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A Chapter Founder wrote us a letter. What he said about our past helps to see our future.
“Future years will bring a keen pleasure and as pleasant memories for the younger and future members of the Fraternity and the Alpha Upsilon chapter as the past years have yielded to me.”
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AU Founder Harry Lee Martin was imploring us to keep our Sigma Chi chapter as strong as ever.
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It is exceedingly rare for a fraternity chapter to have an 11-page letter from one of its founding brothers from the 1890s. Yet, Martin sat down on June 1, 1950 – a full 51 years after he helped to launch Sigma Chi at USC – to share the story of our chapter. While HLM, as he’s sometimes called, was not one of the actual seven charter members of Alpha Upsilon, he was one of the earliest pledges, was critical to our success, and watched it all unfold as the very first fraternity at USC.
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Gene Erbstoesser (AU 1970) tells the story of how we came to rediscover the letter. When his close brother Tom Smith entered Chapter Eternal in January 2017, Gene got a call from Tom’s son who is also an AU Sig who wanted to give Gene a large box full of Sigma Chi stuff. “In that box I found that document,” Gene says. He was awestruck. “You just, it’s like reading the Gospel. Here we have it straight from someone who has strong personal knowledge, one of the actors setting down his personal thoughts.” Gene knew right away the value of the letter. “It’s pretty impressive historical stuff.”
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"I THOUGHT NO ONE CARED."
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Found with it was also a cover letter written by HLM to Fred Nason, the well-known Southern California Sig who, according to the cover letter, was writing a chapter history way back then. “It can be depended upon to be authentic,” he wrote to Nason about his letter. “There is much I may have omitted but I thought no one cared to read a long dry list of things that to them seemed quite unimportant.” He could not have been more wrong. His letter is now featured as the concluding thought it our new 125-page AU chapter history book “The Proud History of the Trojan Sigs” now available to donors of $25,000 or more to the Four Pillars Capital Campaign to build a new AU chapter house.
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The most entertaining part of the letter is the truth about “Nellie”, the famed USC campus bell that rang between classes in the late 1800’s. “And this led to the first Alpha Upsilon ‘adventure.’ On Hallowe’en Night in ’89 or ’90 this bell was mysteriously removed from the roof of the university main structure.” HLM recounts the first of 136 years of fraternity pranks at USC. The founding Sigs climbed the tower and stole the bell. The university immediately suspected Sigma Chi – after all, it was the only fraternity on campus. Threats of lawsuits and expulsions followed but the Sigs never gave in. Finally, the men who presented the bell to the university decided the Sigs were more worthy owners of the bell and officially donated it to Alpha Upsilon. “On every Hallowe’en Night for many years thereafter, sometime between nine o’clock P.M. and one o’clock A.M. ‘Nellie’ would be installed in the rear of a buckboard which, drawn by a team of lively ponies would travel at a gallop through the streets surrounding the ‘campus’ and in and out of the neighborhoods adjoining.”
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OUR NEW CHAPTER HISTORY BOOK
Our new chapter history book goes to great lengths to document all the various places the chapter itself was housed. But HLM’s letter reminds us that there was no chapter house for roughly the first 15 years. Yet, he writes, “the Fraternal spirit of Sigma Chi never burned brighter than in hearts and memories of the members of the Chapter during all these years.”
In fact, Harry’s letter reveals perhaps for the first time the unconventional means by which the AU Sigs moved into their first chapter house in the early 1900’s. Future Grand Consul Percy Thomson “discovered that a private residence, located near the corner of Adams Street and Ellendale Place, was vacant and had been for some time. The house was unlocked and ‘exposed to vandalism’. Realizing that this would result in serious damage to the house, the chapter, under Percy’s tutelage, moved in and occupied it for a long period of time
without paying either rent or taxes. After two or three years of occupancy on this convenient working plan, a friendly and peaceable agreement was made with the owner to pay a modest rent for a while.” Thus, HLM reveals that our first chapter house was free, until it wasn’t.​
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THE BEGINNING OF SIG ATHLETIC DOMINANCE
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Alpha Upsilon’s unparalleled history of athletic stars began as the chapter was getting started and has continued since. HLM tells the 1894 story of some of the Sig sports stars who carved out a workout space in an unused and, in fact, unfinished room in the basement of Old College Hall. They made use of a well-worn, unused desk owned by the university and, as can happen with college men, they used it as a table and secretly began to gamble in the room. Well, the university demanded back the desk. The boys offered to pay for it but were told no. “Almost immediately thereafter said desk disappeared. No one knew who removed it.” Of course, the university accused the Sigs of stealing it and began expulsion proceedings. Outraged at the injustice, two “notoriously non-athletic” Sigs told the university, if the other guys got expelled, so must they be expelled too. “This the faculty was not prepared, or willing, to do and consequently they had to drop the subject,” he writes. “Many years later the disassembled parts of said desk were found intact inside another ‘room’ in the basement...proving it had never been removed from the possession of the University nor from the University proper.” The two brothers who stood in solidarity with their chapter mates were Hartley Shaw who went on to serve as a Superior Court Judge in Los Angeles County, and Rae VanCleve who became a renowned Principal of Los Angeles High School.
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HLM seems to inspire our continuing success by putting any modern-day concerns into perspective. “I might say that the first sixty-one years of Alpha Upsilon will prove to be the hardest,” he writes. “The best prospect, insurance and guaranty of the future of the Chapter will be found in the history and accomplishments of the past.”
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“It’s an unimpeachable source,” says Erbstoesser. “There’s no chapter on this campus today that could document its past like this is. Period. It’s unique at the university” and rare nationwide.
And then Harry Lee Martin concludes by speaking directly to all of us: “I salute my Brothers in Sigma Chi, and repeat again and again ‘thanks for the memory’.”
It is a letter of immeasurable importance that Erbstoesser says will likely be framed and mounted in the library of the new chapter house for alumni and undergrads to see for generations to come “so that people know from whence they came.”
DOWNLOAD YOUR OWN COPY:
“Future years will bring a keen pleasure and as pleasant memories for the younger and future members of the Fraternity and the Alpha Upsilon chapter as the past years have yielded to me.”
Harry Lee Martin
“There’s no chapter on this campus today that could document its past like this is. Period."
Gene Erbstoesser (AU 1970)
Our chapter history book "The Proud History of the Trojan Sigs" chronicles many of the stories shared by Harry Lee Martin in his valuable "letter to the future."