The Frat Pack

Like a favorite college t-shirt, the eternal brotherhood between most fraternity members inevitably fades after graduation. And given the haze of activities that traditionally define Greek life, that’s probably for the best.

Happy exceptions exist, of course, and one of those, Omega Psi Phi, will host its 19th Annual Holmes/Omega Scholarship Golf Tournament July 8 at Black Bear Golf Club in Parker. “We have a unique perspective in that we’re more active as post-graduates than we were while we were in college,” says Greg Labrie, an Adams County civil engineer and director of public relations for the fraternity’s eight-state 8th District. “I think its because our frontal lobes have developed since then,” he adds, giving Golf Committee Co-Chairs Chip Boykin and Earl Conway a good laugh between sips of coffee in Black Bear’s dining room.

They are three of 200 Denver Metro area men who belong to the first international fraternal organization founded on the campus of a historically black college. Omega Psi Phi, whose motto is “Friendship Is Essential To The Soul,” started in 1911 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and its “Cardinal Principles” of “Manhood, Scholarship, Perseverance and Uplift” have shaped and inspired hundreds of thousands of Brothers, including Langston Hughes, Michael Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal and former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder.

Greg Labrie, Chip Boykin, Earl Conway

Local Omegas include ex-Bronco Wesley Woodyard and the late Clarence F. Holmes, a prominent Denver dentist, co-founder of the Colorado-Wyoming branch of the NAACP—and the man after whom the Holmes/Omega Scholarship takes its name. Since the scholarship’s inception in 1965, Denver-area students have received more than $200,000 in four-year scholarships, and the Omegas are currently assisting six students at a level of $1,500 per student per year.

This year, a total of at least $6,000 will go to five applicants, as always, on the basis of academic performance and promise, financial need, extracurricular activities, well-rounded personality and strength of character. Students have to maintain a B average for the scholarship to renew every year.

The scholarship is just one of a plethora of ways the organization makes what Boykin calls “an investment in our young people.” The Omega Leadership Academy, which has 15 to 25 middle- and high-school students signed up on a regular basis, mentors them through visits to colleges, large and small businesses and community organizations. The Omegas regularly engage in community service projects like painting homes and performing yardwork for the elderly.

A healthcare executive with a Masters in Public Policy from the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Boykin also sees the golf tournament as a way to invest in community wellbeing. He’s working with potential sponsors to set up free screenings for hypertension, diabetes and certain cancers and other diseases. “It’s preventative for everyone in the community—black, white, Asian, Latino,” he stresses. “Getting people to come in and get tested is one of the biggest challenges in the healthcare industry. What better way to do it than to attract people through their love of golf?”

Labrie and Boykin both credit Conway, an Aurora-based financial advisor, for keeping the tournament going through the economic downturn. They kid him that it’s because he wins every year, but having had a fraternity scholarship help pay for his education at Mississippi College, Conway knows the value of the event. “The most important investment any of us can make,” he says, “is in human capital.”

More info: holmesomega.org/golf

This article appears in the June 2016 issue of Colorado AvidGolfer.

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.