What does an Omega Man do when he moves to a new city and discovers that there is no established graduate chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. in the area? This situation is hard to accept when you have been very active in the fraternity. This dilemma was peculiar and was a prevalent finding among several Ques in the local area in the early Seventies. The fraternal bond that real Brothers possess was the spark that triggered the desire and impetus to form a graduate chapter in Columbia, MD.
On a very gray and chilly wintery afternoon in January, 1975, 16 men gathered together for the first meeting in the comfort of a modest room to re-engage a bond that each had once taken separately under different circumstances and at all too different times in their lives. Most of these men had never met one another before but there existed a bond that each without question had sacrificed for in order to achieve the ultimate light as “Sons of Blood and Thunder.” This bond, the depths of which they all knew, needed no words for its spirit to regenerate. These 16 men were of different backgrounds, beliefs, philosophies and career paths, but had all come to reside in the new metro Columbia, MD area. They knew that once enjoined together as a group that bonding and regeneration would begin with the same spirit, desire, and soul that had once enraptured each of them in the swells of their youth in years past.
The genesis began on this January afternoon in 1975 with the founding of the Tau Pi Chapter. The spirit of that moment in time began to grow like wildfire throughout the community. That spirit soon turned into numbers and those numbers transformed themselves into many men of like ideals and aspirations whose calling from the bond once again surfaced and gave rise to a ground swell of synergistic unity. That spirit surfaced with permanence, in a climate where more worth was placed upon what one “did and had” than on one’s own self-worth.
Nevertheless, on April 19,1975 ,Tau Pi Chapter made its entrance, was on the scene, improved the community, and was here to stay. This was the precedence that was set for the mystique that is to follow this chapter’s name within the Second District and throughout the Fraternity.