Omega Mu Voice: Matthew D. Smyth, 1980

Omega Mu Voice
Matthew D. Smyth,
1980

Omega Mu Years

Matt Smyth, top row, first on the left.

During my freshman year, I lived in Penobscot Hall, where several good-looking girls down the corridor had Fiji boyfriends. They invited me to attend one of the Wednesday night “11-2” parties at the Castle, which were popular, often crowded campus events. After repeated visits and going through rush, I was most impressed with the guys at Fiji. They were athletic, smart, charismatic, and immensely cool, and not having any real brothers of my own, I looked up to them like any younger, idolizing brother would do. Steve “Wally” Strand, Bob “Moose” Cheney, Eddie Gott, Brian Datson, Chip Rodgers, and Eric Knudsen were all guys that I respected; I pledged that spring and moved into the Castle the following fall.

Stephen  A. Strand and Robert S. Cheney, Jr.

Edward J. Gott, III and Brian L. Datson

Edward  H. Rogers, III and Eric R. Knudsen

My sophomore year was one of demanding Honors College courses tempered by some great fun: Mud Bowl games, cold and damp Fiji Island weekends, memorable and some, um, forgotten 11-2 parties, and fraternity intramural, highly competitive, athletic games. The soundtrack from the megahit “Saturday Night Fever” was finally waning in popularity and Steve Strand usually alternated between The Tramps or Steely Dan’s “Aja” album, when we hosted a cocktail hour in the Ram before a social formal. I think the ladies preferred dancing to the Tramps and I can still hear Nerf’s infectious laugh while he was doing some disco move with his latest girlfriend.

Mud Bowl

Fiji Island

For my Junior Year Abroad, I went to the Sorbonne, Paris, and when I returned to the house, many of my former friends from the Class of ’78 had graduated and were gone. Brian Dumais, Grant Livingston, and my roommate, Steve Dunwoody, were among the few guys that I knew well. However, I quickly became good friends with the brothers in my class, Charlie “Chuck” Foote and Tim Ames, along with a new, younger crew who soon became “partners in crime”: Buddy Cote, Ken Bartlett, Bill McLean, Steve “Garland” Perry, and Tom Hicks, who moved into my room when Dunwoody graduated mid-year. We slept in the “Mental Ward” section of the Ram, where we often had late night discussions, usually involving a girl, our latest adventure, or some convoluted campus scheme.

Brian P. Dumais and Steven M. Dunwoody

Charles M. Foote, III and Timothy A.  Ames

Eugene D. Cote, III and Kenneth C. Bartlett

William R. McLean and Stephen G. Perry

Thomas C. Hicks

Ken Bartlett, Tom Hicks, Buddy Cote, and Matt Smyth

I often recall days from the Castle, made lifelong friends in the house, and our motto, “Not for College Days Alone,”
​could not be more true.

“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)

Fraternally,
Chip Chapman, ’82
Perge