Leaving for college, I was filled with mixed feelings. I was excited to meet new people and learn new things, but also anxious about leaving my home, family friends and everything I knew. I was never a camp kid. If you look up the word “homebody” in the dictionary, you will see a picture of me watching Netflix with my dog in my bed at my childhood home. Being an only child, I was very close to my mom so I knew I was going to miss her. Luckily, I met a woman who could put my fears to rest and take me under her wing. This woman is our housemother, Jayne Fisher.
Jayne has been the Tri Delt housemother for five years now and there has never been a dull moment since. As I talk to her in the house, I can hear girls singing and laughing in the other room. Before taking the position as housemother, Jayne had taught in Mobile and worked with Younglife. When her friend’s husband was deployed, Jayne, always willing to lend a helping hand, moved away from her beloved Alabama to Colorado to help her friend with her children. Though beautiful, Colorado was just not home, so she went online to find jobs back in the Yellowhammer State. “I went through an interview process and it felt almost as if I was going through my own rush,” Jayne jokes. She was hired and the rest is history.
Having never been in a sorority, becoming a house-mom at a major university proved to be quite the experience for her.
“I was hired for the job and packed up my bags for Tuscaloosa. I didn’t know much about Tri Delt except that it was a round house!” she remembers.
She was delighted to learn that many of the girls she had worked with in Mobile with Younglife were Tri Deltas and they were equally happy to learn that Jayne was their new housemother!
“Tri Delt really took me in and I felt right at home. It was a perfect fit for me,” she said.
When asked what exactly she does as the housemother, Jayne cannot help but laugh. “It is so hard to explain when someone asks me that because the job changes so much from day to day. I guess I do really anything and everything,” Jayne said.
Her main job is just to be there for more than three hundred girls. This is quite the task. Jayne reveals, “I actually study the composites because I truly want to know all the girls. They are all so special to me and there are just so many!”
Taking on the job as housemother to Phi Gam was another challenge that Jayne accepted with grace and enthusiasm. “It is a little different, but both groups are really just awesome. There are only about one hundred and forty of them so it is much smaller. It is rare that you really get a glimpse into both sorority and fraternity life."
Tri Delta and Phi Gam love Jayne just as much as she loves them. She laughs that, “now I have five hundred kids,” and it is certain that every one of them would agree that she is the perfect surrogate mother to each of them. Last February, Phi Gam and Tri Delt held a surprise birthday party to honor her in the Phi Gam band room.
“Jayne does so much for us and we just want to show her that we appreciate her and everything she does for us,” said junior Tri Delt Elizabeth Iliya.
Through all the hard work and sleepless nights what keeps Jayne going and motivated? Jayne said that, her favorite part of her job is feeling so blessed to have the privilege of getting to know so many special people. "I do not have any children, so to be able to be a mom is such a gift. I see these kids grow up, get jobs, get married and have babies and I am so proud. My job is such a blessing,” Jayne said. Well, it is obvious that Tri Delta and Phi Gam are also equally blessed to have such a fantastic woman to call their housemother.
