On July 1, 1912, ten years after the first National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) meeting in May of 1902, and nine months after the 1911 annual meeting, eighteen women representing eight of the sixteen NPC organizations met for lunch. The Pan-Hellenic luncheon, as it was referred to in the July 1912 edition of The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi, took place in Chicago, at the Marshall Field Tea-Rooms.
Amy Burnham Onken, a Pi Beta Phi who would later go on to serve as her organization’s Grand President for 31 years and as NPC Chairman from 1945-47, wrote the article about the lunch for her fraternity’s magazine.
According to Onken, it was “an unusually interesting” meeting because “representatives from Alpha Phi, Alpha Chi Omega, and Pi Beta Phi were just returning from their national conventions, and were able to report the most recent development of their fraternities.” Pi Beta Phi’s convention ended two days earlier; it took place on the campus of Northwestern University.
NPC Chairman, Cora Allen McElroy, presided. In addition, she had just been elected Alpha Phi’s Grand President. Greetings were sent from Chi Omega whose convention was taking place at Niagara Falls in Canada. NPC returned Chi Omega’s greetings with a telegram of its own. McElroy presented a brief outline of what was to take place at NPC’s October meeting.
Cora Allen McElroy, Alpha Phi
Kittie Parsons Hanna, Kappa Kappa Gamma, spoke “very forcibly on the high school fraternity problem, strongly advising the ineligibility of high school fraternity members
to membership in a college fraternity.” Her husband John Calvin Hanna, a Beta Theta Pi member and principal of the Oak Park (IL) High School, would speak on the same subject at the October meeting.
A round-table discussion brought out “many interesting points of fraternity development.” Some of the new ideas presented included things that had just taken place at various conventions. Alpha Chi Omega “adopted a completely revised constitution and a new financial system, has divided her chapter into five provinces, and has taken one member from her Grand Council.” Delta Delta Delta had two salaried officers, the travelling secretary and The Trident editor. Both devoted their entire time to fraternity work. Alpha Phi voted to continue for two additional years a board centralized in Chicago; it would then be “taken to the coast.”
Oh, wouldn’t it have been fun to have been a fly on the wall in Marshall Field’s on that July day in 1912!
©Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com 2013. All Rights Reserved.
