The First Meeting |
The loyal Nu Phi's agreed to hold a meeting on December 10, 1904, at Simon's home at 90 Broad Street to found a fraternity.
Seven Nu Phi's were at the meeting: Kroeg, Fogarty, Mixson, A. Pelzer Wagener, Thomas F. Mosimann, Theodore Barnwell Kelly and James Fogarty, Simon's younger brother. All were friends and students at the College, and had grown up together in Charleston. Wagener was a superior scholar of Greek and Latin, much like John Heath, the founder of the first fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, at the College of William and Mary. Wagener would go on to teach Greek and Latin at William and Mary, and appropriately enough, it was he who recommended the letters, "Pi Kappa Phi," and their secret meaning as the official new name of the group.
Because there were so many civic and honorary organizations in the city of Charleston, a visit to a local jeweler offered a great variety of possible fraternity badges from which to choose. Fogarty made a proposal for the fraternity's pin. In his words: "...a plain, diamond-shaped block of black enamel, bearing across its short diagonal an arched raised band of gold with scrolled edges projecting beyond the body of the pin. On this band were engraved, in black enamel, the Greek letters of Pi Kappa Phi. Engraved in gold on the body of the pin, above and below the band respectively, were the figures of a star and student's lamp."
Kroeg naturally became the new chapter's archon, a term taken from the name of a chief magistrate in ancient Greece. He began the work of writing the Fraternity's constitution.