The intense fire could not destroy the foundation. Nor could it destroy the bond among the brothers of the local Sigma Chi chapter.

  "It goes to show that a fraternity is not about the social atmosphere in a house," said Ian Welby, chapter president.

  He and 17 of his 25 fraternity brothers will be moving into the new fraternity house before classes resume at IUP on Jan. 17.

  "We can't wait to move in," Welby said. "We've been waiting a year and a half for this."

  In the meantime, the brothers have found housing wherever they could.

  "We all stuck together. We made it a point."

  The junior health and physical education major from South Florida was one of two fraternity brothers in the house when the fire, which was caused by a malfunctioning hot-water boiler, raced through the building early on the morning of April 10, Easter weekend.

  "The smoke alarm woke me up," Welby said. "I ran upstairs and got my other brother up. We got out pretty much in time."

  In the months that immediately followed, members of the Sigma Chi Delta House Corp., owner of the building, had to decide whether to rebuild. Members of the corporation board are all former members of the local Sigma Chi chapter.

  "We had some doubt if we would be able to recover," said David Elinsky of Pittsburgh, a 1983 IUP graduate and vice president of the house corporation.

  But that doubt was dispelled as board members talked and found there was wide interest in a new chapter house.

  "We just identified some of our alums with finance backgrounds, construction backgrounds," said Elinsky, who eventually headed up the rebuilding project. "We just had a variety of people step up to the plate."

  Elinsky said house corporation members worked with current Sigma Chi brothers and Indiana architect Karen Welsh on plans for a new fraternity house.

  First, the brothers wanted a house with bedrooms for two students each, said Dick Clawson of Indiana, who was a Sigma Chi brother at IUP in the early 1970s and is now executive director of the Indiana-Armstrong Builders Association.

  "They wanted it to be easy to maintain and in tune with the technology of today," Clawson said.

  "We wanted to see the house divided up, so you would have some quiet space for studying and places for students to interact and socialize," Elinsky said.

  "We didn't want to have a kitchen with a large group of college students," he continued.

  The original Sigma Chi house did not have a kitchen, and house corporation members did not see the need to add one to the reconstructed home, Elinsky explained.

  There are safety and hygiene issues to consider if a group house includes a full kitchen, especially if a specified adult is not in charge of it on a daily basis. There can be risks from a fire, and often residents don't keep a kitchen as clean as they should.

  "It is really hard to do with students," Elinsky said.

  In designing the new Sigma Chi home, members of the house corporation wanted to make sure the building was safe and durable, Elinsky said.

  To that end, corporation members eventually chose porcelain tile for flooring all through the house except for the chapter room and adjacent study rooms, recessed ceiling lighting, thick wall insulation that keeps heat and noise inside and a state-of-the-art sprinkler system.

  "We tried to make it (the house) as abuse-resistant and maintenance-free as possible," Clawson said.

  The house passed all necessary state and Indiana Borough inspections in late December.

  Among other house features are a handicapped-accessible shower and bathroom on the first floor and a long handicapped ramp leading from the house's 12-space parking lot to the front door. On the second floor is a technology room that includes a whole-house music system and other computer equipment.The house is wired so that students living there will have both wired and wireless access to the Internet in their rooms.

  While Clawson and Elinsky headed up reconstruction work, former IUP president Dr. Lawrence Pettit - who was a Sigma Chi member at the University of Montana during the late 1950s - led fundraising efforts for the new house.

  Estimated construction costs are $700,000, said Ed Rammrath, president of the house corporation and a 1979 graduate of IUP.

  "We have raised now in pledges and donations about, at last count, $93,000," Pettit said. He expects to raise about $100,000 for the rebuilding.

  Other funding is split between a loan from First Commonwealth Bank and money received by the house corporation after the insurance adjusters ruled the fire was caused by the malfunctioning boiler.

  About 25 percent of alumni from the local Sigma Chi are contributing to the new house.

  "We have gotten some good contributions from people who are not affiliated with the fraternity," Pettit said.

  "I see us doing continuous enhancements as we go along," he added. "We also want to build a deck on the back" of the house. That will give students some space outside without causing a lot of congestion or other problems along South Seventh Street.

  "My theory is, if you upgrade the house, you are going to protect the Greek system," Pettit said. "I also think that a group of students living in a house together are going to behave according to the house. If you are living in a nice house, you are going to take care of it."

  Rammrath flew in from Houston, where he works in commercial real-estate development, for an opening reception for local government leaders that was held Saturday at the Sigma Chi house. An official dedication service will be held April 8 for the Sigma Chi brothers and their leaders.

  "I just kind of stayed close to the guys," Rammrath said when asked why he was so involved in the local chapter, even though he lives hundreds of miles away.

  "I've been around a lot of Sigma Chis. I see that camaraderie. I see that pride. It is hard to explain, (but) I see that tie."

  The fraternity, Rammrath said, "is not just a social club. The ultimate goal of the fraternity is to build lifelong friendships."

  Clawson's experience shows his point.

  Annually he travels to Myrtle Beach, S.C., with a group of 15 to 20 fraternity brothers.

  "There is a bunch of us that just play miniature golf," Clawson said. Others hit the regular 18-hole courses. "We've been doing it for 25 years."