Alpha Tau Omega - National History

Otis Allan Glazebrook

Born in 1845, Glazebrook subsequently earned promotion to Cadet Adjutant, the highest staff position of the cadet corps, and graduated first in his class in 1866. He had planned a career in law but, within a year, his interest in church work prevailed and he enrolled at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, Alexandria, VA. Ordained in 1869, he served a variety of pastorates until his 1885 appointment as rector of St. John's Church, Elizabeth, N.J.

Forty-five years in the ministry, coupled with the friendship of President Woodrow Wilson, led to Dr. Glazebrook's 1914 appointment as U.S. Consul at Jerusalem. Soon after, World War I began and he was entrusted with the interests of eight nations in the Holy Land.

In 1920 Otis A. Glazebrook was transferred to Nice, France, where he served as Consul until 1929, when he retired. This man of the world died April 26, 1931.

Alfred Marshall

Alfred Marshall was born on Christmas Day, 1845, the son of a British tobacco grower at Richmond, VA. A classmate at Tighe's Private School described how he ran away to the battlefield at Seven Pines when he was 16 years old, and "participated in the fight with the gun of a dead confederate soldier."

Graduating third in his class in 1866, he taught mathematics and tactics for a year at V.M.I. and was briefly associated with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Co. Marshall then became assistant engineer with the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad, supervising construction of 20 miles of track from Tensaw to Mobile through a swampy and malaria-infested area. While so engaged, Alfred Marshall contracted yellow fever and died September 22, 1870.

Erskine Mayo Ross

Erskine Mayo Ross, born in Culpepper County, VA., in 1845, entered V.M.I. in 1860 and helped to train recruits at Camp Lee for General "Stonewall" Jackson, who cited Ross for bravery at the Battle of Cedar Run. He moved to California after the war, studied law at night, and was admitted to the bar in 1869.

Elected a Justice of the Supreme Court of California 10 years later, he was reelected in 1882. He was appointed a judge of the U.S. Southern District of California in 1886 and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1895. He was the founder of the city of Glendale, California. Rossmoyne, a suburb of Glendale, perpetuates his name and fame. Erskine Mayo Ross died December 10, 1928.

Possessed of personal courage and strong quiet judgement, Judge Erskine Mayo Ross left his Fraternity a $5,000 bequest, which established the ATO Foundation Fund.

EARLY HISTORY

Alpha Tau Omega began as an idea in the mind of a young Civil War veteran who wanted peace and reconciliation. His name was Otis Allan Glazebrook. His people were defeated, many of their cities burned, much of their countryside ravaged. But Glazebrook, who had helped bury the dead of both sides, believed in a better future. He saw the bitterness and hatred that followed the silencing of the guns and knew that a true peace would come not from force of law, but rather from with the hearts of men who were willing to work to rekindle a spirit of brotherly love.

Glazebrook, deeply religious at age 19, believed that younger men like himself might be more willing to accept, forgive, and reunite with the Northern counterparts if motivated by Christian, brotherly love. But he needed an organization, a means of gathering and organizing like-minded people.

In Richmond, Glazebrook consulted with University of Virginia alumni who furnished further information concerning fraternities. He discovered that they were not Greek in name only, but Greek throughout. Their mottoes, besides being written in Greek, reflected Greek ideals. Greek philosophy, sometimes tinged with the medieval mysteries and Masonic lore, waste the cultural ideal of the fraternities.

The name came spontaneously. He remembered the ancient insignia of the Church, the Tau Cross subjoined by Alpha and Omega. "Alpha" and "Omega" signify to the Christian absolute plenitude or perfection. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Joined with the Cross the whole signifies that Christ is all in all, the beginning and end of salvation.

Having projected a Christian fraternity and appropriated a distinctively Christian symbol for its name, the Cross naturally was its logical emblem. In the center he inscribed a crescent, three stars, the Tau Cross and clasped hands. Upon the upper and lower vertical arms he placed the Greek letters for Alpha and Omega and upon the horizontal arms, the Omega and Alpha letters respectively.

On September 11, 1865, Glazebrook invited two close friends, Alfred Marshall and Erskine Mayo Ross, to his home at 114 East Clay Street in Richmond, Virginia. There, in the rear parlor, he read them the Constitution he had written and invited them to sign. As they did, Alpha Tau Omega was born. It was the first fraternity founded after the Civil War, and the first sign of Greek life in the old Confederacy.