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On April 3, 1976, Henry Lorent Leeb, a 1915 graduate of MIT, was initiated into the Alpha Delta Phi, sixty-five years after he had first set out to become an AD. And in what proved to be the last three weeks of his life, he saw that his dream of bringing Alpha Delta Phi to MIT would at last become reality.

The history of the Lambda Phi Chapter begins in 1906, when a small group of MIT students, aided by a few Alpha Delta alumni from Brown, founded the Lambda Phi Fraternity. Among the original purposes set forth in the First Constitution was the goal “to establish at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston, Massachusetts, a chapter of the Fraternity of Alpha Delta Phi.” Among all existing fraternities, Alpha Delta was the obvious choice because of its decades long history of leadership and prominence in the fraternal movement.

A period was spent by the Lambda Phi Brothers building strength, and by 1911, their “Alpha Delta Phi Committee” would become very active. Henry Leeb joined the Lambda Phi that year and took the lead in the effort to lobby the Chapters for support. The Executive Council was petitioned for a Charter at several points over the next few years.

But in 1911, AD and MIT were very different institutions. The literary tradition was not as yet inclined to make room for the physical and social sciences. MIT was more of an engineering trade school than the center of science and technology that it is now.

Henry and his Brothers petitioned in vain. Its original purpose unfulfilled, Lambda Phi stopped initiating in 1925. In the hearts and minds of its Alumni, however, Lambda Phi remained alive as they went on to prove their merit as worthy sons of MIT.

Most especially, Henry Leeb never forgot the original aim and became a lifelong friend of Alpha Delta Phi and of many individual Alpha Delts. Yet it was not until 1975 that solid progress would be made.

At that time, Brother Burton S. Price, HAM 1923, brought Henry’s story to the attention of the Board of Governors. Brother Price produced a mass of correspondence, which he, the Executive Council, and the Board had had with Henry Leeb over the years. This time Henry’s story was heard with great interest. The Board’s Expansion Committee led by Brother Vice president Robert G. McKelvey, MID 1959, recognized MIT as a logical candidate for expansion, given the prominence of the Institute, the strength of its fraternity system, and the obvious tenacity of its Alumni support.

Henry helped organize a group of Boston area Alpha Delta and Lambda Phis to start a Chapter at MIT. In February 1976, the President and Treasurer of the Board of Governors met with MIT’s administration. They were told the Fraternities at MIT, thirty strong at the time, were full to capacity, that there was room for one more, and that Alpha Delta Phi would be welcome, particularly a Lambda Phi Chapter.

After an examination of the facts surrounding Henry’s involvement with Alpha Delta Phi, and with the new commitment of the Board to colonizing MIT, the Board authorized Brother McKelvey to arrange for Henry’s initiation at the Middletown Chapter. On April 3, 1976, Henry reached his lifelong goal, but his own initiation was only half of Henry’s dream.

It remained then to assemble a group of undergraduates who would become the nucleus of the new Chapter. Plans were launched, and on the night of April 23, 1976, Brother McKelvey was able to call Henry to tell him that the group that would become the original ten Brothers of Lambda Phi’s second generation had committed themselves to the Lambda Phi Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi.

On Friday night, May 21 1976, the Board formally pledged the men who would become the Lambda Phi Chapter. Sadly, Henry Leeb could not preside over the ceremony he made possible. Brother Leeb had become ill, and died a short time later.

Nonetheless, the force set in motion seventy years earlier could not be deflected. The Original Ten occupied the new Lambda Phi House in September 1976 and immediately began to rush new members. The new Chapter received its Charter on November 13, 1976, at which time the Ten were initiated into the Alpha Delta Phi. By February 1977, the Chapter was ready to initiate an additional twelve men. By then, all of the Lambda Phi’s of the First Generation had also been inducted, some of them posthumously, by special permission of the Board of Governors. From that point on, the Chapter grew steadily in strength and has become a major force and influence on the MIT campus.

Although Henry is no longer with us, his memory lives on through the continuing saga of the Lambda Phi, and in the respect and gratitude we owe him for preserving the Brotherhood we share.