Marcia Malone Slavin, Alpha Xi Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 14, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

t hitMarcia Malone Slaven was born in Grafton, West Virginia on July 17, 1932. In 1950, she enrolled at West Virginia University after graduating from Grafton High School. She was a student at WVU’s School of Pharmacy. In 1950, pharmacy was not a usual major for women. She became a member of the Iota Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta. According to her obituary, she “made lifelong friendships with her sorority sisters.”

In a way, she was following in the footsteps of her older sister Emily Malone Glaser, also an Alpha Xi at WVU and the 2000th registered pharmacist in West Virginia. The fact that their father, Paul E. Malone, was also a pharmacist, might have entered their choice of career.

After graduation, she returned to Grafton to work at Malone’s Drug and Chemical Company, which was started by her father. When her father died on June 23, 1953, at the age of 55, she assumed many of his responsibilities.

On November 29, 1958, at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Washington, DC, she married Maynard D. Slaven. He was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi and a 1958 graduate of WVU’s School of Pharmacy. They had two sons.

Malone’s Drug Store was a fixture in Grafton and it served the community. It hit the one millionth prescription filled mark in the 1960s. The Slaven’s kept the store open for as long as they could and although it survived for more than 50 years, it closed in the early 1980s. The Slavens also owned Medical Arts Pharmacy in Morgantown.

According to her obituary:

Following the store’s closure, Marcia was the longest-serving pharmacist in charge at Grafton City Hospital, a multiple-decades long record that is unlikely to be equaled. She wrote, along with Maynard, the drug formulary for the institution, a massive undertaking that gave instructions for drugs approved for patients. During her decades of service to the hospital, she also served as a clinical instructor for the WVU College of Pharmacy and guided many future professionals through the processes of checking for medication errors, preparing hyperalimentation (artificial nutrition) treatments, and handling toxic chemotherapy preparations. She was, by all accounts, a consummate teacher and a detail-oriented but sympathetic instructor.

Marcia Slaven was an active member of the Grafton community and served many civic, business and professional organizations. She died on Dec. 19, 2022 at the age of 90.

 

 

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Janet Greig Post, Delta Delta Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Janet Greig Post was born on November 21, 1871, in Fonda, in upstate New York. She grew up in Oneida, Illinois, and entered Knox College. There she became a member of the Epsilon Chapter of Delta Delta Delta. Although she was not a delegate to the first Tri Delta Convention held in 1893, she most likely attended the legislative sessions. She was indeed at the Panhellenic reception held at Armory Hall where she wore a yellow silk dress with lilies of the valley.

A graduate of the class of 1894, she spent two years studying in France and Germany. Much of her work was done at the Sorbonne in France. She also spent some time doing post-graduate work at the University of Chicago.

She returned to her alma mater where she served as an instructor in French and German before becoming the Dean of Women in 1898. She held that job until 1902, when she married Probate Judge Philip Post, who, at that time, was the youngest man on the Illinois bench. Years later in a Trident article, the wedding was “still remembered as a college and Delta Delta Delta affair with Delta bridesmaid and silver, gold and blur decorations, and the ceremony read by President McClelland of Knox.” Her husband was also a Knox alumnus and a member of Phi Gamma Delta.

During World War I, she worked with the Women’s Overseas Section of the National War Work Council, an affiliate branch of the YWCA. She also served the American Red Cross. The Knox Alumnus described her war work in the April 1918 issue.  She had completed a course on what was being done in the Canadian military hospitals training as to the re-education of disabled soldiers.

The Posts moved to Winnetka, Illinois, when her husband joined the International Harvester Company. She was active in many Chicago clubs and was known as an “active clubwoman.” When Philip Post died in 1920, Janet Greig Post assumed her husband’s position on the Knox College Board of Trustees. She was the first woman to serve on the Knox Board of Trustees.

She remained a staunch supporter of both the college and her sorority chapter. There are accounts of her attending chapter and alumnae alliance events.

Her greatest contribution was leading the fundraising effort to celebrate Knox College’s 100th anniversary in 1937. She charged forward in a poor economic climate to raise funds to renovate Old Main. She wrote thousands of letters to alumni and supporters. Had she not done that it is quite possible that Old Main might not be around today. It is currently the only remaining site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Post remained a member of the Board of Trustees until her death on January 24, 1964, at the age of 94. She and her husband are buried in Hope Cemetery in Galesburg, Illinois.

Knox College’s Janet Greig Post Leadership Society recognizes donors who give $10,000 or more annually to the college.

 

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Jenn Winslow Coltrane, Kappa Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 12, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Jenn Winslow Coltrane was initiated into the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College chapter of Kappa Delta on October 27, 1903. The chapter was founded earlier that year on January 28. Although she was born in Marshall, Missouri, and she died in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, she spent most of her life in Concord, North Carolina.

Jenn Winslow Coltrane

Jenn Winslow Coltrane

She served as her chapter’s president. After graduation in 1906, Coltrane was Kappa Delta’s first Inspector. She spent five years as National Treasurer before becoming National President in 1912. That year she was present at the meeting when Kappa Delta joined what is today the National Panhellenic Conference. Coltrane served as Kappa Delta’s National President until 1915. She was also the Business Manager of and a contributor to The Angelos of Kappa Delta.

Coltrane was on the state board of the Federated Women’s Club. From 1920-1923, she was Historian General of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She qualified for membership by descent from her great-great-grandfather, Colonel Beverly Winslow of Virginia.

During World War I, she worked in the War Risk Insurance Bureau and helped organize a Red Cross chapter in her county. In 1930, she founded the Junior Charity League in Concord. Its original focus was to provide soup, crackers, and milk to hungry schoolchildren. The Junior Charity League continues to this day.

The December 4, 1932 edition of The Tuscaloosa News reported, “Miss Jenn Coltrane, former national president of Kappa Delta Sorority, has returned to her home in Concord, North Carolina, after a short visit at the Kappa Delta House in Colonial Place.” She died on September 4, 1934, at the age of 47.

She was remembered at the 1935 Kappa Delta Convention held at the Huntington Hotel in California. In 1997, she was inducted posthumously into the Kappa Delta Hall of Fame.

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Nell Morgan Austin Enlows, Ph.D., M.D., Sigma Kappa, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Nell Morgan Austin Enlows grew up in West Virginia where her father was a doctor. She married Harold Franklin Enlows on September 7, 1910.

She earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction from George Washington University in 1915. The Enlows were involved in fraternity life; she was a Sigma Kappa and he was a Sigma Nu. She immediately began working on a master’s degree in bacteriology at GWU and her husband began his career as a lawyer.

1915

1916

An active Sigma Kappa alumna, she wrote the 1917-1918 report from the DC alumnae chapter. That year, according to a report in The Triangle, “Nell Enlows and Mary Newcomb, accompanied by Nell’s mother and three friends (all girls) drove Ally Enlows – Nell’s Dodge – to Atlantic City, returning by way of Philadelphia.”

Another report written during that time includes this information:

Our last alumnae meeting was held jointly with the active chapter on January 2. Red Cross contributions, TRIANGLE subscriptions, and Panhellenic rules regarding rushing were the engrossing topics of the evening. We find here at Zeta that joint meetings are very helpful on both sides. After the meeting in January several of the active girls came to me and said how very much they had enjoyed hearing the alumnae tell them of the difficulties and joys of Panhellenic rushing rules of the past. The long rushing season of this year has been to say the least very unpleasant. The greater part of every business meeting is taken up by a discussion of rushing. And practically all the free hours the girls have about college are claimed by the business of rushing.

She helped install Sigma Kappa’s Rho chapter at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College on June 2, 1917, and the Omega chapter at Florida State College for Women on May 29, 1920.

Enlows worked for several years in the field for the United States Public Health Service while doing doctoral work.

Triangle, December 1921

New Castle Herald, June 18, 1921

Enlows earned a Ph.D. from George Washington in 1923. With her husband’s encouragement, she enrolled in medical school at Johns Hopkins University. She graduated in 1929 at the age of 40. She was the only woman in her class who passed the qualifying exams.

Enlows practiced otolaryngology (ENT – ears, nose and throat) in DC. She was the first female doctor to join the staff of Washington’s Episcopal Hospital. She later recounted that because there were no facilities for women doctors to change their clothes, she was forced to change in the telephone booth. The female nurses then invited her to use their facilities.

In 1942, she and her husband each received the Alumni Achievement Award from GWU.

The Enlows moved to Florida in 1945. She practiced part time until 1956, when her husband died. She then retired and spent her time volunteering. She taught first aid and life saving and served as medical officer at the Aquatic Schools founded by her husband. Enlows also volunteered with the Florence Crittenton Home. She was instrumental in organizing Florida Medical Women.

Fort Lauderdale News, April 15, 1948

She remained active in Sigma Kappa alumnae chapters and was a member of the alumnae Panhellenic association. She was also active in AAUW and medical organizations. Enlows was honored by the American Medical Women’s Association, at a mid-year meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1959.

Enlows died on June 25, 1973, at the age of 83.

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Cheryl Ruth Selby Kielczewski, Alpha Sigma Tau, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Cheryl Ruth Selby Kielczewski, who was known as Ruth, was born on October 8, 1958, in Macon, Missouri. She attended high school in Atlanta, Missouri, and was valedictorian of its high school’s class of 1977.

She enrolled at Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University). There she became a member of Alpha Sigma Tau and during her senior year, she was named Outstanding Greek Woman. She was also active in the Cardinal Key honor society and was Assistant Editor of the student newspaper. She graduated summa cum laude.

In the 1980s, she served as an Alpha Sigma Tau District President. On October 22, 1983, she wed Richard Z. Kielczewski. The couple had two sons.

Kielczewski worked as an advertising and marketing executive. The clients she served include Dell, AT&T, and Taco Bell. In her linkedin profile, she described herself thusly:

I’m a seasoned pro with an expansive knowledge base – high-tech advertising, direct marketing and bank/financial advertising – although I’ve also served clients in many business-to-business and consumer fields. I’m not afraid to tackle in-depth subject matter and have written for numerous media including collateral, print advertising, direct mail, newsletters, promotions, radio, and interactive mediums. I can present ideas, deliver sharp strategic insight and direct creative projects from start to finish.

She was also described by one of her former employees,

It’s simple and clear: Ruth is the best boss I’ve ever had. There are many possible reasons for this. Maybe it’s because she’s a fellow writer – a superb wordsmith, if you want to know the truth – and knows how writers think. Maybe it’s because she leads by example and always had my back. Maybe it’s because she has such clear vision and cuts to the strategic, targeted chase. Or maybe it’s all of the above and more. Ruth is an inspiration to me. She gets it. That intangible it. Not everybody does. I can say without reservation that her leadership, mentorship and teaching ability made me a better writer. She always challenged me to do more, and the work was always better for it. The best work of my career can be traced directly back to her. She knew when to push. She knew when to set me loose. And she did all of it in a way that made it feel like it was for my benefit. And it was, but only if it benefited the work as well. And that’s part of her genius. Nobody ever led me – or my team – with a surer hand. I have complete trust in Ruth as a creative director, and believe me, that is nothing anyone should ever take for granted. So to say that I recommend her is dangerously underplaying the reality of the situation: I can’t recommend her enough. You simply can’t do better talent wise, character wise or just plain wise. She made me better. She’ll make you and your company better, too.

Kielczewski died on March 13, 2018, after a six-year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). She was 59 years old.

 

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Florence M. Rohr, Alpha Delta Pi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Florence Myers Rohr was born on February 27, 1878, in Lynchburg, Virginia. She studied at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and Brenau College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree. While a student at Brenau, she founded Phi Beta Sigma in 1905; it was an honorary literary society whose criteria were high scholarship, leadership and character.

Rohr worked as an instructor at Brenau from 1906-1913. She became a member of the Lambda chapter of Alpha Delta Pi at Brenau College when it was chartered on April 18, 1910.

She also installed the Phi chapter at Hanover College in 1913, initiating the seven charter members. According to an account, Rohr:

was to have been here on Friday, May thirtieth, the date of our annual Pan-Hellenic dance given by the men’s fraternities. We had planned to have a college reception at the home of Eloise Mills, daughter of the president. A telegram came from Miss Rohr about the middle of the week telling us she must go to Chicago May thirty-first to attend a fraternity convention. Our plans were completely upset. Miss Rohr arrived in Hanover Sunday morning. We had our installation Monday evening in our sorority hall after which we returned to the dormitory for a spread. Miss Rohr remained with us until Wednesday morning when she took the boat for Louisville.

She coordinated the Brenau European Party, and took a group including seven Alpha Delta Pi members to Europe. One visitor, Pearl Napier O’Daniel, an Adelphean, whom the others called “Mother Dannie” described the trip, “I had the good fortune to be a member of Miss Florence Rohr’s delightful European party last summer, and our boat, the Canopic, weighed anchor one bright June day off the coast of the Madeira Islands.” She noted, “I would occasionally forget and speak of the Adelphean Society instead of the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority.” Her Adelphean badge was “quite an object of curiosity to some of the girls, and they would beg to wear it. Once we held an impromptu meeting in my room in Dublin, and as we sat on the bed school girl fashion, I felt like a college girl again.”

When Rohr studied at Columbia University in 1917, she taught part time at the Horace Mann School. She and her sister took an apartment and invited five other women to join in a cooperative living arrangement. Rohr later said:

Each girl brought and prepared the dinner and breakfast for the following morning one day a week and I began to realize how much one could get by pooling resources with others. After a few months, an elderly couple living in another apartment asked me to take over their apartment, letting them retain a few rooms. Not long after another couple, breaking up, asked me to take over their lease and their furniture for anything I would pay and pay when pleased.

By saving what she could from this arrangement, Rohr was able to purchase a house at 100 Morningside Drive. The Morningside Residence Club of New York City was born.

In 1920, as a lecturer for the U.S. Department of Justice, she spoke throughout the eastern states. Publicity about the tour appeared in June 1920 newspapers;

As a part of the battle against the high cost of existence the housewives of the country are being organized into State chapters all over the country by the women’s activities branch of the Department of Justice, in its campaign against high prices. Twenty states have been organized; it was announced. Encouraged by the progress of work, three additional women organizers have started from Washington to take up the organization work. They are Misses Mary Stewart, Helen Grimes and Florence Rohr, all good speakers, whose mission it will be to tell women’s clubs all over the country and weld them into effective units in the campaign to lower prices. The speakers will preach judicious buying, educate housewives in marketing principles and teach the wisdom of buying only essential things.

Ithaca Journal, July 9, 1920

Juanita Brooks’ 1980 account of talking about going to Columbia University for a masters in 1928 mentioned the club:

Early September found me on the eastbound ‘Flyer’ scheduled to go to its final terminal, New York City. Here I would enroll in Columbia University. I arrived in NYC in the later afternoon with on one to meet me. By sunset I was established on the 7th floor of The Morningside Residence Club, a home for women only.

A 1930 newspaper article state that Rohr felt she was “blazing a trail toward a new type of community living inside a city.” It was her aim, the newspaper reported:

to provide the members of her club all the elements that go to make up a wholesome and normal life. To this end, there is an afternoon tea every Sunday from 4 to 6 in the long reception room, to which any member can invite a friend. There is the Wednesday night bridge club. One can join a class for French or Italian conversation or take bridge lessons at small expense. The member who wants to keep in touch with the latest plays or attend the opera once a week has an opportunity to get tickets at club rates. Several season seats for the opera are bought every year and club members get these at the original cost.

In February 1931, she won first prize in the Class B division of the City Gardens’ Club’s annual exhibition for her photograph of the roof garden she had designed.

The Morningside Residence Club moved to  600 W. 113th Street in 1937. Rohr was also a member of the  NYC Altrusa Club.

In January of 1941, she spoke in Florida as a country-wide lecturer for the British War Relief Society.

She died  in Lynchburg, Virginia, on December 2, 1959, at 81 years of age.

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Gladys Allene Hanna Hazeltine, Sigma Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 8, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Gladys Allene Hanna Hazeltine was raised in Walworth, Wisconsin. After high school, she enrolled at Whitewater Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater). Her major was elementary education, and she became a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma.

After earning her degree, she married Donald Roger Hazeltine in 1949. She began her career teaching first graders in Beloit, Wisconsin.

In 1953, they moved to Joliet, Illinois, and her primary focus became raising her family, although she occasionally served as a substitute teacher. Six years later, the Hazeltines moved to Evansville, Indiana, where her husband and a friend became McDonald’s franchisees. Hazeltine helped support the family business taking on some administrative and community focused duties.

She was instrumental in establishing a Tri Sigma chapter at the University of Southern Indiana, which at that time was called Indiana State University – Evansville. Hazeltine also served as an advisor to the chapter.

Evansville Press, October 27, 1968

She was also an active alumna and when she and her husband moved to Florida permanently in 1993, she was a charter member of the Sarasota-Manatee Alumnae Chapter which was chartered on May 9, 1997. She supported the Tri Sigma Foundation.

She was involved in community, church and charitable organizations wherever she lived.

2016

In 1997, the Hazeltines set a presidential scholarship endowment at the University of Southern Indiana. A few years later, they gave another $1 million unrestricted gift to the university. In 2000, the Hazeltines were honored with honorary doctor of laws degrees.

Gladys Allene Hanna Hazeltine died on February 23, 2023 at the age of 95.

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Helen “Betty” McGarr Murtagh, Theta Phi Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 7, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Elizabeth “Betty” McGarr Murtagh, was born on October 23, 1925 in Lakewood, New Jersey. After the death of their parents, she and her three siblings were taken care of by her mother’s sister, Mildred Brown.

She had artistic talent and while growing up in Jersey during World War II, she painted signs and decorated the sides of blimps and war planes at Lakehurst Naval Air Station.

She enrolled at Syracuse University and became a member of its Theta Phi Alpha chapter. . After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1947, she was employed by several advertising agencies and she freelanced fashion illustrations.

She married Gil Murtagh, a New York University graduate, in 1950 at Saint Mary of the Lake church in Lakewood. They honeymooned in Bermuda. He was an architect and the couple lived in Norwalk, Connecticut. The Murtaugh family grew to include five children.

Betty Murtagh used a bedroom for her studio. She illustrated several children’s books, including one with her neighbor, Virginia Hartmann, entitled I Can Do Anything. It was published in 1963 and was even read on the children’s television show Romper Room. She also created more than 75 Christmas card designs.

After the family moved to Hinsdale, Illinois, in 1974, she began exploring and experimenting with printmaking and created more than 100 large and colorful serigraphs.

She moved to Utica, New York, after the death of her husband in 2001. Her first art show was curated by Dr. Becky Shaw, a British artist. The show took place at the Munson Museum of Art in Utica. An exhibit at Utica College and at Syracuse University followed. A collection of her work remains at the Resource Center for Independent Living in Syracuse.

She died on May 20, 2008, at the age of 83. Some of her work can be seen on her facebook page.

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Frances Steen Suddeth Josephson, Kappa Kappa Gamma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Frances Steen Suddeth Josephson grew up in Baltimore. She became a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma while attending Goucher College where she was a biology major. Her goal was to become a doctor.

Dorothy Stinson, the president of Goucher, was the cousin of Henry Stinson, the United States Secretary of War. That connection was the impetus for some extremely bright Goucher women being recruited as clandestine cryptographers, “codebreakers.” The work she did was her secret until 1992, when the U.S. government finally declassified the project. Her first husband never knew about her codebreaking career because he died before she was able to discuss it.

After her graduation from Goucher in June 1942, she was one of the first WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). She was commissioned as an Ensign in August 1942. In an article in The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma, she stated that the work she and her fellow codebreakers did helped bring the war to a quicker close.

She worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift as she took part in race to decode the German’s Enigma machine. The work they undertook directly contributed to the Allies’ European victory. Decoding the Japanese code was much harder, and it touched her personally. Her brother, Commander Egil Steen, was a U.S. Navy captain. He commanded a ship which she learned was to be attacked, according to a Japanese code which was intercepted. There was nothing the Navy could do to avoid the kamikaze attack. While almost all of the crew were killed, Commander Steen survived the attack.

On November 20, 1944, she married Naval Air Commander James H. Suddeth in the St. Andrew’s Chapel at the United States Naval Academy chapel in Annapolis. Her husband was a Phi Kappa Tau, a graduate of Georgia Tech. Captain William N. Thomas, the academy chaplain, officiated. The bride wore an ivory satin gown and a veil which her mother had worn years before at her own wedding. The bride carried a bouquet of orchids and gardenias. A reception took place at the Officers’ club in Annapolis.

James Suddeth died on September 1, 1960, when he was struck by lightning on a Summerville, South Carolina, golf course. She married Captain H. Carl Josephson in 1962.

Frances Josephson was multitalented. She was an active volunteer and an accomplished artist. She also modelled at stores and taught charm and poise to high schoolers.

In 2004, Josephson was honored by the Navy Cryptologic Veterans Association. Her son, James “Jed” Suddeth, Jr., had served in the U.S. Naval submarine force and offered this tribute: “As an American citizen, with all the freedoms we have, I thank you; as a fellow naval officer, I salute you; and as a son, I love you.”

She died on June 9, 2007, at the age of 86.

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Mignon Good Eberhart, Alpha Gamma Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2024

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Mignonette “Mignon” Good Eberhart was born on July 6, 1899, in Lincoln, Nebraska. She studied for three years at Nebraska Wesleyan University where she became a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. Her sister, Lulu Good Vogelsang, was also a member of the chapter. Vogelsang would go on to serve Nebraska Wesleyan on its governing board and Alpha Gamma Delta as national president. Both sisters were members of P.E.O.; Mignon was a member of Chapter CA\Nebraska.

M.G. Eberhart, as she was known professionally, described her journey as an author. She began writing when she was a teenager:

I preferred writing to studying Caesar’s Commentaries and algebra. There was one halcyon period during which I traded work on English themes for the solution of geometry problems, with an obliging classmate, but, perhaps for the best, this was very brief. There was a long novel to which I could add chapters at will, and numerous plays, all of which were advisedly destroyed. In my early twenties I gathered up courage and postage stamps and sent a book-length typescript to an editor. It was accepted. The story was a murder mystery and thus started me on a hard but rewarding writing path. The writer hopes that a mystery novel is entertaining to read but it is not easy to write.

She began writing in earnest after her 1923 marriage to Alanson Eberhart, an engineer.

The first short story The Dark Corner she submitted was rejected twice but it was finally published in Flynn’s, a detective magazine.

The Patient in Room 18 was her first published novel. It debuted in 1929. Her second novel was The Patient Slept and it was awarded a $5,000 Scotland Yard prize for the best detective story of 1929. The Crime Club also selected it as its book of the month selection.

In a newspaper interview which took place early in her career, she said that she read to her husband each day’s work and if he was bored with any of it, she would rewrite it. Her rationale was “I know the public will have the same reaction. A logical husband is almost a blessing if you’re going to write mysteries.”

In March 1930, she spoke at a dinner sponsored by Theta Sigma Phi, a national journalism sorority, at the Lincoln hotel. She related her plan for utilizing her leisure time in a productive way “in the writing of mysteries and murders.”

Nebraska Wesleyan University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1935.

The couple divorced in 1943. She then married John Hazen Perry in 1946 but the marriage lasted about two years. They divorced in 1948 and she remarried her former husband. Alanson Eberhart died in 1974.

The Greenwich, Connecticut home in which she lived. (Alpha Gamma Delta Quarterly)

During her lifetime, Eberhart wrote more than 55 novels and was one of America’s best-known romantic suspense novelists. She was called the American Agatha Christie. Some of her recurring characters were Sarah Keate, Lance O’Leary, Susan Dare and James Wickwire. Her novels were adapted for cinema and television, and one was even performed on Broadway. She adapted the novel Fair Warning into a play Eight O’clock Tuesday, which ran on Broadway in 1941.

Eberhart was awarded a Grand Masters Edgar from the Mystery Writers of American and was a past president of the organization. Her books were translated in 20 languages. Harry Truman was “one of her most ardent fans.” In 1994 she received the Agatha Award: Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Eberhart wrote her last book Three Days for Emeralds when she was almost 90. She died on October 8, 1996, at the age of 97 in a Greenwich, Connecticut nursing home.

In 2007, a collection of her short stories was published. The Cochrane-Woods Library at Nebraska Wesleyan University has first editions of her 59 novels and the music for the song Mignonette which was composed for Eberhart while she lived in Chicago.

A plaque identifying her as a recipient of an honorary doctorate from NWU and a list of her achievements was presented by the Nebraska Wesleyan University Alumni Association and is in the Alpha Gamma Delta chapter house.

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