Fraternity rebuilds membership

Kirksville resident George Magers received a call in early 1979 that would challenge the resilience of his agricultural science fraternity, Alpha Gamma Rho. Told to rush to his fraternity house on North Osteopathy Street, Magers pulled up to see the house burning. More than 30 of his fraternity brothers stood barefoot in the snow, many of them having come outside with nothing but the clothes they wore to bed.

"When you lose everything, and I mean everything was lost, you wonder if you're even going to be able to rebuild," Magers said.

Magers, who today works in Kirksville at Merschman Seeds and acts as AGR's financial advisor, said AGR was able to get the financial support it needed to rebuild the house through lenders. But because of changes in the mission of the University over the course of the '80s and '90s, AGR has seen a drastic decrease in members due to the reduced number of agricultural science students on campus.

"The mission [of the University] was different when I went to school there," Magers said. "Students in [AGR] at that time were several hundred, so we had a large pool to pull from. Forty to 50 members was pretty common for our chapter."

Today, the chapter functions with 13 members, a sizable improvement from the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year, when they were down to four.

Junior Adam Priest, who has been affiliated with AGR the longest of the current active members, said he's pleased to see the way the fraternity has progressed in recent years.

"When I joined, I was the fifth guy, and we had another guy graduate," Priest said. "And then we joined all these guys. I was really happy to see that growth, and I'm hoping to see it grow even more."

AGR is a unique campus organization because it is both a social and a professional fraternity. Out of 13 current members, seven are agricultural science majors and all share an interest in agriculture. AGR president junior Kurt Nagel said the fraternity is open to anybody looking to pursue a career in agriculture.

Nagel said Monsanto, a large agriculture company, has an established group of AGR alumni that helps graduates receive jobs out of college. He said AGR has built a good rapport with many agriculture companies.

"One guy was getting a job down at somewhere like [Archer Daniels Midland Company], one of those pork producers," Nagel said,. "He sat down and talked to the guy, and he told him he was in AGR, and they talked for awhile. And he said, 'Yeah, you had the job as soon as you told me that, I just wanted to talk to you."

Nagel said this is one reason their recruitment efforts have become more successful in recent years. But Nagel said they are not satisfied and are looking to continue expanding.

Although they had to sell the house on Osteopathy in 1996 due to a lack of members, Magers said they are in the beginning stages of a search for an additional house to their current one at the corner of Normal and Mulanix.

Magers said he credits some of the increase in numbers to an increase in support of the agriculture department from the Board of Regents.

Overall, Magers said he likes the direction the fraternity is headed. He said AGR avoids some of the problems caused by having a larger group of men and their egos in the same house.

"We're excited about some of the things that the boys are doing now. We've got a good size, and we're at a manageable level," Magers said.

Magers said the fraternity has been through a lot since that early morning phone call over 30 years ago.

"We've worked our way out of it, we have no debt, and now we have the guys that are really on a recruitment move," Magers said. "Hopefully it's a sign of great things to come."