“We were committed to being good guys, upholding the goals of the fraternity” – Bob Stevens ’48
Posted February 2nd, 2006
Robert (Bob) Stevens, Phi Kappa Sigma class of 1948, is living proof that the best things in life are free. Including a successful career in advertising, which afforded him opportunities for extensive travel and the finer things in life, Bob still appreciates the simple things. When asked about his favorite memories of his time in the Skull House, he recalls the occasions in the winter when he and his fraternity brothers rented a big dump truck and drove out into the mountains to cut down old trees. They would split the wood and bring it back to the House where the brothers enjoyed roaring fires on the coldest weekends.
“I still chopped wood, up until about ten years ago,” Bob says. “I would take my black lab out in the woods surrounding my house and chop and split wood for fun. When we moved, I left eight cords of wood cut and split and stacked outside the house!”
This native of the Forest Hills suburb of Pittsburgh arrived at Penn State in the summer of 1944. He and four others lived over a chicken coop on South Allen, and took to hanging out on the high school football field in the evening. “We played lacrosse with the varsity football team,” he says. “Some of the guys we hung around with were Phi Kappa Sigmas, and they invited us to join.”
He pledged in the fall of 1944, just after the U.S. Navy vacated the house. The pledges avoided an initiation of normal paddling by doing all the work to clean up the house. “We all moved in when the Navy left, but the pledges did all the work,” he says, with vivid recollections of sanding and varnishing the entire main floor. They also painted all the bedrooms and bathrooms on all three floors.
Bob, now 79, also recalls fondly his days with the Campus Owls band. He played tenor and baritone sax and clarinet in this group of student musicians. “We were really good and played great arrangements—all the greats: Miller, Dorsey, Basie, Ellington…the good stuff,” he says. The group usually played Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturday nights in various venues, including the Rec Hall, at country clubs and fraternity houses.
Bob still keeps in touch with the drummer from the Campus Owls, Sam Eyer. “He was a very good guy, and we became very close,” Bob says. “He was the house manager and I’m a pretty handy guy, so we did a lot of work together on the house. The two of us built a rec room in the basement—on the sly. We built a bar…shelving…all beautifully done. It took us months.” Since this new social room was “off the record,” an alarm was put in at the front door. If someone from the IFC (Inter-fraternity Council) showed up, everyone in the rec room had to keep quiet—”hold their breath”—until the IFC rep left.
Bob also remains close to his best friend from the Skull House, Fred Walker. Both Fred and Sam Eyer live outside Denver now and Bob has visited them and their wives over the years. Of the group of men that he lived with in the Skull House, Bob says, “It was a good bunch of men. We were committed to being good guys, upholding the goals of the fraternity. We conducted ourselves as gentlemen.”
Bob retired in 1996, after 49 years in advertising. He was executive vice president and general manager of an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York for 35 of those years, working primarily with the national airlines of other countries. His name appears in five different Who’s Who directories and he is a member of Alpha Delta Sigma, the national honorary society of the American Advertising Federation. “I had a very fine career,” Bob says. “It enabled me to travel extensively, to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I really enjoyed that.”
About ten years prior to his retirement, Bob set up his own ad agency, running it out of his home office. He did most of the work except for layout work and served such clients as Virgin Atlantic and Fujitsu. He has also consulted with a former client and close friend as the friend established businesses in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and here in the U.S.
Bob married his first wife during their last semester of college. “We graduated on a Saturday (in May, 1948), loaded up the car and drove to Pittsburgh, and I started work Monday morning,” he said. They had four children, but later divorced. Bob married his current wife in 1995.
Today, Bob says he does “little bits and pieces” of work from his home office, but he primarily keeps busy as a volunteer with his church and the public library of Palm Harbor, Florida, where he now lives. He is active as a volunteer tutor for the literacy council at the library and enjoys the opportunity to help others to read, write and speak English better. He says his students—all of whom are foreign-born—epitomize for him the idea that you get out of something as much as you put in. He takes great pleasure in helping them succeed in their efforts. And they have!
(Bob Stevens now lives in Palm Harbor, Florida and can be reached at 727/771-7111.)
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