Convention Brain is a malady that is hard to explain to those who have never been at a fraternity or sorority convention. It is my excuse for being a day late with Founders’ Day greetings for Sigma Chi and Sigma Tau Gamma. Sigma Chi was founded on June 28, 1855 and Sigma Tau Gamma on June 28, 1920.
Sigma Chi was founded at Miami University in Miami, Ohio. It is one of the Miami Triad. Sigma Tau Gamma was founded at Central Missouri State Teachers College, now the University of Central Missouri, in Warrenton, Missouri. Warrenton is where the fraternity headquarters is located.
With general session starting in less than an hour, I offer this old favorite.
Garland “Jake” Stahl was perhaps the most famous of the University of Illinois’ early athletes. He was the captain of the 1902 Illini football team as well as a star on the baseball team. A member of the Kappa Kappa Chapter of Sigma Chi, his nickname “Jake” was given to him by a chapter member.
At Homecoming 1922, shortly after his death, the chapter’s alumni reminisced about their departed brother. One told the story of his nickname, “Garland Stahl came over from Elkhart (Illinois), and he was as green a country boy as they make ‘em. In his freshman year he joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and as he played the cornet, he was immediately made a member of the house orchestra. One night a special feature at the house was to be an orchestra program, but when the time came to begin, Stahl was nowhere to be found. The fellows searched the house and finally found him hiding away on the second floor. They dragged him down and asked him what the trouble was. ‘Aw, I ain’t got no lip,’ said Stahl, and he started to walk away, when Jack Allen, 1902, one of the musicians, stopped him with, ‘Come on, ya darn old hay jake, and play anyway.’ Stahl played, but from that time on everyone who had heard the affair called him ‘Jake’ until it just grew into his name.” (The Sigma Chi Quarterly, November 1922, 42(1), p. 62).
At a home game with Michigan in 1903, Stahl hit a game-winning homer “so hard and so high that it struck amid the upper limbs of a tree almost down to the football field.” The soft maple tree became known as the “Jake Stahl Tree” until the late 1940s when it was cut down because of advanced decay.
In 1903, after graduating, Stahl joined the Boston Red Sox as a first baseman. Later he was transferred to Washington, Chicago, New York and then back to Washington as player- manager. He went back to the Red Sox as manager.
In 1906, he married Jennie Mahan, a classmate and a member of the Delta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta at the University of Illinois. Her father was founder and president of the Washington Park National Bank in Chicago. In the off-season, Stahl worked for the bank. Later he became the bank’s president but his health failed. The family moved to the West Coast in an unsuccessful effort to regain his health. He died on September 18, 1922. At his interment in Chicago, his Sigma Chi chapter placed on his grave a large white cross of Sigma Chi roses. Stahl had been a loyal Kappa Kappa alumnus, donating generously to the building fund and giving the chapter a Victrola.
Garland “Jake” Stahl
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
