Every Moment Counts – Sympathy and Heartfelt Condolences

It’s Friday. I haven’t accomplished nearly all that I wanted to do this week, but the fact that I keep plugging along should mean something. Life can change on a dime and this week’s Facebook and Twitter posts reflected that.

Just after Wednesday’s post was published, the news came across the internet that WDBJ7 reporter, Alison Parker, and cameraman Adam Ward were killed as they were filming a story. Parker was a member of the Alpha Phi chapter at James Madison University and was serving as an alumnae advisor to the chapter at Virginia Tech. My condolences to both their friends and family. 

The lily of the valley is Alpha Phi’s flower.

Yesterday, Alpha Tau Omega posted that Amos Burns, a past national officer, had passed away. He was one of three ATOs who were in attendance at the Centennial in 1965 and at the Sesquicentennial in 2015. At the 150th celebration earlier this month, he introduced himself to me and it was an honor and a thrill to meet an alumnus whose devotion to his fraternity was abiding and true. His love and respect for his fraternity and his ATO brothers seems to me to have begun the moment he was pledged to the fraternity and did not stop until he was no longer of this world. ATO’s values and ideals were his own. My heartfelt sympathy to his family, friends, and fraternity. This is from the University of Alabama’s ATO chapter website:

Born on February 13, 1928, in Mississippi, Amos D. Burns served two years in the U.S. Navy, and was initiated into Alpha Tau Omega Epsilon Epsilon (Mississippi State University) in 1949. Amos moved to Tuscaloosa in 1951, and worked as the Manager of Dixie Dairy Products, a central purchasing organization for 53 of the largest independent ice cream manufacturers in 13 states. Retiring from Dixie Diary Products after 40 years, he founded Amos Burns Co., Inc., an ice cream brokerage company. He has served as chapter advisor, mentor, House Corporation President, Board of Trustee Chairman, and friend to every ΑΤΩ at Alabama since the early 1950s. Amos was also involved with ΑΤΩ National as Province Chief (1963-1970), member of the High Council (1970-1978, where he was the chairman for four years), and the ΑΤΩ Foundation (1980-1985). Brother Burns is a “National Officer Emeritus” and “Chairman Emeritus of the Beta Delta Board of Trustees.” Amos received the UA Order of Omega Fraternity Advisor of the Year Award in 2007. He and his wife, Dot, have two sons who are ΑΤΩ Beta Deltas: Keith Burns, initiated 1979, and Barrett A. Burns, initiated 1982. Amos has been an active member of Calvary Baptist Church since 1951, and has held numerous leadership positions and named a Lifetime Deacon. Brother Burns has also served as President and Treasurer of the Board of Directors for Tuscaloosa’s International Friends of The University of Alabama.

The white rose is the flower of Alpha Tau Omega.

This morning, there was an instant message from my brother-in-law’s sister. I met her years ago when my husband’s sister married her brother. Later on, when our children were young, our vacations east coincided and a trip to her family’s beach home (“Uncle Brian’s beach,” as we called it) was always a highlight of our visit. She and her family were so good about accommodating the tribe that is her brother’s family by marriage. No one in her family belongs to GLOs, but she took the time to tell me this. It was a link to a fun recruitment video done by an Alpha Xi Delta chapter.

Hi. Thought of you when I saw this posted by the daughter of a good friend of mine who passed away this year from breast cancer. I worry about her daughter but from her posts since her mom’s been gone, I can tell she has so much support from her sorority.