Kappa Delta Rho was founded on the Middlebury College campus when there were three fraternities already on campus. In the fall of 1904, members of the Commons Club, led by President George E. Kimball discussed becoming a fraternity, too. Kimball, along with Irving T. Coates and John Beecher, explored the idea. After several meetings between the three, they asked seven other Commons Club members to form a new fraternity. These men were Thomas H. Bartley, Pierce W. Darrow, Benjamin E. Farr, Gideon R. Norton, Gino A. Ratti, Chester M. Walch and Roy D. Wood.
The Founders of Kappa Delta Rho. Back Row, l-t-r: Benjamin E. Farr, Chester M Walch, Gideon R. Norton, and Gino A Ratti Seated, L-t-r: Thomas H. Bartley, George E. Kimball, and Roy D. Wood
Delta Tau Delta met with a member of Kappa Delta Rho when it was a new organization on the Middlebury campus. At that point, with only one chapter, KDR was a local organization and it would have been easy to join an established fraternity. The men made the decision, according to Kimball, to “paddle our own canoe.” They took no action on Delta Tau Delta’s request.
On May 24, 1913, the second chapter of Kappa Delta Rho was founded at Cornell University in upstate New York. In 1936, a member of that chapter, Colston Estey Warne, was a co-founder of Consumers Union and served as President of its Board of Directors for 43 years; the Union is the publisher of Consumer Report. Warne’s wife, Frances Lee Corbett Warne, a Kappa Kappa Gamma, was a dietician. One of their daughters, Barbara Warne Newell, a Vassar alumna, was President of Wellesley College (1971-80) and the first female Chancellor of the State University System of Florida (1981-85).
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