The mother of all brothers Wild frat boys will miss retiring housemother
Article Courtesy of: Merlene Davis, LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER Columnist

   Helen E. White retired from IBM after 25 years and tried her best to settle into a more relaxing lifestyle.
    That was 14 years ago, and it lasted four months.
    "It got old and boring," White said. "I sat home for four months. I switched my house around, turned everything upside down. Finally I said, 'This is not for me yet.'"
    So White got a job as a cook for the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity on the University of Kentucky campus. One semester later, she became the fraternity's housemother.
    That move made her the first and only black fraternity or sorority housemother on the UK campus, and still the only one nationwide for the agriculture fraternity.
    Now, after 14 years of a great deal more activity, White is retiring again. She says this time it's for real. 

    "I told them I would take the job until I get tired," said White, 64. "Now I'm tired."
    "We're going to miss her," said fraternity member Garrick "Puddin'" Howell, 21.
    "She is what the situation calls for," said Clint Meadows, 20. "If she needs to come upstairs and rip some hind ends, then that's what she does. If she needs to be nice, then that's what she does."
    White lives at the fraternity house during the week and returns to her own home on weekends.
    She runs a tight ship.
    "On Thursday nights, everybody gets a little wild," said Howell. "She makes an appearance in the hall, and we all shoot to our rooms. She has that look."
    "We have respect for Mom White," said Andrew Clem, 22. "If we do something wrong, she'll get on the intercom, for example, and call my name. 'Clem, get down here.' I'll come down shaking in my skin. She'll put her finger on my chest and say, 'Clem, listen to me.' Then she'll say what's gone wrong or awry."
    White insists the men go to class, clean the house and wash the dishes.
    "I keep them in line," White said with a laugh. "I know these are some college kids, but you do as I say.
    "And when they have problems, they come and talk to me."
     She cooks lunch and dinner through the week, but not if the kitchen is dirty, something the men have learned the hard way.
    "I say, 'This is garbage. Get that broom and dust pan and let's get started,'" White said, barking orders. "'It looks like a garbage can in here.'
    "It's not much different than rearing my own four children," said White, who is divorced with four grown children, ranging in age from 37 to 43.
    If the young men don't know how to mop or wash dishes when they come to White, they will before they leave. Each room is responsible for keeping the house clean for a week.
    She also teaches etiquette and manners, said Tim Henderson, president of the AGR alumni board, who hired White. "They have a formal dinner once a month, and she teaches them how to sit at a table, which fork to use and how to act," he said.
    Plus, he said, she has high moral standards and wants to teach the young men the right things to do. She also watches their general appearance.
    "She doesn't get into running their lives or telling them they can't do this or do that as college kids do," Henderson said. "She's just there to help teach them right from wrong."
    White organized the parents into a group nine years ago, and that group has donated money for curtains, paint and other things that will keep the house more homey.
    "She's very involved with parents," said Casey Story, 19. "She sits down and talks with them. The parents really like her. She's real down-to-earth."
    Throughout all those years, White said, she has experienced only one incident regarding race.
    During the disturbances surrounding the shooting of Tony Sullivan 10 years ago, one young man used a word she didn't appreciate.
    "He didn't know I was standing there," White said. "I called the president in and told him so-and-so said something I didn't like, not one bit. I told him I didn't want to say anything to the young man right then because of my temper."
    The president said he'd take care of it, and about 20 minutes later the offender was at her door apologizing profusely.
    "He said, 'If my mom and dad knew I had said that, they would beat me,'" White said. "'I am so sorry. I wasn't raised like that.'"
    "I believed him and accepted his apology because he had always treated me with respect," White said.
    Clem said race isn't a problem in the AGR house. "If it is an issue for anyone, they haven't met her or seen what she has to offer," he said. "It's not really an issue, and it shouldn't be an issue."
    "It's not that we don't notice at all," Howell said. "But between us, we have superseded that."
    White's retirement begins at the end of this semester on Dec. 17. The young men are giving her a retirement dinner, however, on Dec. 6, and they are not even making her cook.
    "I fell in love with them," White said. "I-hadn't intended to stay here that long, but they treat me so good."
 

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