I joined Phi Gamma Delta in 1997.  I was a junior.  My foray to Marquette University in frozen Milwaukee had ended in a broken heart and $30,000 in debt from just a single year of study.  I had followed a girl.  And it had failed, predictably so.  Still, I believe it was better to see it through.  I’m a romantic at heart, I guess.  Afterwards, I came home – to Stillwater – where I had always returned when life had given me a hard lesson and re-enrolled in Oklahoma State University.

In my absence, nearly all of my high school friends in one way or another had joined up with this fraternity known as Fiji.  A fraternity.  It was nearly a dirty word to me.  I hated the stereotype – drunken, half-witted alpha males – but I was told that this one was different.  This house was special.  It was blessed with young men that had true character – the kind of character and conviction that could change your life if you let it.  With reluctance, I signed and moved into the chapter house as a pledge.

Throughout my pledgeship, I looked to the brothers for proof of this character.  I studied them intently with a cynical eye.  I was surprised as I found many young men with considerable intelligence and promising talent.  Young men that I was proud to call friends, friends that I still keep to this day.  Yet among them all there was one person that stood before the rest.  I could see in him something else, something special,

His name was Wade.

He made me laugh.  He became my friend.  He became my roommate and my brother.  He changed my heart.

THE DAILY O’COLLEGIAN, October 29, 1998

Wade Scruggs, 21, was driving west on Lake McMurtry Road when he apparently swerved to miss a deer, and his vehicle rolled, said Trooper Todd Hatchett of Oklahoma Highway Patrol Thursday.  Scruggs was ejected from the car and killed …

The life of a pledge in any fraternity is always a trying time.  We were the lowest on the totem and so much of what is desire has to be earned.  Dinner service, house cleanings, pledge tests, coat and tie, and more.  We were united in our pledge class throughout all of it and often times pitted against the brotherhood, each having faced the same trials that we now faced.

There are two types of newly initiated brothers.  These are the same ones that were struggling through the same experiences and challenges as my pledge class was now, only just a year earlier.  The memory of their own pledgeship is still fresh in their minds.  There are those that want to make it as hard as possible, eager and excited to exercise their new power over the next batch of pledges.  On the reverse, there those new brothers that feel sympathy for the pledges and secretly try to make their life easier.

That was Wade.

He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.  The other thing about Wade was that he was hilarious.  I watched him work a room with his big grin and mischievous eyes with amazement.  He was a natural.  People just liked him and desired his friendship.  I was no different.  There was one late night that I was up and about in the house, avoiding my studies as usual, when Jonathan and I convinced Wade to come to Short Cakes with us.  Short Cakes is a local, hole in the wall, all-night cafe.  For $1.30 you could get a stack of French toast and a side of stove grease.  It was priceless.

We were in our small booth, eating our pancakes and omelets.  The pledges sat on one side and Wade on the other.  During our conversation, Wade suddenly pointed at the two of us and said in the form of a blunt confession, “I think you are the two funniest guys in the house.   While we’ve been eating, I’ve been nervously wracking my brain for anything funny to say just to keep up.”  Of course, we burst out laughing.  That’s exactly what both Jonathan and I had been doing.  Neither of us would have had the courage to admit it.

But that was Wade.

… Brian J. Grimes, Fiji President,  said Scruggs lived his life to the fullest and had fun, even in the hardest situations.  Grimes said he will remember Scrugg’s ‘funny little smile he always had on his face’ …

There was more to Wade than just his ability to make people laugh.  He had this rare quality, particularly rare among young men, that made him seem like he had his life figured out.  Not life in the mundane sense – what major, where to live, what girls to date.  No, I mean in the most important way.  Wade had an uncommon wisdom.  I guess you might say he was an old soul.  His faith, his beliefs, were the bedrock in his heart.  Unchanging, unshakable.  He was the model for which I aspired.  Wade was blessed with the heart of a servant, never judgmental, never pushy.  It was most evident in the way he interacted with other people.

My own journey in faith, towards an understanding of Christ, has always been short bursts of keen awareness followed by long bouts of lethargy.  College was perhaps the slowest maturation of my spirituality.  Whenever I have the most time to become the person that I want to be, that’s when I’ll spend the least time working on it.  After pledgeship and after I had become a brother, I went to the Christian bookstore and bought some Bible studies by Max Lucado.  I had been inspired by Wade and his un-invasive way of witnessing his values.  It was important that I start examining myself and what it meant to be a Christian, a Catholic.

I started with the Gospel of John.  There were several lessons that I was supposed to work through weekly, but I was lax in my efforts.  I’d pick up the book, read some, and then forget it again for a few weeks.  My progress through the book was in short bursts, as was everything that I tried to do in those days that was important.  The last that I read was Chapter 7 before I put it down again in my distraction.  There were video games, girls, and movies.  I was young and there would always be more time to get to the serious stuff.

Always though I was thinking about that little Bible study and eventually getting back to it.  Maybe after Homecoming.

… Grimes said he will remember Scrugg’s ‘Christ-like attitude’ he took toward life.  ’He had a way of meeting people and bringing them closer to God, and he could do it with anybody,’ he said …

That year we did Homecoming with the Thetas.  Among them was a young girl, pretty and adventurous.  She crossed paths with Wade and they started dating.  He hardly ever went out with girls as he possessed by an awkward shyness.  Wade also knew innately the type of woman he was looking for and could settle for nothing less.  Passionate about her beliefs and centered on faith.  They hit it off and the entire fraternity immediately began whispering: ‘She was the one.’  It was evident in Wade’s eyes.  They had a sparkle like a man in love.

One night we were all sitting in Wade’s room, 2 Beta, watching Friends.  The late October air was cool and invigorating.  The leaves had fallen from the trees in a golden litter.  Wade only had a few moments before he was going to go pick up the One and go on an impromptu date.  His parents had given him a red SUV for his Junior year after hoofing it for the first two.  It was his pride and joy.  When he stepped out, we teased him as was our right as bachelors.  Some of the guys gave him a hug as part of a simple ritual that had developed over the semester.  He stepped out of the dark room and our eyes returned to the television.

It was the last time I saw Wade.

After an hour of hanging around the fraternity house, I went home.  To be honest, I snuck out.  It was the last night of Homecoming, the big push, and I didn’t want to work anymore.  I had put in a lot of hours on the Homecoming Sign for the first part of the competition.  So I decided to go home and goof off instead.  Later that night, the phone rang.  Mike Jaskowiak, my pledgebrother, was on the other end.  His voice was broken and he was having trouble speaking.  ”It’s … Wade.  He’s dead.  You should come over here.  Right now.”  I couldn’t believe it.  I prayed immediately that it wasn’t true.

I got to the house and the truth was all too evident.  The brothers were in their rooms, the halls were empty.  Wade was gone.  The memories of that night mix and turn in my head even now as I try to remember what happened when.  I remember Travis Cambern walking around with a Bible, praying with people as he did.  I remember the look on Michael Hartmeyer’s face as he waited for Wade’s bestfriend, Bo, to reappear to tell him the news.  No one had been able to get in touch with him.  I remember sitting with Elizabeth Karns on the driveway as I tried to find an explanation for what happened.  I thought of Todd, Wade’s older brother and a member of the fraternity, how he must feel.  I thought of my own brother.  I remember seeing Jaskowiak at the front door of the house and him hugging me.

I have never wept so openly in my life.

It was the last night of Homecoming and hundreds of hours had been poured into our decoration.  We no longer cared.  As we put our arms around each other, pulling our circle tighter together, the first floor began to fill up.  Members from every fraternity and sorority on campus filled our halls and worked through the night to finish the work we could not.  The AGR’s showed up with a team of welders to finish the steel framework.  More sorority sisters than had ever been fit into our little chapter house sat pomping and painting throughout the night.  For some reason, I was surprised to see so many people that Wade had touched.

I went out with a small can of paint and a brush with BJ Roberts.  I found our Homecoming Sign on the library lawn among the others, the one that I had worked on for hours by myself in the basement.  I painted a few words in white on the sign.  ”Wade W. Scruggs.  A True Brother.”  It was all I could think to do.  Some way to commemorate this beautiful person that had just left us.

… The night Scruggs died, most of the fraternities and sororities came to the Fiji house to offer condolences and help with homecoming welding and pomping, he said.  Grimes said most fraternities and sororities placed memorials such as crosses in their yards …

The night passed into early dawn.  My tears dried and only questions remained.  How could this happen?  Why did this happen to Wade?  He was one of the people with the most to offer?  He had it figured out.  All of it was so unfair.  It was so sudden and impossible to understand.  I thought of my Bible study, sitting at home next to my bed.  Max Lucado on the Book of John.  In other times in my life, when things have been hard, I find that there are whispers for me to hear if I will only listen.  Whispers that will guide, teach, heal.  I had a feeling that this was one of those moments.  I just knew.  Or perhaps I desperately hoped.

For the last month, my bookmark had been sitting on the last chapter that I had read.  Chapter 7.  I knew somehow that Chapter 8 would mean something.  It was that whisper at the back of my head.  Take a look.  I got home and immediately went to my room.  I picked up the small Bible Study and flipped to the table of contents and looked down to Chapter 8.

This is what I saw:

I wept as I read the chapter.  I understood.  Wade was not gone.  He had gone home.

It was then that my heart changed.  My own understanding of Jesus and God and faith and spirituality.  It all changed.  When God takes a moment to tap you on the shoulder, you know it.  You can feel it.  My faith changed, matured.  I try to make it my bedrock as it was Wade’s.  I try to make it my strength as it was Wade’s.  It has been nearly 13 years since his passing.  I find that I still think of him often – smiling and laughing.

And it makes me smile, as well.

… A candle burns in memory of Wade Scruggs in the entrance hall at the Phi Gamma Delta house. The Fiji member and public relations sophomore was killed in a one-car accident Thursday night.  The candle glows in the center of a star that is inside an inlaid diamond in the hall floor.

‘He is always with us,’ Grimes said, ‘and the candle will always be burning.’