Following the Kansas Epsilon Chapter’s 45th anniversary reunion in June 2014, the Emporia Alumni Club (1909) authorized the publication of a chapter history to be ready as a favor distributed to those attending the chapter 50th anniversary reunion in 2019. Kansas Epsilon Brother Ethan A. Schmidt is assistant professor of history at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi specializing in Colonial America and Indigenous Peoples. He offered to write this contemporary history of his chapter.

During the 2014 holiday season, Schmidt (left) interviewed James Lowther (right) for this history. Lowther is a brother of Kansas Alpha who served as advisor for the Kansas Epsilon Colony from August 1968 when the Beta Sigma Tau local fraternity petitioned the General Convention at Ashville, NC to installation in mid January 1969. He continued to advise and consult with the forming housing corporation. Lowther’s career was in marketing, public relations and banking, and in his later years, was an elected Kansas Legislature Representative for many terms of office. Lowther was the pledge son of long-time Province President, Oliver Samuel.

Robert Miller arranged for Lowther’s PR firm to design several Scroll covers during the later 1960s. These included the May 1968 cover on Famous Phi William Allen White’s 100th anniversary of his birth feature article and the historic cover in 1969 of Neal Armstorng’s walk on the moon. These covers can be found in the Scroll online archive.