Imagine cooking three meals a day for up to 40 still-growing young men. Now imagine cleaning up the kitchen after 40 men every morning before you start cooking. It really wasn’t as bad as you imagined. Well, maybe it was. House cook for 13 years, from 1990-2003, Mary Ellen Nichols says, “even though that was my job, it was really something special because of the wonderful young men of Kappa Sigma.”
Mary Ellen, a central PA resident, became interested in cooking for a fraternity when a friend of hers who was doing the same thing recommended she try it. She had been managing the Sunset West Restaurant and its 38 employees in Pleasant Gap for over 11 years when she applied to two fraternities as house cook– one of them was Kappa Sigma. She interviewed at both houses and was asked to work at both. She chose Kappa Sigma because the kitchen was big and had lots of storage, and because the boys who interviewed her were nice.
Monday mornings Mary Ellen would do the grocery shopping, unload back at the house and organize everything. Tuesday morning, she’d come in to reorganize and clean everything she had done the day before. Cleaning the kitchen daily after it had been misused nightly by tens of young men made this one of the most difficult jobs she ever had. “But, I’d do it again if I could,” she states firmly, “I loved the guys.”
The reasons she can’t do it again are two-fold. The obvious one is that the chapter disbanded this past year, closing its doors and putting the house up for sale. The other reason is not so obvious: Mary Ellen has been battling cancer for four years and she just started her second round of chemotherapy, plus her husband was just diagnosed with lung cancer. Mary Ellen was diagnosed and began treatment while she was still with Kappa Sigma. After her hair loss, she came to work in her new wig only to singe it bending over the stove the first day wearing it. She never wore her wig to work again.
The boys were very caring during her treatment. At that point there had been a decade-long relationship built between the fraternity and Mary Ellen. “A lot of the guys were special, too many to name. Just when one would graduate, a new one would take his place.” One was with her for seven years–they never thought he’d graduate. Another was a caterer who liked to help cook (caterers were brothers assigned to help with kitchen duties). Many would join her to watch “The Price is Right” or to catch up on soap opera gossip. Two alumni still e-mail her regularly to check up on her. The strangest menu request from the boys was for birds in a nest, a fancy name for an egg fried in toast. Their most adamant request: Never Serve Butter Beans!
Her favorite memory is a collective one of the boys coming down after first waking up, with their hair a mess, still in their sleepwear, spilling stories about the previous night’s exploits or disappointments. In fact, she “often thinks of the guys and wonders if they will let their own sons live in a fraternity after what they experienced.”
Mary Ellen had raised three boys of her own before working for the Kappa Sigma boys. She was used to a house filled with testosterone and dealt with much using her sense of humor. Now she spends her time breeding and raising Burnese Mountain dogs, caring for her two ponies, and enjoying her seven grandchildren. For her future, she hopes to live happily and healthfully as long as she can. She has learned to take every day seriously and to not plan anything too far in advance.