I’m convention tired. I’ve spent the better part of the last week greeting old friends and making new ones. It’s fairly easy to make new friends in a place where everyone shares a deep connection to an organization. This is especially true of fraternity and sorority conventions and with P.E.O.’s early beginning as a collegiate organization, it, too, shares this trait.
For those who have never heard P.E.O.’s early history, I’ve written many posts about it. There is a search button on this blog; use “P.E.O.” to find additional posts. P.E.O. was founded on January 21, 1869, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, a month after Libbie Brook, a Pi Beta Phi founder, established a chapter of I.C. Sorosis at Iowa Wesleyan. At that time, Pi Beta Phi was the organization’s Greek motto. I often wonder what would have happened had Libbie Brook ventured eastward from Monmouth, Illinois, rather than westward as she did. Would P.E.O. exist today? Or if Pi Beta Phi had used Greek letters from the beginning, would P.E.O. be known by Greek letters, too? (In the late 1880s, the P.E.O. convention body appointed a committee to study the idea of changing the name to a Greek letter one, but nothing came of the committee’s work.)
Several collegiate chapters of P.E.O. existed. Community chapters founded by young women who belonged to those collegiate chapters followed. The young women wanted to have the bonds of P.E.O. sisterhood available to them after their formal education ended. By 1902, only one collegiate chapter remained. That chapter became the second chapter of Alpha Xi Delta.
Betty Quick, Gamma Phi Beta, makes an appearance at about the 58 second mark. In addition to having served as National Panhellenic Conference Chairman, she is a P.E.O. member.
At the Convention, President of International Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood Sue Baker, a Kappa Kappa Gamma, passed the gavel to Brenda Atchison, an Alpha Gamma Delta.
With more than 6,000 in attendance, meals were a sea of tables and people.
I met many sorority women throughout Convention of International Chapter and some were even double sisters, those of us who are Pi Phis and P.E.O.s. One was a recent Pi Phi initiate. I mentioned that she was one of the few at this CIC who might be at the Bicentennial CIC in 2069. If she makes it there, she should tell those P.E.O.s in attendance of the events of the 150th. I also met a few P.E.O.s who were at the Centennial CIC in 1969 and they recounted their memories of that event, which was also held in Des Moines, Iowa.
