Schmeelk noted. “We bring crazy things, too, that people will bid on. And so many times, we know one sister wants a particular item so we’ll outbid her and then give it to her.”
In fact, the sisters used the College’s Alumni Reunion 2009 on the main campus to announce they had raised $35,000 for the Endowment for Huntington, a fund dedicated to improvements at Camp Huntington at the Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education. Prior to that, they contributed $10,000 to repair the site’s historic glass dining room, which they named the M. Louise Moseley Glass Dining Room, honoring a revered emerita professor of physical education. The Greek organization also supports scholarships, including the Marjorie Dey Carter ’50 Scholarship, named after a revered Theta Phi sister.
“So many of us had a physical education or recreation background,” Solano said. “We had the Camp Huntington experience for a short time and now we have that experience of going back. None of us wishes to take that for granted so this is our way of giving back to a place that we love.”
The Theta Phi sisters used the most recent gathering to write 176 letters to sisters who graduated in 1960 or earlier to encourage their involvement in Alumni Reunion 2015. Their hard work sets the stage for the Reunion Committee to place more than 500 phone calls this year to the sisters they have on record.
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| Colleen Fritze '77, Sue Klinger '77, Kelly DeRocker Davis '82 hang out on a log at Long Point on Raquette Lake. |
For kicks, the sorority members plan elaborate costume parties, Schmeelk said. Several years ago they researched historical figures from around 1890 and staged an authentic, Gilded Age dinner by William West Durant, builder of Camp Pine Knot, considered the original Adirondack Great Camp upon which the current Camp Huntington is based. Members dressed as family, friends and contemporaries of Durant that might or might not have actually visited the camp, including the former U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and a younger Franklin Delano Roosevelt, artist Henri Matisse and wild west figure Wyatt Earp.
The long weekend often involves at least a little camp improvement work. One memorable year, Theta Phi members rolled up their sleeves and helped former Center Director Jack Sheltmire M ’73 tear out and replace a large section of “corduroy”-style trail. The women didn’t flinch from the hard and messy labor of lifting up the muddy, rotted logs that were being discarded on a flatbed truck. They also stepped up to put down freshly cut green logs to create navigable paths over wet trail sections.
Although for some Theta Phi sisters the trip to Camp Huntington has been a more or less 50-year love affair, other sisters didn’t heed its call until more recent years.
Keegan recalls how, at Alumni Reunion 2003 on campus, she encountered a dozen sisters who attended the College during a six- to seven-year timespan during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“We had not seen each other in more than 30 years; 33 years for me,” said Keegan of Richmond, Va. “There were some that would periodically be in touch but I was really one who had not. We decided, ‘Let’s go to Raquette Lake.’”
“The interesting part is when I reconnected with these women who all grew up together at (SUNY) Cortland, it was like it was yesterday,” observed Keegan, who now is the sorority’s corresponding secretary.
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Theta Phi sisters raised the paddles as they kayak together on Raquette Lake. |
“Most of us don’t know each other for the work we have gone on to do. Our connection is really who we are: the people who were together at college. But if I ever need anything I can call any of them, even though they live states apart. I know those people care about me and I care about them.”