The five men responsible for this task were:

• Secretary-Treasurer J. B. Edgar (Beta)
• General Chairman of the Constitution Bylaws and Ritual Committees Frank McGoldrick (Alpha)
• Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Ritual Earl R. Hoyt (Beta)
• Jim R. Leonard (Alpha)
• C. B. Rosen (Gamma)

Edgar described in a letter to then President H. G. Wright, “We worked with the copy of the Ritual you gave me last year, and with Earl there to interpret it, McGoldrick there to give it the strict Deltasig slant, and the rest of us helping where we could, I think that a lot was accomplished. “

Edgar also stated that “The proposed standard Ritual is not new in any sense; just the form which should be adopted by all chapters so that a brother visiting another chapter will feel that he has not gotten into the wrong lodge.” At that point, Delta Sigma Pi had installed eight chapters (Theta was installed days earlier on January 29). As the Fraternity continued to grow, it was becoming more apparent that consistency was important and many aspects of the Fraternity were being reviewed for standardization.

The men (along with committee member F. B. Morgan) met again on February 22 “to make suggestions for the improvement of the Ritual after having spent considerable time talking the matter over with his associates in his chapter. The old Ritual was then gone over word for word and a good many changes made which consisted largely of additions to the Ritual and in no way was the sentiment of the original Ritual changed,” said Earl Hoyt in a Report of the Sub-Committee on Rituals.

The version drafted on February 1 (and possibly into the morning of February 2), continued to evolve. In the same report it was noted, “This committee does not feel that the Ritual has been developed anywhere near as far as it can be. We recently received from Brother Alexander Makay a historical sketch of the parts appearing in the Fraternity Shield which we suggest be added to conform with the balance of the Ritual as soon as possible.”

After additional work, during a special meeting of the Board of Directors on May 14, 1921, at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, Founder Makay made a motion to accept the standard Ritual submitted by the committee, drafted by these five men 100 years ago, and it was approved. 

While researching the archives, we “re-discovered” what we believe to be the original Ritual from Alpha Chapter. It was sent to Secretary-Treasurer J. Buford Edgar from an Alpha brother so they could review it as they created the standardized Ritual. It is pictured with the newest version (2019) of our Ritual book.