WELCOME TO THE PARTY – COL LEMMOND AND ME

By Mark Reed

In 1968, while in college at UGA and in Sigma Pi fraternity, I became friends with COL Walter H. Lemmond, US Army (Ret). The COL, as everyone called him, was a Sigma Pi alumni from Emory University, Psi Chapter, in the 1920’s. The COL was basically the only “alumni support” we at Alpha-Phi chapter at UGA had back then. He had pretty much adopted our chapter at UGA since the Emory chapter no longer was chartered.

The COL became my Mentor in all things Sigma Pi. He was a Past Grand Officer of the National Fraternity, and a brother who truly loved Sigma Pi. He worked tirelessly in his later years supporting Sigma Pi. One of his great missions was to see the creation and installation of new Sigma Pi Chapters around the country, especially in the south. The COL was honored at the Sigma Pi Convocation in Atlanta in 1974 with the highest honor Sigma Pi can bestow. The Founder’s Award.

Our newest colony was located at West Virginia Tech in Charleston, WV. The COL had played an instrumental role in their founding, and he was to lead the installation team for the formal chartering as a new Sigma Pi Chapter. He asked me to go with him and to be on the installation team. I was honored, as an undergraduate, to be asked to be a part of an installation.

I drove up to Clayton, GA, where the COL lived and he drove us up to WV in his car. Along the way, the COL continued his mentoring of me by talking about what it meant to be an alumni and how important it was to be a volunteer after graduation.

Now let me digress, or flash forward, as the case may be.

Last night, Memorial Day 2022, I watched an old WWII movie made in 1945 – They Were Expendable. This John Wayne movie starred him as a PT Boat commander in the Philippines at the start of the war when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. There was this one scene where John, as a naval officer, walked into a small dance party on Corregidor, and when he did, the band immediately stopped playing the song they were performing and broke out in the old Navy song “Anchors Aweigh” as a welcome to his appearance. It was a pretty cool scene. I immediately stopped the movie on our TV and told my wife, Michelle, my own similar story, the one you are reading now.

Now, back to my story.

It was Friday night when we rolled onto the campus at WVU and pulled up to the Sigma Pi house. They were having a band party, a celebration of their chartering the next day. As the COL and I walked into the party, obviously they were on the lookout for our arrival, because the band immediately stopped playing the song they were performing and broke out in “Dixie” and everyone started singing in honor of us Georgia brothers who had just arrived. Everyone surrounded us and shook our hands, patted us on the back and handed us a beer to welcome us.

This welcome made quite an impression on me. It has stuck with me all these years. BTW, I am proud to say that like the COL, I too was bestowed the honor of receiving the 96th Founder’s Award at the Orlando Convocation in 2014, so some of what the COL taught me must have stuck.