Kappa Delta was founded on October 23, 1897 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. Its founders are Lenora Ashmore Blackiston, Sara Turner White, Mary Sommerville Sparks Hendrick., and Julia Gardiner Tyler Wilson, the granddaughter of U.S. President John Tyler.*
In 1902, Kappa Delta’s second chapter was established at the Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia. It was a short-lived chapter and was forced off campus in 1904 by the school’s administration. Among the women initiated into the chapter during those two years was Georgia O’Keeffe. She enrolled at Chatham in 1903 and graduated in 1905. It was the Institute’s principal and art instructor, Elizabeth May Wilson, who encouraged O’Keeffe’s interest in art. O’Keeffe, a prolific artist, lived nearly a century and she was awarded a Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Georgia O’Keeffe as a student at the Chatham Episcopal Institute.
O’Keeffe’s legacy is preserved at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1998, the O’Keeffe Art and Leadership Program for Girls was established there and it provides opportunities for young women ages 11-13. Each summer, the Kappa Delta Foundation funds two paid internship opportunities working with the leadership program.
White Rose with Larkspur by Georgia O’Keeffe, circa 1927. The white rose is Kappa Delta’s flower.
National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) delegations and dignitaries are gathering in Dallas for the 2015 NPC Annual Meeting. Chi Omega Jean M. Mrasek, Chi Omega, will chair the meeting. Donna Crain King, Sigma Kappa, will be installed as the Chairman for the 2015-17 biennium. (See http://npcchairman.blogspot.com/2015/10/npc-transitions.html for Mrasek’s reflections near the end of her term.)
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The past two weeks have been full of family milestones, meetings, and the travel that goes with each of those things. Last night I returned home from a quick visit to Monmouth, Illinois. Monmouth College is, in my opinion, the birthplace of the modern women’s fraternity system. In 1870, when Kappa Kappa Gamma was organized there, it joined I.C. Sorosis whose Greek motto, Pi Beta Phi, became the organization’s name in 1888. An 1867 Monmouth College Courier lists I.C. Sorosis news in the column with the men’s fraternities and not in the column with the literary societies, as some have argued. I attended the meeting of the Holt House Committee. Holt House is the home in which Pi Beta Phi was founded on a Sunday afternoon in 1867. To be in the room where ten of the twelve founders gathered and spoke in whispers as they promised “to always conceal and never reveal” the particulars of the founding, is truly awe inspiring. I also made a quick visit to Steward House, where Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded in 1870.
Holt House. My friend Lisa was my randomly assigned roommate at my first Pi Phi convention in 1987. The tree was planted in honor of Cheri Patterson, a Bradley University Pi Phi who served as Chairman of the Holt House Committee.
The iris garden at Stewart House, Kappa Kappa Gamma’s founding home. Although it is mid-October, some iris did not get the memo that they usually bloom in the spring.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
