Lisa's Alpha Phi Omega Page

An APO is ignorant and has a distorted sense of values. He is so ignorant that he doesn�t know something is impossible and he goes ahead and does it. He is so backward that he still believes in the ideas that made his country great. He denies that proposition that it is not what you know but whom you know that counts and thinks that success comes to the man who can deliver the goods. He is so mixed up that he thinks it is better to be right than rich, and that he can rise highest by staying on the level. He thinks it is better to be free than secure - and he looks for a helping hand at the end of his own arm.

An APO is so inexperienced that he can�t solve the sticky problem by sitting in an air-conditioned office and drifting off into the cool stratosphere of abstract thought. He has to put his shoulder to the wheel and his hand in God�s hand, and pray like a lost sinner while he totes the barges and lifts the bales.

You can�t recognize an APO just looking at him. To an underprivileged child at Christmas he looks like Santa Claus. To the lost, bewildered freshman at registration time he looks like a Good Samaritan and his Father Confessor. To the thousands who see him sweating under the Spring sun to get the vote tallied he looks like Uncle Sam in a limp shirt. To the harassed, overworked Scout Executive, the APO ever eager to take on the job no one else had time for looks like the Scout Oath and Law personified. To a worried university administrator he is an army of help or a leader unafraid to soil his hands with the clean dirt of hard work.

And even if you know an APO today, you won�t know him tomorrow. Today, in order to stay in school, he may be an obscure part-time clerk; but after a while as an APO, after becoming aware of getting into the bloodstream of civic affairs � he�ll graduate and soon will be hiring and firing clerks by the dozen. But meanwhile he�ll spend time on committees, or running around on cold nights working on some kind of project, or standing on the street corner telling people where to vote and come, and listen, and be concerned. And he�ll start getting public recognition that he is not actively seeking. People he doesn�t know from Adam will call him by name on the street; and he�ll be on speaking terms with hundreds he never know before; his professors and his boss will begin to realize what a valuable person he is; and his fellow citizens and classmates will be turning to him for leadership. And he�ll be lucky if his best girl thinks enough of him (or his wife loves him enough) not to gripe like the dickens because he doesn�t spend more time with her.

But his real reward will be the comfortable realization that he is doing things that build communities and states and nations. He can say with solemn pride that while others stayed in the background, he came forward and threw down the gauntlet to the problems and injustices that hung over his campus and community. He can say that while others followed the crowd, he followed his conscience; and that he was working to keep every dot and dash in the Constitution while others were concerned only with putting kudos in the campus yearbook or with putting dollar signs on the ledger. When some merely moaned �We have a problem, what shall we do?� he was ready to step in. While others just pointed at the dirt, he was swinging a broom.
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J. Crozier Brown
Past President, Alpha Rho, U. Texas

Leadership:
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." ~Max De Pree
"In simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up, and goes." ~John Erksine
"The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself." ~Blaine Lee

Friendship:
"When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy."
"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything." ~Muhammad Ali
"The only way to have a friend is to be one." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Service
"You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself." ~Harry Firestone
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." ~Theodore Roosevelt
"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." ~John Wesley