Ed Fuller (Boston ’68) is proud to say that he and actor George Clooney have a connection of sorts. In the 2009 film Up in the Air, Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, was on a mission to accumulate 10 million frequent-flyer miles. Accomplishing that feat offered numerous perks—one of which was having his name painted on a plane’s fuselage.

In the 1990s, Fuller reached the 10-million-mile mark while crossing the globe as president and managing director of international lodging for Marriott International, Inc. And yes, “Ed Fuller, Customer” was actually painted beneath the pilot’s window on a United 747.

For Fuller, the miles and moniker were nice, but they weren’t the goal. Logging miles was simply part of how business should be handled: in person and onsite.

“If you run an operation that’s not in the same town as your office, it’s essential that you get on a plane or get in the car and go see those operations,” said Fuller, who still racks up nearly 400,000 frequent-flyer miles per year. “All too often, the ivory tower syndrome limits the views of someone who is capable of managing but doesn’t have a clear understanding of what’s going on in his or her world.”

With that face-to-face mentality, it comes as no surprise that Fuller chose You Can’t Lead with Your Feet on the Desk: Building Relationships, Breaking Down Barriers, and Delivering Profits as the title of his book, which was released in March 2011.

Fuller wrote the book, he said, to share the lessons he’s learned about developing and tending relationships in dozens of countries over 20 years. “My long experience working outside the United States has convinced me that the best way to gain a better, more complete understanding of people, cultures, beliefs and historical events is to leave my desk behind,” he wrote.

Fuller is no stranger to leaving things behind. As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a pilot, but his poor eyesight kept him out of the cockpit. Undeterred, he set his sights on getting into the aviation industry in some capacity.

After graduating from Boston University in 1968, Fuller entered active duty as a second lieutenant in the Army. When he left the military in 1972, his goal remained the same: to work in the airline industry. At that time, however, the United States was entering a recession, and the industry wasn’t hiring. As a result, Fuller went to work for Marriott’s in-flight food division to maintain his connection with his chosen field. In essence, he was in a holding pattern until he found a more desirable place to land. On his first day, Fuller arrived at work eager and ready to learn. Almost immediately, he knew he had to abort his assignment.

“I was told I would be in the kitchen for the first ten years, which seemed like a lifetime,” he said. “I became somewhat disinterested at that point.”

Fuller then learned about an opening in Marriott’s hotel group that seemed like a perfect fit since it required someone who could “speak military.” Fuller had served as a captain in Germany and Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal, all of which, he said, gave him an edge in his new position of selling group lodging to military bases in the Washington, D.C., area.

We’re painting this portrait with a slightly different brush. Though we normally feature our brothers in these profiles, there’s a person who deserves to have her story about Sigma Alpha Epsilon told. First, however, we must turn the clock back to 1982. On the Cal State- Fullerton campus, Ellen Stohl arrived as an eager-eyed, ambitious freshman. Like most of her female colleagues, she enjoyed friendships with her classmates. Yet she didn’t expect to forge the lifelong bond she’d make with our Fraternity.

Stohl decided to rush a sorority, which helped introduce her to life in a Greek-letter organization. And because of her involvement with the Greek system, she met the Sigma Alpha Epsilon brothers. “I was always like one of the guys,” she recalls. “In a way, I was like their Little Sister of Minerva.” The men of California Pi provided a brotherly love to Stohl and made her feel like she had a place on campus, she says. That first semester, as is normally the case with incoming freshmen, provided her lasting memories of college life in the early 1980s, one of the most popular periods in time for membership in fraternities and sororities. Her natural ease with the SAE brothers came from their gentlemanly, yet incredibly personal, demeanor. They protected her and made her feel right at home in a new environment.

“They weren’t a complete party group,” she says. “They had structure, they were easygoing and there was a sense the guys were loyal to each other. These guys were good-hearted and fun and didn’t have that attitude of superiority.”

During the winter break, however, Stohl encountered a life-altering experience. She was involved in a car accident and broke her neck in five places, severely damaging her spinal cord. The tragedy rendered her paralyzed below the neck, although she eventually gained use of her upper body.

At a time when society still classified men and women with disabilities as “handicapped” or “physically challenged,” Stohl noticed a change when she returned to campus. People started to avoid her, she says. “They stared and looked at me differently and treated me like I was helpless.” Stohl, just 19 years old at the time of her accident, says she was treated as if she were only six.

Not the brothers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. In keeping with our creed, “The True Gentleman,” and what it states, the men perceived Stohl the same way they always perceived her: as an equal. “They welcomed me with open arms,” she says. “And they always made sure to include me in every event, no matter what.”

Of course, the brothers did not miss an opportunity to play an occasional prank on Stohl when the situation warranted. “If I was being a smart mouth, they would wheel me up to the top of the hill in the middle of the quad and let me sit there until I had time to cool off,” she says, laughing as the memories flooded back to her. “They did not treat me like I was an injured person.” And while Stohl struggled with an identity crisis following the accident, her relationship with the chapter provided all the guidance she needed – that she had not changed nearly as much as she thought. “I would be dead if someone had not been there to help support me,” she says.

Still a very young adult, Stohl says it was hard to swallow the notion that people would look at her as different and assume she could never marry or have children. But Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s members gave her the confidence to comprehend her potential. “They helped me realize I needed to take a stand, that disability shouldn’t change who I am,” she says. “And I started taking that message to others.”

She had always dreamed of an acting and modeling career and, in 1987, Stohl became the first woman with a disability to pose for Playboy magazine. The company also released a docudrama about her story, and the national media was abuzz following the photo shoot. She had helped to turn heads and let the world know, wheelchair or not, Stohl could follow her dreams. Following graduation, she maintained her friendships with brothers as she started her career. Though life took them in different directions, Stohl never forgot the SAE men who treated her like their own little sister.

An elementary-school teacher for 14 years, Stohl is now a professor at Cal State-Northridge and speaks to her freshmen U100 students frequently about the positive experience a fraternity can provide. In fact, she loves to teach freshmen because they’re at an impressionable stage of their lives. She helps them understand a fraternity can provide support through the good, the bad and the ugly. And the Little Sister pin that she cherished nearly three decades ago … well … it’s still in her possession, and it means just as much today as it did back in 1982.

She still maintains all the energy she had as a college student. In addition to being an educator, wife and mother, she scuba dives, rides horses and serves as a columnist for Disabled Dealer Magazine and a freelance writer for New Mobility, a magazine founded for wheelchair users who wanted more information on how to lead active, healthy lives. Stohl has also received accolades for her work in the field of education. She was awarded a 2010 CSUN Writing & Reading Across Disciplines Fellowship for a unit of study that encouraged students to examine the question of how ethnocultural differences affect the way they relate to themselves, their peers and the communities in which they live. And she earned the Judge Julian Beck Learning-Centered Instructional Grant for the development of a customized textbook.

Stohl says although she’s noticed improvements with society’s perceptions of men and women with disabilities, as well as the physical accommodations, she thinks the public attitude needs to change. “I don’t want to deny that I have a disability, but I’m a person first,” she explains. “What irks me is when people see me as a disability first and then as a person. See the individual for what he or she is.”

Most of all, Stohl has learned to let go of social expectations of who we should be, which provides the ultimate freedom to live our lives. “The disability doesn’t define you. You do,” she says. “The way my body functions changed, but my dreams did not. Be true to yourself.”

Stohl can be contacted via Facebook or via her website www.ellenstohlstory.com.

When I first met with the 2009 True Gentleman of the Year, he seemed an unassuming person: Flyaway blonde hair, small build, a standard suit jacket. It was quickly apparent, though, that he was accustomed to putting others at ease. He answered questions quickly, but conversationally. He didn’t flinch when we brought up his many Fraternity accomplishments. He never appeared uncomfortable or worried that his next statement might end up in The Record.

And that poise was noticeable from the beginning, as we started the interview with a difficult question, one that may not have an answer: “Are leaders born or are they made?” I ask.

He pauses. “I believe leaders are born,” he says, “but they have to find their true path. When a leader finds his passion, that’s what defines him and shows him his potential.”

It’s an answer that’s specific enough to make me think he had been anticipating the inquiry. But the ability to anticipate the unknown is one of the qualities that makes Robert McNamara deserving of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s highest individual honor: being named True Gentleman of the Year. Such an award brings a lot of prestige, some bragging rights and a $10,000 check, provided through the generosity of former Honorary Eminent Supreme Archon Warren P. Poslusny. But none of those things seem to interest McNamara. It’s leadership — or, more precisely, the betterment of those around him through his leadership — that matters.

Sometimes the direction of a brother does not follow a typical path. We know undergraduate life conjures up notions of 18-22-year-olds fresh out of their parents’ homes with a bounty of freedom. But Sigma Alpha Epsilon has a large crop of collegiate members who could be classified as non-traditional students, for they’ve had other life-changing experiences before they even set foot in our chapter houses.

At 23, Steve Shopher from Tennessee Tau — whom the brothers have nicknamed “Sho” — arrived on campus with a well-established skill set and the maturity of a grown man. Still in high school, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and served as a team leader while he was in Iraq. His deployment took him to the hotbed called the Middle East, sharpening his leadership skills and teaching him some vital life lessons. After he completed his commitment, he headed for school — a process that required an adjustment.

“The first thing I had to do when I got back [from active duty] was to get acclimated back to the lifestyle,” he says. “Coming from Iraq, the college lifestyle is a complete 180.” During that adjustment phase, he sought to get involved on campus, but he noticed something. Most of the students who were actively engaged were members of Greek-letter organizations. As he dove into extracurricular activities, he started to meet sAE members on a first-name basis. His future in the Fraternity was already finding its roots. Plus, he came well-prepared with an artillery of his own experience.

Through his tenure as a soldier, Shopher learned to deal with diversity and different personalities. “Every day, someone different is coming up to you with a problem or issue or assistance he needs,” he says. “There is so much I was able to bring back from my deployment, such as patience. It helped me work on my planning process.” Shopher compares his brothers in arms to his brothers in fraternal bonds. “You can be friends, but when it comes right down to it, you have to hold people accountable for their actions,” he says. “And when you disseminate information, you have to make sure it goes through as smoothly as possible.”

He believes that wherever life takes us, it’s important for us to leave our mark. And he thinks the ability of a brother to leave something better than we found it will define our legacy ultimately. The dent Shopher is leaving behind comes from a continuous zeal for Sigma Alpha Epsilon and a little bit of inspiration from what he learned from his peers.

He brought back an idea from Leadership School to his chapter about a philanthropic cause but had no idea just how much the Greek-letter community would embrace it. During the school, he wrote a big note down on his notepad that read, “Walk a mile in her shoes.” When he got back, he told his brothers they had to follow through on the idea. So, using his leadership experience, he communicated his idea with his brothers, tweaked the concept a bit and got buy-in from other fraternity and sorority presidents. Women donated hundreds of pairs of high heels, and the community rallied behind the event, which was a first-of-its-kind at UT-Martin. Following the event, proceeds went directly to the campus security department in the name of all Greeks, not just Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

When we played games as young boys, many of us found our fantasies turning to legendary fighters and warriors throughout time: Cowboys and Indians. Knights of the Round Table. Vikings, explorers and ninjas. But then we grew up and we turned our attentions to other pursuits, from school to a job and kids and modern life. Spending time dreaming about things that would never happen was no way to spend our lives. For many of us, that part of childhood gets lost to time.

But luckily, there’s still a man who gets to live out those boyhood fantasies — and who gets to tell us all about them. Terry Schappert (North Carolina-Wilmington ’88), who just finished filming the first season of his show Warriors with Terry Schappert on the History Channel, found himself wearing the armor of the Knights of St. John, crossing swords with the 12th descendant of legendary samurai Myamoto Musashi and creeping through the dark forests of Germany at nighttime, reenacting the battles of the barbarian hordes that once ruled the area.

“I’m living a boy’s dream,” he admits. “I’m traveling. I’m fighting with weapons. I’m on fields where you can feel the presence of history.” And it’s not as if this 44-year-old Green Beret, with multiple combat tours in the Middle East and the Balkans, hasn’t seen his share of the world. It’s that, after years of Special Forces, Army Ranger and paratrooper training — and a four-year hiatus to study acting — he’s finally bringing it all together.

And he gets to do it on television.

Warriors started on a lark, as a side project that blindsided even Schappert. “When you’re 20 or 21,” he says, “you don’t know what you want. But suddenly I realized that I wanted to be in the Army.” He enlisted directly out of college and found it fulfilling in every possible way. He became a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. He passed his Army Ranger tests. He trained for two years to become a Green Beret. All of those milestones required years of training and grit and effort, but they would help him down the road with the Warriors show. “Being a Green Beret is extreme,” he says. “They push you to the point where you can’t go any further and then push you a little more.”

But after nearly nine years in the military, he found himself able to pursue another passion that had been put on hold — acting. He moved to New York City and was accepted into the Circle and the Square Theatre School, eventually playing roles in small theatre and television productions. Fate, though, had other ideas. After experiencing the tragedy of 9/11 close-up, he knew that, with his background and training, he was being called again to serve his country.

He re-enlisted and found himself deployed to Iraq, running special-forces missions. But his two lives — military and civilian — started to meld. The agents and industry insiders he met during his four years as an actor thought that he had the total package: He was an accomplished soldier who was at home in front of the camera. A production company pitched a concept to the History Channel, the one that would become Warriors, and Schappert submitted a tape — a home-recorded audition video shot by his wife.

After landing the show, he realized how much his background would help inform his presentation style. Schappert took as much from his background with Sigma Alpha Epsilon as it did from his military career. “I had moved on from the Fraternity after college,” Schappert says. “A lot of the guys had stayed in touch with me and knew I was in the military. But in 2006, a few of the alumni invited me to come and speak to my chapter at its 25th anniversary.”