This week, I had the opportunity to read hard copies of recently published sorority magazines.* What fun it was to turn the pages and read about some of the 26 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations! Good works are being done. Current topics are being discussed. Lifelong membership is being promulgated.
The editors of the NPC organization’s magazines met for the first time prior to the first session of the 12th National Pan-Hellenic Congress (as it was then called) meeting in October 1913 at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Eleven editors attended. In addition, some groups were represented by former editors, business managers and NPC delegates. A few organizations had two or three representatives. R. Louise Fitch, editor of The Trident, was elected chairman and L. Pearle Green, editor of Kappa Alpha Theta, was elected secretary (Green also served as NPC Chairman in 1909 and 1949). The editors discussed life subscriptions, business management, and general editorial issues. The opportunity to meet as a group “was so successful and the mutual problems found to be so universal, that it was agreed that the conference should meet at least biennially, in the future.”
I find it interesting to note that all 14 magazines represented in the picture above are still being published. The four additional organizations whose editors are not pictured (Sigma Kappa, Zeta Tau Alpha, Phi Mu, and Kappa Delta) were also members of NPC in 1913 when this collage was put together by Florence A. Armstrong, Editor of The Lyre. The 18 organizations comprising NPC in 1913 are all members of NPC today. Also included in the collage is one NPC woman extraordinaire, Ida Shaw Martin, who was identified as the Sorority Editor of the Greek Exchange (also known as Banta’s Greek Exchange). Martin was a founder of Delta Delta Delta, better know to generations of Tri Deltas as Sarah Ida Shaw.
Armstrong noted that during the Congress “a report on the use made of fraternity journals by the college libraries was read and discussed. The majority of college libraries welcome the publications of those fraternities represented in the college community and give them a place on their reading-room tables. It is desirable that all Greeks become familiar with these magazines and gain the broader knowledge of the fraternity world at large which a constant reader can obtain. No one magazine can cover all the pertinent topics of the time in a single volume but each one contributes its share to the general fund of information and a truly broad-minded fraternity woman should be familiar with several journals besides her own. There is no better way to gain the real Pan-Hellenic spirit.” I concur wholeheartedly!
*You can thank my husband who somehow managed to snag me into getting new tires, but didn’t spring this on me until I was already in St. Louis. (“Just get there before seven. They have the tires in stock and will be waiting for you.”) I had nothing with me to read while I waited for the tires to be installed, so I borrowed some magazines from Constance Dillon, Pi Beta Phi’s wonderful Arrow Editor. (And yes, I do know that the magazines are all available on line, but I am old school when it comes to magazines and books. There is a great joy in physically turning the pages.)
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013.
