Brad Fischer, 78-S, has been awarded the prestigious Jay E. Minton Best Alumni Chapter Officer Award by Sigma Chi International.  Jerry Nelson, Chairman, Alumni Awards Committee and a personal friend of our late brother Steve Heinrichs, 65-F, announced the award in an email on May 8, 2020.  

The award is given to only one Sigma Chi alumni chapter officer each year.  It was created in 1928, and in 1975 it was named in honor of Order of Constantine Sig Jay E. Minton Sr., Missouri-Columbia 1920, past alumni chapter officer and vice president of the Order of Constantine. The award recognizes outstanding leadership, administration, Fraternity relations and service, effectiveness and improvement by an officer in his alumni chapter.

Brad has been recognized often for his many contributions to our chapter over the decades.  He started accumulating them as a pledge by earning the Outstanding Pledge award in 1978.  While an undergraduate he served as Kustos in 1978 and Annotator in 1979.

A few of Brad’s accomplishments are as follows:

• Named Top Dog at Fresno State in 2014
• Received the Grand Consul’s Citation
• Named a Seven Lights alumnus by Sigma Chi International in 2018

Brad expanded the role of Chapter President by also being the link between all of the various committees and functions of our chapter so that nothing occurs in a vacuum.  He regularly attends the monthly House Corporation meetings plus engages often with our Chapter Advisor, Dusty Lacefield, 12-F.  Brad was especially effective when he assisted Dusty and the chapter’s Consul, Gio Primavera, 17-F, last year during negotiations with the university following an incident relating to assaults on students perpetrated by the Fresno State football team.  The end result was that two of the three alleged active chapter violations were dropped both posing existential threats. 

Brad joined the Board of Directors of the Alumni Chapter 2004 and served in the following capacities:

• Treasurer beginning in 2006-2008 and 2014 to present
• Vice President 2008-2014
• President from 2012 to present

About eight years ago Brad started the June Brotherhood Day at the Chapter House which is now an annual social event drawing seventy-five active and alumni brothers to the house. The alumni chapter underwrites the cost of lunch that day, and we now use it as a platform to announce chapter awards.

Brad also initiated the first annual Sigma Chi Wine Tasting six years ago that raised $15,000 last year for our local scholarship endowment which now totals almost $900,000.  Even though the wine event is capped at one hundred participants, the amount raised continues to significantly increase each year. 

Past Fresno Sig recipients of the Jay E. Minton award were Richard Swartz, Sigma Tau, awarded in 1953, and Tony Flores, 56-S, awarded in 2014.

Thanks to Brother Brad for all of the time and energy he devotes to our fraternity, and congratulations to him for being selected as the 2020 Jay E. Minton Best Alumni Chapter Officer Award.  All honor to his name!

IHSW,

Mike Patton 63-S
President, Fresno Sigma Chi Endowment Board

Scholarship Chairman Brother Christian Reta, (18-F), held a scholarship workshop on February 24, 2020 to help Active Chapter brothers apply online for the (21) $2,000 scholarships available for the fall 2020/spring 2021 school year.  The deadline for applications is March 1.

For the first time pledges were allowed to apply also.  The total monies available from our five endowments is a record $38,000.  In addition many brothers successfully applied for the Dante Simi scholarship which awards a total of $10,000 annually, and Sigma Chi brothers have preference along with graduates of Dante’s Learn for Life charter schools.

Many of our undergraduate brothers at Fresno State achieve academic excellence.  The seven brothers with the highest chapter GPAs for the fall 2019 semester are: Consul Gio Primavera (4.0), Scholarship Chairman and Smittcamp Scholar Christian Reta (4.0), Leo Reyes (4.0), Arvin Sihota (4.0), Johnathan Zamora (4.0), Chapter Editor and Smittcamp Scholar Micah Gross (3.8) and Derby Daddy Christian DeFendis (3.75).  The White Cross has gained luster by their academic excellence.  It is this kind of performance that encourages alumni to continue supporting our endowments.

The monies raised for the endowments are from contributions received from alumni members over the years. As of January 1, 2020, five separate endowments have raised a total of $821,467. The scholarship funds are from the interest earned by the endowments in 2019.  The endowments were created because alumni wanted a way to recognize, encourage and reward academic excellence and leadership as well as contributions to the brotherhood of Sigma Chi.

Founded on June 28, 1855 by seven undergraduates at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, Sigma Chi’s core values are “Friendship, Justice & Learning.” There now are 242 Sigma Chi Active Chapters at Colleges and Universities across North America. In 2021, the Fresno State Active & Alumni Chapters will celebrate their 100th Anniversary at the University.

On Tuesday February 11, 2020, George L. Hooper, KANSAS STATE 1960, Chair Warden, Sigma Chi Monuments and Memorials Commission conducted the White Rose Ceremony at the memorial to Harry St. John Dixon, VIRGINIA CONSTANTINE CHAPTER, 1961.

Pictured Brothers in attendance (l to r): Sam Mann (91-S), Warden, Dixon Memorial; Bill Robinson (70-F), Secretary of the Alumni Chapter of Fresno; Order of Constantine, Tom Downing (62-F), ; Brad Fischer (78-S), President, Alumni Chapter of Fresno; George L. Hooper, Warden, Monuments and Memorials Commission; Dusty Lacefield (12-F), Epsilon Eta Chapter Advisor; Julian Ramos (09-S); Charles Kent; Bruce Edmonston, President, Alumni Association of Kern County; Donald P. Copeland, Warden of the Bell Monument and President of the San Francisco Chapter and Rod Gavorian (76-S).

The monument dedicated by the Order of Constantine Sigs of the Epsilon Eta Chapter is located in the Mountain View Cemetery in Fresno California. Harry St John Dixon founded the Constantine Chapter with a small band of dedicated Sigs outside of Atlanta Georgia on September 17. 1864.

In the years that followed the war, he settled in Fresno County where he became the fifth County Clerk and later served as the City of Fresno’s first City Attorney. He also was the first President of the Fresno County Bar Association. He passed away on August 27, 1899.

As a delegate to the 1860 Grand Chapter, he was elected the 1st Grand Chi or Grand Pro-Consul, was the 1st Grand Historian, re-worked the Sigma Chi Ritual, founded Alpha Beta (Berkeley) Chapter in 1886 and installed the Stanford and U.S.C. Chapters.

Marvin Meyers was initiated into the Epsilon Eta Chapter of the Sigma Chi Fraternity in the Spring of 1954. He graduated in 1956 with a degree in Agriculture and, soon thereafter, he was drafted into the Army where he participated with atomic bombing testing in Nevada helping to prepare for the flight that made Alan Shepard the first American in space.

When he finished his military service, he went to work in the Midwest and after a couple of years he returned to Fresno where he went to work for Red Top, a local agriculture chemical business. After several years with encouragement from some of his big farmer clients, he opened up his own business, Meyers Agricultural Chemicals. He sold the company in 1977 after 16 years of being in the business.

During this period, he had purchased a few acres in the Firebaugh area and with his sale of his agricultural chemical company, he went full-time into farming!

During the next 42 years, he accumulated 11,000 acres, of which 6,000 acres were planted with almonds, cherries, pistachios and olives. His purchases included the defunct Spreckels sugar beet processing plant with 900 acres that was located within the Pacific Flyway and used by countless migratory waterfowl each year and the natural habitat to numerous mammals and reptiles on the endangered species lists.

Over several years, these 900 acres not only became a wildlife preserve that is visited by over 1,000 children visit every year, with funds provided by Brother Marvin for the buses and other expenses incurred by the schools, but also the beginning of a “water bank” that would “bank” surplus water in years of abundance to irrigate his crops during drought years. It took 7 years to accomplish this and he was quite proud that it was completed without any government assistance! It is able to store 35,000-acre feet of water or 114 million gallons!

Marvin also owned a ranch in Colorado that has 5 miles of river frontage the he would stock with trout for “catch and release” thus preserving the fish in the stream. His ranch is home to deer and elk as well as bald eagles that nested across the river from his home which he allows to live and prosper.

Brother Meyers received numerous awards from the State of California, Governor’s office and Fresno County, and he also served on many agricultural boards locally and at the state level as both a board member and president. He also contributed to numerous charities along with contributing to Fresno State and Fresno State Sigma Chi Alumni programs.

Three prestigious awards that stand out were his being named a recipient of the Fresno State Alumni Top Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012, Outstanding Alumni of the Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in 2015, and being named a Sigma Chi Fraternity Significant Sig in 2012.

Marvin served many years as President of the Fresno Sigma Chi Endowment Board stepping down last year because of health issues.  Under his leadership the Endowment increased significantly after the goal was raised to $3,000,000.

Private family services were held.

ALL HONOR TO HIS NAME!

Alumni chapter president, Brad Fischer, recognized the extraordinary time and effort that Chapter Advisor, Dusty Lacefield, has given since the May 6 incident at the Chapter House.  Dusty has spent hours in meetings with the undergraduate brothers and the Fresno State administration hammering out solutions that are appropriate for the Chapter.

A few days prior to the November 21 dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, Dusty returned from his two-week honeymoon.  He and Haley were married in Hawaii, then the newlyweds flew to the Fiji Islands for another week.

Congratulations to Haley and Dusty, and many thanks to Dusty for his devotion to our fraternity and our local chapter.