If you lose touch with your college fraternity brothers after graduation, do you: a) do nothing; b) try to reconnect with them via social media or a phone call after life slows down, or c) surprise them by showing up at their house unannounced 35 years later?
If “c” sounds like the craziest choice, meet three late ’80s Sigma Phi Epsilon brothers from Ohio Northern University.
By all accounts, Dan Meek, BSME ’88, Brian Newberg, BA ’89, and Brian Keckler, BSEE ’89, are decent individuals and reputable professionals—a venture capitalist, an attorney, and a quality manager, respectively.
When the three get together? Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), the ONU fraternity brothers transform into jokesters and co-conspirators, reminiscent of their college-aged selves.
During one such gathering of the minds, on a golf course during a global pandemic, the three concocted their most harebrained scheme to date: “The Lost Brothers Project.”
Their plan? Play detective and track down the fraternity brothers they had not heard from for over three decades; pick a random weekend to show up at their home and “surprise” them; spend the night and reconnect.
Meek said: “Everybody we shared our idea with, I would say 98 percent of them, thought it was a really, really bad idea.”
What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? Read about “The Lost Brothers Project” and find out how surprise visits to a Maryland suburb, an Ohio farm, and downtown Chicago turned out.
