Omega Mu Portrait: Frank W. Danforth, Jr.

1/26/2021

“What if the space be long and wide,
That parts us from our brother’s side
A soul-joined chain unites our band,
And memory links us hand in hand.”
(Phi Gamma Delta fraternity song)

There is no fraternal brotherhood like Omega Mu at the University of Maine. We have been a proud fraternal team in the truest sense of the word since 1874. Quite simply, we are proud of the beauty of the Castle and our unparalleled fraternal history at the university, and we continue to succeed because we have resilient spirit and aim to succeed in all areas: socially, academically, social service, and athletically.

Athletically, we have had many fraternal brothers who were bona fide athletes on many Maine teams since the very beginning of the university’s athletic history, when the teams were called the Mamelouks and not the Black Bears. That is a heady athletic legacy.

Success in anything is grounded in the grace of individual and team discipline, and our Omega Mu brothers have athletes have exemplified a high level of unswerving workmanship and zeal for success throughout our fraternal history. Their sacrifice of time was worth the effort for them and the student body at the University of Maine who watched them play. They created many warm memories since the early 1870’s. For the eminence of their athletic success; and, above all, for being our Omega Mu brothers, we are all very proud.

So we must remember these QTV and Omega Mu brothers with fraternal amplitude because these brothers, with sound unflinching desire and instinct, are part of the heritage of athletic excellence at the University of Maine. With consummate skill and attentiveness, they understood that being on an athletic team, like our fraternal life in The Castle, was a communal responsibility in acting in concert with their teammates to achieve success. Their considerable accomplishments claim our fraternal attention and respect, and they show us something fundamental about character and life. Therefore, in the linked soul and spirit of our long fraternal history, we gratefully remember and celebrate our QTV and Omega Mu brothers who participated on many varsity athletic teams at the University of Maine. Our fraternal athletic scorecard is historically long and deep. Our proud cheer: Omega Mu Fiji athletes.

Omega Mu Portrait:
Frank W. Danforth, Jr., 1946

High School

Bath High School

Higgins Classical Institute

Fraternity Brother

World War II Veteran

University of Maine Athlete

Baseball

Basketball

Wearers of the M

Football

Golf

Frank was the captain of the Maine golf team

Phi Gam Golf Classic

Frank W. Danforth, Jr. was a vivid, memorable brother in our Omega Mu brotherhood, and it was a great honor and pleasure for Joel Gardiner and I to speak with him, at his home in Bath, several months before he died in 2016. He expressed his life-long love for our Omega Mu brotherhood with a bit of a misty twinkle in his eye, great humor, and abundant pride and joy. You could feel his fierce loyalty to Omega Mu. To be sure, he was a fiercely loyal, respectable and upstanding Omega Mu brother throughout his life. He always put his heart into everything he did for our brotherhood throughout his life. That is resilience, perseverance, and determination. Combine those three self-evident traits with Frank’s innate Maine pride, Maine stubbornness and grit, and Maine self-reliance, and that is what makes Frank W. Danforth, Jr such an extraordinary Omega Mu brother, a memorable, endearing link, soulfully strong, in our proud Omega Mu history.

Frank had a long and fascinating life-journey that spanned 93 years. The “Habits of the Heart”, to use Robert Bellah’s fitting term, left an important, enduring, and positive legacy for Omega Mu, the University of Maine, our country, his family, his countless friends, and the city of Bath, Maine, because he was a genuine no-nonsense type guy who believed in commitment to hard-work, traditions, cooperation, and discipline throughout his life. Quite simply, he lived faithfully and did all things for the common good of the whole. He was a blessing for a lifetime with all of his commitments. Therein lies the source of what makes Frank so vividly memorable. That was the consistent inner-linkage throughout his life, and that unifying linkage, that sincere and responsible sense of connectedness, made him successful, personally, professionally, athletically, civically, and fraternally. He lived fully, and he exhibited a gratitude for a life lived in all its different expressions, and his life and legacy is assured in all areas because he was committed and faithful, instinctively so.

When Joel and I arrived at Frank’s home in Bath, Frank, standing in the doorway, heartily greeted us, smiling joyfully. He was genuinely pleased that we had come to see him and speak with him. He led us into the kitchen, graciously offered us coffee and pastries, sat down and with a look of excitement he was ready to share his reflections and memories, and he did so with obvious affection, in an easy-going manner, interspersed with a great deal of laughter.

Frank speaking with us in his home in Bath, Sept., 2016

It was not a gossip-column memory piece. Joel and I asked some questions but, generally speaking, Frank simply took over and became a wonderful storyteller and gave a beautiful, unique account about Omega Mu house-life in the 1940’, and he did so in a down-to-earth, emotionally honest manner. Frank pulled us right in and we were in the Castle in the 1940’s, feeling the connectedness of positive, grounding traditions lived faithfully. Listening to Frank was interesting and informative, refreshing and relevant.

Some Images From the 1940’s

Frank shared stories about the grace and good charm of having a housemother living within the Castle. Although not directly stated, Frank’s facial gestures and tone conveyed his firm belief that the presence of the housemother in the Castle gave the Omega Mu brotherhood a stabilizing dignity to the civic, fraternal life at many necessary points.

Mrs. Hewitt, Mrs. Houston, Mrs. Walker

Housemother eating in the dining hall

Additionally, Frank spoke affirmative clarity about a juridical tradition of the Omega Mu brotherhood in the 1940’s, a tradition that continued until the early 1960’s: the fining of brothers for drinking too much, taking women, even girlfriends, to the second floor, and for talking too loudly in the RAM. Frank assured us that the brothers who were fined for their libidinal indiscretions, insobriety, and for disturbing the peace of the RAM, paid their fines. Imagine that. Second, he spoke joyfully of one the keystone traditions of living in the Castle: sleeping in the RAM.

These traditions, according to Frank, had true fraternal value. It is no wonder, then, that when traditions are dismissed, forgotten, or intentionally dropped, the civic good of fraternal life looses its value, and that has proven to be true, unfortunately, during several periods in our history. A close reading of our fraternal history speaks for itself. It definitively shows that our brotherhood is at its best when we live with collective, civic purpose for the good, always, as undergraduate and graduate brothers. Frank’s multi-faceted narrative reflection on our Omega Mu fraternal life spoke volumes about the absolute necessity to live thoughtfully, faithfully, and courageously for the greater dignity of the whole of the Omega Mu brotherhood. Frank W. Danforth, Jr. was the perfect example of what fraternal faith in action looks like throughout life. Broadly speaking, we are blessed that we have had countless brothers like Frank through our history, and that is the real-life human truth that makes our brotherhood so special. We continue to know what fraternal integrity means, still.

It was warm and homey to be sitting at Frank’s kitchen table as he gracefully wove many other anecdotal stories about Maine basketball games, World War II, the making and breaking of Fiji paddles, the Phi Gam Golf Classic, regularly attending Pig Dinner, Tom Tear, the chef for the Omega Mu brotherhood for over 30 years; and several others.

However, one of Frank’s stories really stood out. One morning, as he was standing next to the open window in the upstairs bathroom, a B-26 Bomber flying out of Dow in Bangor, piloted by two Phi Gamma Delta brothers (non-Omega Mu), who had played cards with Frank in the house the night before, flew over the Castle, dipped the planes wing to say hello to the Omega Mu brothers, and then proceeded over the campus, and it blew out or cracked many windows in Balentine Hall as it flew over.

From multi viewpoints, Frank embodied good judgement and an easy yet hard-working grace throughout his life. There was an easy-going dignity about him, and his human spirit was always genuine, easy, kind, warm, and accessible to anyone. There was an honest immediacy about him.
Fraternally, he relished, understood, and celebrated the inter-linked connectedness of our brotherhood for his entire life. He made himself invaluable to this brotherhood, attended countless Pig Dinners, relishing the face-to-face time with brothers of every generation; played in the Phi Gamma Delta Golf Classic for many years, and contributed in so many other ways.

So many things, so many accomplishments, and when Frank died in 2016, we all lost a great fraternal friend and inspiration, and our Omega Mu brotherhood is better because of his example. We will always hold Frank W. Danforth in the highest esteem because he enhanced the vision and lived ideals of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity life in all the positive and right ways. We will miss his fraternal camaraderie, his fraternal loyalty, and his fraternal joy, and his fraternal love. He truly bled Omega Mu Fiji purple.
Perge!

“Furthering through perseverance”