Our chapter traces its earliest roots to a group of WWI veterans at Oregon State College who organized the Oneonta Club in 1920. The club then became a local fraternity under the name of Tau Delta in 1921. A local church pastor at the time, Reverend EJ Harper Pi 1885, became acquainted with some members of Tau Delta. The members of Tau Delta soon learned to love and respect him and he, in turn, thought this group had the qualities necessary for a chapter of Chi Phi. Under his sponsorship, Tau Delta petitioned for several years for a charter as a chapter of Chi Phi and after building a new house they were finally installed as a chapter on March 17, 1931. Financial problems caused the loss of this house in 1936 because of the Great Depression. A dean at Oregon State at the time had a daughter who was in the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, who bought it and still live there to this day.
From then until the middle of WWII, when all our boys went off to war, they lived in rented quarters. In the fall of 1946 there was a reactivation and to lend stability to this the Oregon State Chi Phi Association was incorporated in 1947 with George Spaur '36 and Merritt W. Truax '33. Under the direction of a committee headed by Elwood McKnight '33 construction on the current house was started in 1958 and Chi Phi moved into their new house in 1959.
In 1982, Brother Truax donated the chapter house to the Chi Phi Educational Trust. In October of 1999 a group of local alumni formed a nonprofit corporation and purchased it back from the Trust in order to preserve it for future generations of Chi Phi's and provide capital for renovation work. |
