In November 1888, several graduate and undergraduate students at Johns Hopkins University resolved to procure a Charter from Alpha Delta Phi. After overcoming determined opposition by several Alpha Delts in the faculty and after obtaining the support of several prominent Brothers in the Baltimore area, they petitioned the Executive Council for a Charter. Once again, they encountered resistance, but, with the help of Brothers from Phi Kappa, they were able to persuade all of the Chapters and all members of the Executive Council to consent to the institution of a Johns Hopkins Chapter. After almost a year’s efforts, during which the petitioners took the name Alpha Delta Phi Epsilon (Aspiro Dum Expiro: while there is life, there is hope), nine Johns Hopkins men were initiated under the auspices of the Executive Council and in the presence of nearly 100 Brothers, young and old, from all parts of the country, in midnight ceremonies at Yale University. Within a week thereafter, three more Brothers were initiated into the Chapter. By 1893, the Chapter was well established at the University.

From such difficult beginnings grew an active Chapter whose contributions to the University, the City, the State, and the Nation have been distinguished. At various times since the Chapter’s inception its members have been Presidents of the University, Chairman and members of its Board of Trustees, members of its faculty at the School of Medicine and among the Faculty at Homewood, and always-generous contributors to its material prosperity. Its Brothers have been prominent in medicine, banking, the law, journalism, publishing, music and the arts, collegiate and secondary athletics, municipal government, engineering, and the physical sciences, real estate and the ministry.

Brothers of the Active Chapter almost annually have been members of: Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi and other academic honorary societies; Tudor & Stuart Club, a literary society composed of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students; the editorial board of every undergraduate publication; the governing and financial administrative agencies of the undergraduate body; and several varsity teams. The Brothers have made the greatest sacrifice in each of the two World Wars and during the Korean War, and their memories are honored in many ways by the University’s annual awards and prizes. Of a total of 24 buildings at the Homewood campus of the University, 5 are names for Brothers or families of Brothers who have been Brothers of Alpha Delta Phi, both at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere.

Although the Chapter became inactive in 1969, at a time when Fraternities and the establishment as a whole were under fire, through the undaunted and imaginative efforts of Robert S. Price, Ken 1958, Robert G. McKelvey, Mid 1959, Gordon M.F. Stick, IV, JH 1954, William E. Millard, Ill 1980, and a host of other Alumni from various Chapters, the Chapter was reconstituted, a spacious house was purchased next to the campus and its Charter restored at the Convention in 1982. It has now resumed its former status as a major and important influence at Johns Hopkins.