The Coffin Story

Coffins, Hazing, and Courtly Love at Millsaps College in the 1980s

I’ve told this story so many times that I can do it in two sentences now. “Paige and Madolyn talked me into stealing a coffin.” “I nearly got kicked out of school, but I didn’t.” Recently, I learned that I should add a third sentence: “Janie planned the whole thing, but orchestrated it so she couldn’t get in trouble.” You’d be surprised how many stories of the bedevilments I got up to were because Jane Clover thought it might be funny. I figure that’s as good a reason as any. Besides, I’m rather good at bedeviling.

Like everywhere, the Greek System at Millsaps College is criticized for its dominance and exclusivity, but praised for the leadership opportunities and friendships it provides. Although there was a time when racial exclusions were a problem, it’s always been fairly difficult to be completely locked out of the Greek System at Millsaps. The women’s pledging system is designed to prevent it. Unless a girl suicides (saying she will only join one sorority), every girl gets a bid when the system works, whether they choose to exercise it or not.

Hazing, we’re told, is the intentional degrading or belittling of underclassmen by upperclassmen, making it a condition of their advancement. Everyone is against hazing, even if they disagree on what constitutes it.

Having dinner with KA Knight Commander Chaney, Knight Commander Traylor, and Province Commander Dick Wilson, I discussed the issue. They informed me that the root of the problem was getting liability insurance if a chapter didn’t keep a tight lid on hazing. “They’ll come for your cannon one day,” Province Commander Wilson said, and he was right. Our beloved cannon now sits filled with concrete so it can never be fired again to celebrate Millsaps Touchdowns, or less eventful events, like the Pikes playing a band we didn’t like on their stereo.

My participation in the Millsaps Greek System was both famous and infamous. I wrung every ounce of life out of the thing I could possibly manage. Before telling my father, I called my mother at five-thirty a.m. to tell her I would pick up a bid. She had concerns. I was a very antisocial boy, and I had pronounced learning disabilities that we never discussed with anyone. “If it’s horrible, I’ll drop out,” I said.

Opening the company mail with my father and grandfather at six-thirty a.m., I looked up long enough to say, “I think I’m gonna pick up KA.” My grandfather looked down at his KA ring and said, “I think that’s fine.” We had finished the mail and had coffee with Pat Jeffreys.

“What time do you pick up your bid?” she asked. " Eight thirty,” I said. I was wearing a tie. It was rare for me to see my grandfather without me wearing one. At some point I should let you know that the rest of that day involved me smashing almost a dozen beer cans on my head, projectile vomiting out of the window of Alan Overby’s BMW, making a date with a woman I’d never seen before but didn’t actually make because I passed out shirtless in the Oak Tree by the Chi Delta Chapter of Chi Omega with Michael Jarrat’s boa constrictor around my neck.

This entire story is verifiably true. You can ask the snake (who made it home just fine) or any of the six girls I knew from Jackson, who picked up Chi Omega bids and were probably why I ended up in the oak tree in the first place, but the details are fuzzy.

We took turns serving on the interfraternal council because nobody wanted to do it. Two men from each chapter. When it was my turn, I got a note saying my presence was required to vote on how to punish some Kappa Sigma boys who had made their pledges yell at a tree. “As Stands this Mighty Oak, So Stands the Alpha Upsulon Chapter of Kappa Sigma!” I don’t actually remember the words, but it was something like this. The upperclassmen made the pledges yell at a tree. It’d been going on for generations. From what I could tell, it did no harm to them or to the tree, but I still had to show up for the meeting.

After the boy who called the meeting finished laying out his charges, I asked, “Was this incident meant to demean the pledges or the tree?”

“If you’re not going to take this seriously, Boyd. You can just leave!” Don’t have to tell me twice. On my way out, the Pike delegation insisted that they should make sure I got home ok and left too. That left four voting members, two Sigs and two Lambda Chis. The vote was three to one to aqquit the Kappa Sigma seniors of hazing making their pledges yell at a goddamn tree.

From what I could see, there were two kinds of things that could be considered hazing. Things that were an actual threat to the well-being of the pledge, like making them drink a fifth of cheap rum and dance naked up and down West Street, and things that aren’t an actual threat to their well-being, like making them yell at a tree or suggesting that they might have to share coitus with a goat in order to become a KA.

Having served as the KA ritualist, I can tell you there’s nothing about a goat in the initiation. I’m pretty sure it’s not a violation to say that. There’s nothing in the book about goats, but the pledges aren’t allowed to see the book until they’re initiated, and there lies the rub.

We called our pledges goats, and let them decide whether to believe it or not. Every year, we entertained a conversation about renting an actual goat to make the pledges nervous, but renting a goat is far more complicated than you might imagine. I found a man who would sell me a baby goat, skinned and cleaned and ready to barbecue. “You eat baby goats?” I asked in horror. What I didn’t know at nineteen was that roast baby goat is pretty damn good. That’s not what I wanted, though. I wanted a goat we could rent for a few days and then return to the goat farm where he could find a goat wife and live out his days being slightly enriched by his time at Millsaps. That sort of service wasn’t available.

I favored the Chi Delta of Chi Omega because most of the girls I knew from Jackson chose them. The year before, most of the girls I knew from Jackson chose Kappa Delta. I’m not sure how these things are arranged. Women seem to have secret conferences to decide things we’re not encouraged to have an opinion on.

Two of them I loved more than anything and had done so since childhood. A third, I met in high school, but became what I described as the feminine ideal. They became Chi Omegas, and I became the guy who did things for the Chi Omegas. Yard work, light carpentry, roof repair, rebuilding bookcases, painting, amateur psychology, shoulder crying, and co-conspiracy were all parts of my job.

Madolyn Roebuck was from Jackson, but was from another part of town and from another school, so we hadn’t met. Uncomfortably attractive, she was the beloved of two of my fraternity brothers. That’s a line I did everything I could not to cross, although sometimes I did. One of the most uncomfortable things I ever had to do in college was telling a beautiful blonde girl that she absolutely had to quit kissing me because it would break Lawrence’s heart. That’s just one guy. Madolyn had two swains she knew about and a third she didn’t, so she became my most favored wingman.

Paige Sibley, I was told, was a late bloomer who opened up the year she came to St. Andrews Episcopal High School. That seemed impossible to me. She seemed perfectly and fully enflowered as far as I could tell. Paige used to hold my hand under the table in Biology Class. Nobody but the teacher could ever see us. Our teacher, Dan Rose, would sometimes call me into his office to smoke a clove cigarette and sneak a sip of something brown and Scottish. He related to me the story from the bible about a man who found a pearl of great value, meaning Paige.

Dan Rose insisted that Paige was the most attractive woman in school. She was. He insisted that she’d be perfect for me. She was. “So, what’s the hold-up, my boy?”

“She’s my best friend.”

I found great comfort in driving around Jackson with Paige, drinking beer, and ending up parking at the scenic overlook, falling asleep waiting for the sun to come up without either of us having to worry about how it would end up. There were girls in Jackson who would do pretty much anything I asked in the back seats of cars, but none of them could provide me with what Paige did just by sitting quietly and looking at the world through the eyes I studied so often.

I’m pretty sure she knew there was a burning desire, deep in my loins, for her. A boy’s eyes will always tell. We never approached it. Never discussed it. She was, and still is, my one pure thing.

We’re told in some of the stories that Lancelot never touched Guinivere, but he shared a burning, perfect love for her that was strong enough to separate him from his king. Courtly love is a very real and a very worthy thing. It doesn’t matter if anyone believes nothing ever happened between Paige and me, since there were always questions from people who didn’t have a right to our secrets, but she knows, and I know, and I’m pretty sure Dan Rose knew, and that’s enough.

There were, for reasons I don’t actually know, two perfectly serviceable coffins in the crawl space under the KA Mansion. We had a cannon on the porch, why not a couple of coffins underneath? Having served as the ritualist, I can tell you there’s absolutely nothing in the KA initiation about coffins. We do knightly shit. “Go fight that dragon!” “Oh, look! A maiden!” None of that is in the ritual either, but you get the idea. These weren’t props for a play or Halloween decorations; they were actual wooden coffins.

We mostly used the coffins as a throne for the Great Wazoo. The Great Wazoo was a mostly naked man, wearing a jockstrap, who met the new pledges after they picked up their KA bid and asked them stupid questions, about their virginity, their boogers, and other secret things.

When I pledged, Carter Stamm was the Great Wazoo. I’m pretty sure he was the model. I was the Great Wazoo, and Jim Benton was the Great Wazoo. Benton was possibly the funniest. After the boys picked up their bids, put on their jerseys, drank their beers, and fired the cannon (maybe a few times), the coffin was returned to its place of hiding for another year.

Having been pretty deeply entangled with one of the boys living in the KA Mansion (it’s not really a mansion. Accommodations are slightly below the dorms, but with fewer rules and access to the communal beer chest), Madolyn knew of the coffins hiding under the KA house. She then told Paige and then Janie, who concocted a plan. I was enfolded into their plan because I was a KA, and I could carry an entire coffin on my shoulder.

Chi Omegas didn’t have goats. We didn’t either, but that’s besides the point. The pledges never knew for absolute certain whether they would have to get jiggy with a goat or not. They broke us up into small groups for initiation so we could contemplate what we were about to promise to do. Sitting in a tiny dark room, Michael Collum said, “If I hear or smell a goat, I’m leaving.” He ended up not leaving. Whoever had the job of renting a goat that year failed just like I did.

Chi Omegas didn’t have goats. They had coffins. Pledges were told they would have to take a written purity test, put on an entirely white cotton dress, including white cotton foundation garments, and spend the night in a coffin. Didn’t seem like such a big deal to me. I knew girls who would do it naked in a graveyard just to say they had.

It wasn’t true. I don’t know that much about the Chi Omega Ritual, but I do know it’s pretty ladylike and generally received as a positive experience by everyone who did it. The story about the coffin was just to make the pledges wonder how far the upperclassmen would go, without them actually having to go there.

I didn’t consider it hazing. I didn’t consider it harmful since nobody would actually have to sit inside a coffin. It was just a stupid story. One of the pledges about to be initiated was my own baby sister. I was pretty sure she knew bullshit when she saw it, and would find the bit about the coffin pretty funny.

The plan was to leave the coffin between the Chi O house and the library so the pledges could see it and wonder if they were about to have to take their written purity test, and then the coffin would vanish before the pledge meeting was over.

I probably would have done it if Paige or Madolyn told me they needed me to get in a cage with a live tiger or grizzly bear. Moving a coffin around kind of stealthy-like seemed like not much of a challenge.

I had a station wagon to move it part of the way. Then, I would park in the AC under the library, carry the coffin on my shoulder, put it in its designated spot, and wait for Pledge Class to start so I could remove it.

A coffin, an actual coffin, is meant to be carried by six men. I miscalculated what it would be like for one man to carry one. I figured the other five men were to share the weight of the body, and there would be no body, so no problem. I was wrong.

Paige and Madolyn tried to help, but it was still mostly on me to to get the coffin up the stairs and in place.

The plan was for them to sit on a park bench, pretending to study, pretending they didn’t know anything at all about this goddamn coffin in the yard. My sister did actually laugh. I don’t know if she knew I was involved, but it was a pretty good bet.

Returning the coffin to its proper place, I spent the rest of the night drinking beer and screaming at the television. There were acts on MTV that I just couldn’t accommodate.

The next morning, pretty hungover, I went to open the company mail with my father and grandfather at six thirty. George Harmon, the president of Millsaps, called for my father, the Chairman of the Board at Millsaps.

“Tell Boyd, he’s on social suspension until he talks to Stuart Good.”

“What’d he do this time?”

“Hell, I dunno Jim. Some bullshit about a coffin. Just tell him to work it out with Stuart.”

Stuart Good, the dean of Students, was one of my heroes. I spent a great deal of time looking out for my fellow classmates, who often had quiet disasters that threatened their time at Millsaps. I always knew I could turn to Stuart Good and Jack Woodward (the dean of students before Good) to find them a solution.

Dean Good, it seems, was quite concerned about where I got the coffin since I’d been seen carrying it. He was concerned that I’d stolen it. Technically, I had, but I had stolen it from my own fraternity, not the funeral home down the street, and I returned it.

“There wasn’t a body in it.” I insisted, and there wasn’t.

“Hazing is very serious.” He said, and I agreed. The girls all laughed. It was a joke. I would protect the Chi Omega pledge class with my own life from actual danger, but this was a joke.

“Where’s the coffin now?”

“Back under the KA house.”

“Why do the KAs have a coffin?”

“I don’t know, man. Why do they have a working cannon? I promise you nothing nefarious happens with it ever.”

“Can you work this out with the Chi Omega president?”

I knew her pretty well. I’d taken her and her roommate to the two-dollar Tuesday night movie at Meadowbrook Cinema Six a few times. She agreed that nobody was actually hurt, but would I write a letter to their chapter advisor and their alumni advisors? I was more than happy to do so. I knew them as well.

Their faculty advisor was one of the most storied professors in the history of Millsaps. A history professor, he often tried to talk me into talking the KAs out of having the Old South Ball. I agreed. I wasn’t much for Confederate stuff. The KA connection to Robert E Lee was about his years after the Civil War, trying to teach boys to rebuild the Virginia he helped destroy.

There’s some pretty deep lore there that has nothing at all to do with “whop whoop! Hell yeah! Screw them Yankees!” Even though that stuff was popular. I agreed with his points and added that the Old South Ball was so terribly expensive that we could only afford to do it every other year. Within a few years, Millsaps would be among the first KA Chapters to ban the Old South Ball. A few years after that, the national organization would ban it.

“Look, just apologize to the girls.”

“I have.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.”

For a while, it was tradition to send Chi Omega girls white carnations upon graduation. For four years, I would order an entire box of them, tie them up in bundles of however many initiates there were, and leave them for the pledges at their dorm when they went off for initiation, without my name anywhere on them.

It wasn’t a secret. A hulking creature with a bad attitude going from dorm to dorm with an armload of flowers is hard to hide, but the pretense of secrecy mattered. The purpose of courtly love was the act itself, not whatever credit you might get for it.

I have stories about how all my Chi Omega girls ended up. I share it with them when I see them or their classmates, but I don’t make those part of my personal stories. They went off into the world and became whatever was in them to become, but that’s not my story to tell. Through them, my heart traveled the world and had enough children to put on an opera.

There was a song that was popular that year:

Hey baby, you gotta remember
I'm forever your girl
Baby, forever, and ever and ever
I'm forever your girl

Forever, it seems, means forever.