COLUMBIA, S.C. _ After seven college students died in a beach house fire in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., on Oct. 28 last year, their fraternity brothers and sorority sisters returned to their houses to figure out how to move forward.
What emerged shows the depth of loyalty these students had for their friends.
“It really brings to light why you join a fraternity when things like this happen,” Ellison Neese, president of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity chapter at the University of South Carolina, said.
Thursday, the group of brothers and sisters will sponsor a remembrance concert in the Five Points district of Columbia, S.C., where all but one of the students who died were in school at the University of South Carolina. A charity bike ride is Saturday, with proceeds going to help fire victims in South Carolina. The events all have the same goal: Keeping their friends’ memories alive.
Not that the individuals closest to the seven who died aren’t already hard at work doing that.
In room 225 of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, Paul O’Steen is always cold and Tripp Wylie is always hot _ but it’s nothing that can’t be settled by rock-paper-scissors.
The air conditioner is next to the chair, which is next to the couch, which is crammed between the wall and the other bunk in the small room.
It’s just how Wylie wants it _ because it is just how his friends Justin Anderson and Travis Cale left it.
Anderson and Cale died in the beach house fire that early Sunday morning. Their friend Wylie was staying at the beach house, too, but he survived the inferno by leaping from a third-story window into a saltwater canal.
Anderson and Cale, both SAE brothers, lived in room 225 _ where they hosted Mario Kart parties on their Nintendo 64.
During most of the year after their deaths, the room was unoccupied _ except for Cale and Anderson’s stuff. It was moved out gradually.
This fall, after talking it over with his parents and counselor, Wylie moved in.
He sleeps on Cale’s old bunk. It still carries a message, written on it in pencil shortly after the fire: “I love you Travis.”
“I haven’t had a single bad moment in this room,” Wylie said. “It’s a little safe haven for me.”
The fraternity house has been a safe haven for many young men this year. In the months after the deaths of Cale, Anderson and William Rhea in the beach house fire, two other brothers were killed in car accidents.
Timothy “T.C.” Cox, 19, of Murrells Inlet, S.C., was killed in a car wreck June 7 in Georgetown County, S.C.
Four months later, Ryan DeLoach, 20, was killed in a car wreck in Pawleys Island, S.C. Another fraternity member, Eugene “Stone” Miller, was driving and later charged with felony DUI, according to Cpl. Paul Brothers with the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
DeLoach would have turned 21 on Tuesday. That night, SAE pledges lit candles in front of the fraternity house at USC’s Greek Village in the shape of “21″ to honor him.
While five of the fraternity brothers have died in less than a year, their memories still live at the SAE house.
As you walk in the front door of the frat house, on the right is a portrait of Rhea, Anderson and Cale.
Rhea is wearing a tie, pulled loose to show an unbuttoned collar, and smiles without showing his teeth.
Anderson has his arms around the shoulders of the other two, while Cale is to Anderson’s right, wearing a backward red baseball cap with his left hand in his pocket.
Aside from Anderson’s haircut _ which Wylie says is too much of a “bowl cut” _ the artist got it just right, Wylie said.
Some in SAE, including the new pledge classes, never knew Anderson or Cale. But a guy who wants to join the fraternity had better get to know them first.
Pledges have to be accepted by the brothers. One of the ways they do that is to earn points on a test by answering questions about the brothers, and Anderson, Cale and Rhea are not excluded.
“They still have to know these guys, where they are from and who their big brothers are,” said Neese, the fraternity president.
They’ll get to know more about them Thursday night at the Carolina Remembrance Concert at the fountain in Five Points _ which is serving as USC’s memorial for the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 28 fire.
“We don’t want to do too many other small things along the way. We want to save up for this big thing,” Wylie said. “We think this concert is probably going to have the biggest impact.”
The motto of Tri Delta sorority is: “Let us steadfastly love one another.”
After the Ocean Isle Beach tragedy, where three of its members _ Lauren Mahon, Cassidy Pendley and Allison Walden _ lost their lives, the USC Tri Delta chapter put words into action.
“Dealing with death is going to be difficult no matter what, but losing three is incomprehensible,” said Leslie Coones, the current USC Tri Delta chapter president. “We felt numb.”
Instead of isolating themselves, the chapter reached out to the bereaved families, extending love and support to those lost in pain and grief.
Two days after the fire, the doorbell rang at the home where Cassidy Pendley’s mother, Lisa Evert, was staying. Her oldest daughter Carly, also a USC Tri Delt, answered the door. Six of her sorority sisters embraced her, with tears.
“I felt the Delta love the minute they arrived,” Evert said. “Such young girls to face death with such grace _ I know grownups who couldn’t do it.”
In the days that followed, rotating shifts of Tri Delts cleaned the house, made sure the family ate and kept Pendley occupied.
“It was unexplainable _ their support and love and outreach, the way they treated my mom and the way they took care of me,” Pendley said.
At the multiple funerals, sorority members delivered eulogies, sang and showed up by the busloads.
“For Tri Delta, it’s never been as much about Tri Delta as about the young people who died and their families,” said Tracy Bender, chapter advisor.
The news of the fire hit the USC Tri Delta community on the day in 2007 when the chapter would have gathered to initiate its newest pledge class, to which Cassidy Pendley and Mahon belonged. (Walden would have participated as a fully initiated sister.)
When the rescheduled ceremony took place about two weeks later, both women were posthumously inducted. Evert was there to witness the ceremony and was made an honorary member.
“It was so moving,” Evert said.
And while the USC Tri Delta chapter reached out to the families, others reached out to them.
People from the community and from the rest of the USC campus, both Greek and non-Greek, sent cards, flowers and offered assistance. Tri Delta alumnae and members arrived at the house from all over the country. Counselors and clergy offered their support.
Patients from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, for which Tri Delta raises money each year, drew pictures and sent them to the chapter. One drawing hangs in the chapter’s dining room as a special reminder of the outpouring of love they received.
In the weeks and months that followed, the families continued to receive phone calls and letters from Tri Delta members.
“They’ve stayed in continual touch,” said Kaaren Mann, the mother of Mahon. “They let me know they’re thinking of her.”
Over the summer, a number of USC Tri Delta members accompanied Mann to Washington to show support for the fire safety legislation Mann now advocates to honor her daughter and keep others from suffering the same devastating loss.
On the anniversary of the fire on Tuesday, the USC Tri Delta chapter will hold a private ceremony officially remembering their sisters. In candlelight they will dedicate an oak tree planted amid a bed of pansies at the sorority house to honor the three fallen sisters.
“Knowing that people cared was important a year ago,” said Tracy Bender, the Tri Delta chapter advisor. “It will continue to be important for the rest of these women’s lives that were so affected by this.”
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© 2008, The State (Columbia, S.C.).
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