Beta Eta lost a great friend, brother, and musician. Brother John Fields passed away from a heart attack as he was hunting mushrooms. Brother John has been in bands for over 30 years and was a great musician! He will be sadly missed. Rock on in heaven brother!!
As we get through this pandemic, I would like to thank Beta Eta and all Phi Delts as I make my last month of my journey through the National Officer chairs. You are all my PDK family and always will be!
I talked with Butch Rhonemus Tuesday night and the by Phi Delta Kappa Chapter Chase will be cancelled this year. There is not enough time to get it in before National Convention.
National Convention will be in Winchester this year. We’ve made a lot of improvements to the Chapter House and would like everybody to see it. Please make reservation and get your Registration Forms in as soon as possible. There is also forms to order convention shirts and magazine articles on the National Website. phideltakappa.org
Finally, I would like to thank all Beta Eta’s men and women that put time, sweat, and hard work to make our Chapter House look great!! We are continuing to work and hopefully everything will get done by the time you read this article. It is a great place to be!!
First of all, I hope that everyone has gotten through this pandemic without any illness. May God look down upon us and keep us all safe. Hopefully we will be able to go to our favorite restaurant or watering hole in the near future!
Most of you have probably heard, but Brother Kerry “Sarge” Gilmer was in a motorcycle wreck in March. He had a pretty extended stay in the hospital with some broken bones and some breathing issues. He was released from the hospital around the 1st of April. He still has a long way to go, so please pray for healing for our Brother.
I want to wish all the mothers a Happy Mother’s Day.
May is also when we recognize the men and women of the Armed Forces that gave the ultimate sacrifice for us to be free and live in this great country. Remember them as we celebrate Memorial Day.
PDK has been trying a new way to communicate on the Go To Meeting website. I think this will come in handy and save some money for National Officers and others in the future. You will get an invitation through your email and you follow the instructions to join. It is better to do it on a laptop or computer so you can see and hear everyone. If you do it through your cellphone you can only hear people.
At Beta Eta we have continued to make improvements to our Chapter House. Thanks to everyone that has put the work and time in to making it a better place for everyone.
As of writing this article, all Chapters are shut down due to the Governor’s order. We now can see what a simple gathering or a night out to eat is such a luxury.
Convention is coming in July so be sure to get your registration in by June 30th, your magazine article by June 20th and your shirt orders in to Beta Eta by May 15th. All the Chapters should have a Convention Packet, if not, email Scott Dull at sdull13@gmail.com and he will send you the info. We look forward to seeing you all there.
Don’t forget to get your 20/20 tickets ASAP. Contact any National Officer and he will gladly hook you up.
This New Year’s Day the brothers of Gamma Theta Chapter mark the one hundredth anniversary of their founding charter, issued to the original local membership on January 1, 1920, by the then young and growing Phi Delta Kappa Fraternity. Founded in Marion, Indiana in 1902, Phi Delta Kappa was established by seven young men with the shared vision of, “a Brotherhood of business and professional men, conceived in fellowship, based on ethics and faith in the Supreme Being, and dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of the American Way of Life.” The national fraternity now has over nine hundred members spread among eleven chapters, located in Indiana, Florida and Mississippi.
While few organizations can match the “Phi Delts” at being quintessentially “Danville”, the original chapter house was actually located in Clayton, moving to the first of several Danville locations later that decade. The current home of Gamma Theta, acquired and built in 1964, features of sixty-six hundred square foot chapter house which includes a community room, commercial kitchen, bar room and rec room set on three beautifully wooded acres with outdoor cooking facilities and a playground for the kids and grandkids.
From its beginning a century ago, Danville’s Phi Delt membership has included a broad cross section of local businessmen, civic and agricultural leaders, professional men and hundreds of hard-working men who have wanted to give back to their community. The current roster numbers one hundred eighty-two and includes several third-generation members as well as twenty-two new initiates from just the last year.
The membership, along with their Sweethearts, families and guests enjoy a full schedule of club activities including regular Friday night dinners, bi-weekly steak dinners, golf outings, cooking contests, holiday events, formal dinner-dances and several national fraternity events. Philanthropic efforts include the Relay for Life, Sheltering Wings, Family Promise and six annual college scholarships.
A Grand Centennial Celebration is planned for this June to usher in the next century of good works, brotherhood and fellowship at the Gamma Theta Chapter of the Phi Delta Kappa Fraternity, here in the community we’ve been proud to serve for the past one hundred years.
On the weekend of April 26 thru 28 the Northern Chapter Chase took place here in Indiana. Brother Doug Leach of Gamma Theta – Danville coordinated this event and done an excellent job.
Here at Beta Eta we kicked off the Chase on Friday by providing a variety of food to our members, having a drink special, raffling off a gift certificate to Firehouse BBQ and Blues, giving away a gift certificate to Jason’s Meat Market as a door prize and cranking up the jukebox.
On Saturday morning we headed to Beta Nu – Kokomo in the Colt’s bus with 12 members aboard and 4 other couples following in their vehicles. When we arrived we had a great breakfast waiting for us. We had a few drinks and socialized for a while then headed north with three couples from Kokomo and two couples from Danville for our next stop, Lambda – Peru. The folks here had a meat & cheese tray and vegetable tray ready for us. Again we had a few drinks and socialized for a while then headed north for our third stop, Delta Nu – Plymouth. These folks had ham & beans, cornbread and a variety of food waiting for us. Once again we had a few drinks and socialized before heading north to our fourth stop, Zeta Eta – Laporte. These folks had hamburgers and a variety of food waiting on us. And once again we had a few drinks and socialized before we moved on to our last stop, Gamma Lambda – Michigan City. These folks had chicken and a variety of food waiting on us. This being our last stop we socialized a little longer and had several drinks before finishing the night and heading to our hotel.
The Chapter Chase is a truly awesome time. The brotherhood that is experienced is amazing. The effort all the chapters put in for this event is amazing with all the food and “drinks” waiting for us and the hospitality that is extended. If you have never done this you are missing a great time and should try to experience it at least once. I want to thank Doug Leach for organizing the Chase.
I also want to thank all the brothers and sisters from each chapter for the food and hospitality and those members from Beta Eta, Gamma Theta and Beta Nu that made the journey north. If I were to talk about every stop in detail this article would not fit into the magazine as you experience something different at each chapter.
The following is an article from the Kokomo Perspective about PDK brother Jeff Haworth of Beta Nu. It was submitted by National President Bruce Smith.
Spring break started off on the right foot for the local president of AFSCME and his wife as they left for a “bucket list” vacation that began in Las Vegas and was supposed to end with a cruise in the Pacific Ocean.
But when Jeff Haworth suffered a heart attack partway through the vacation, new plans were created for him and Sheila, which included a multi-day stay in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Mexico. “I was scared. I was very scared. I didn’t know if that was the end or what kind of treatment I was going to get,” said Haworth, 55.
The couple began their dream vacation in Las Vegas, visiting with longtime friends, before flying to Long Beach, Calif., to visit with family. From there, they left on a cruise, and everything was going well until two days in. Haworth began feeling ill and was vomiting heavily, but the pair had a catamaran excursion planned that they previously had booked through the tour company Pronatours. Sheila suggested Haworth stay with the ship and skip the excursion, but he wanted to go.
The excursion took the group to an island where Haworth continued vomiting. He began having slight chest pain, he said, but he and Sheila considered that it could be from all the retching. Regardless, Sheila checked with a woman from Pronatours, Lety Gomez, and asked if Haworth could leave with one of the other tour groups that was coming and going, as he wasn’t feeling well, and Sheila would finish out the excursion Another woman with the tour company, Lety Osuna, assured Sheila that they would get him back to the ship. “It never entered my mind that he was having a heart attack,” said Sheila.
On the way back, Haworth told the woman he was with that he thought he was having a heart attack, so she radioed ahead to a harbor doctor in Mazatlán, Mexico, and took him there instead of to the ship. When they arrived, the doctor was waiting on Haworth. He did an EKG and determined that Haworth was, in fact, having a heart attack. He administered nitro and told Haworth that he had to call an ambulance.
Haworth wanted to wait for Sheila, but the doctor told him that if he waited he would die. There were three hospitals in Mazatlán, a city of 750,000 people, and the Haworths said they were fortunate that the closest hospital had the city’s only cardiologists. And it was a state-of-the-art hospital that was only three years old, Hospital Marina Mazatlán.
Around the time Haworth arrived at the hospital, Sheila’s excursion was cut short. She said the tour guides claimed the water was changing and that they needed to head back to the ship. When she arrived back on land, Osuna was waiting for her. She told Sheila that her husband had a heart attack, and they needed to go to the hospital immediately. “I’m bawling. I’m scared to death,” Sheila said.
At the hospital, Sheila found Haworth lying in a hospital bed and described him as looking completely gray. The doctors told her not to talk to him, as they didn’t want him trying to talk back. They explained that Haworth’s main artery was clogged, and he needed a stint. They also needed his insurance card, which was back on the ship.“I’m going, ‘This is crazy.’ I don’t have the insurance card. We didn’t have passports. You don’t need them when you leave and come back through the U.S., so that’s going through my head. I’m saying, ‘Oh my god, how are we going to get out of here?’” she said. However, Osuna arranged for Sheila to get back to the ship to get her belongings and insurance card and assured her that everything would be fine.
When she returned to the hospital, Sheila asked how the procedure went, and she was told the doctors hadn’t done it yet because they needed proof of insurance. The hospital employees told her they could expedite the insurance, but it still would be the next day before they could do the procedure. Sheila, who had a heart attack three years ago, waited 24 hours before she had her procedure, she said, so she said she told herself that everything would be fine if they could do it for her husband the next day. Still, Sheila was panicked, as she wasn’t sure the insurance would be accepted.
Osuna, who still was with Sheila, called her boss, according to Haworth, and Pronatours guaranteed the company would cover the cost of the procedure if the insurance didn’t go through. “I kept saying, ‘You are my angels,’” she said about Osuna and Gomez. The insurance did go through, and Haworth had a stint put in the next day, reopening his main artery. The doctors showed Sheila images of the reopened artery, and she said it went from looking like a toothpick to a straw. “Then I knew he was going to be OK,” she said.
Still, doctors required Haworth to spend two days in the intensive care unit and two days in a regular room, and he had to wait 10 days until they would clear him to fly back home. Hospital officials let Sheila sleep in one of the hospital rooms until the hospital got too busy, and then they moved her to the waiting room. Osuna, one step ahead of Sheila, arranged for a room for her at one of the all-inclusive El Cid resort properties, which the company comped, so she wouldn’t have to sleep in the waiting room, and moved her there.
Once Haworth was released from the hospital, he spent the remaining days at theluxury resort with Sheila, where they said they were treated better than they could have imagined, both at the resort and at the hospital. “The harbor doctor, the ER doctor, the head of the hospital, the cardiologists, from the time he got there until he got his procedure, none of them left. They stayed right there. It was unbelievable the treatment he got and the treatment I got,” she said.
Along the way, Osuna made sure Sheila got everywhere she needed to go and helped her secure the documents she needed to get back home, including passports. A consulate official even went to the hospital to take Haworth’s photo while he was lying in his hospital bed so the passports could be secured quickly. Sheila said she eventually asked Osuna why she was going above and beyond to care for her, and she said she was told, “Because that’s what we do, and it’s part of my job. And I love my job”. “We got to be really close because she took me to do everything,” she said. Sheila said if they hadn’t booked with Pronatours and had the assistance of Osuna and Gomez, they didn’t know what they would have done.
The last few days at the resort, when Haworth was feeling better, they were able to continue out their bucket list vacation as tourists, and Osuna and Gomez were happy to play their parts. They took the pair on a tour through the old city of Mazatlán, and Sheila said she fell in love with it. The couple said they also were grateful to their friends and family back in the states, who arranged for their return flight. Haworth had three pieces of wisdom for those traveling overseas: always take a passport, consider international insurance, and, for those over age 40, have a heart scan.
“I feel like I’m one of the luckiest men on earth that I’m still here. A higher power was looking over me because I’m not finished. I’m blessed. Scary turned into fun because it was scary. It was fun, scary, fun. And that’s how it ended,” Haworth said.
The Haworths already are planning a trip to return to Mazatlán next spring.
Hello Brothers and Sisters
On the weekend of April 26 thru 28 the Northern Chapter Chase took place here in Indiana. Brother Doug Leach of Gamma Theta – Danville coordinated this event and done an excellent job.
Once Haworth was released from the hospital, he spent the remaining days at theluxury resort with Sheila, where they said they were treated better than they could have imagined, both at the resort and at the hospital. “The harbor doctor, the ER doctor, the head of the hospital, the cardiologists, from the time he got there until he got his procedure, none of them left. They stayed right there. It was unbelievable the treatment he got and the treatment I got,” she said.