I never heard the name Austin Peay until I moved to southern Illinois. It’s mentioned frequently on local news, especially the Paducah station, during the sports update. Austin Peay State University, or “Austin P.” as some sportscasters call it, is located in Clarksville, Tennessee. I figured the university was named for a person, but I gave it little thought. It turns out that the person it is named for was initiated into the Centre College chapter of Kappa Alpha Order.
Kappa Alpha Order was founded at Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia on December 21, 1865. Its founders are James Ward Wood, William Archibald Walsh, William Nelson Scott and Stanhope McClelland Scott. Samuel Zenas Ammen, an 1866 initiate, who had fought in the war, is revered as a “Practical Founder.” Ammen’s “constant refinement of the ritual and creation of the constitution, by-laws, grip, symbols and regalia of the Order, along with his lifelong commitment,” afforded him that honor, according to the fraternity’s website. Robert E. Lee, the President of Washington College when the fraternity was founded, was named a “Spiritual Founder” at the 1923 convention.
Its original name was Phi Kappa Chi. Phi Kappa Psi was the first fraternity to have a chapter at Washington College and that organization protested the similar sounding name. The fraternity took on the name Kappa Alpha in April of 1866. Although the organization changed its name early in its history, it is sometimes confused with Kappa Alpha Society, one of the Union Triad, founded at Union College in 1825.
Austin Peay was the Governor of Tennessee from 1923 until 1927 when he died in office. Austin Peay Normal School was established in 1927 as a two-year junior college and teacher-training institution. In 1943, its name was changed to Austin Peay State University. Its sports teams are the Governors and the Lady Governors.
On November 19, 2011, the Zeta Tau chapter of Kappa Alpha Order was chartered at Austin Peay State University. It is the fraternity’s first active chapter on a campus bearing the name of an alumnus of the fraternity. Additionally, the fraternity was given Peay’s Kappa Alpha Order badge by the family and it is on display in the fraternity’s headquarters in Lexington, Virginia.
