Alice Dugged Cary, Zeta Phi Beta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alice Dugged (Cary), who was born in 1859 in New London, Indiana, was educated in Marshall, Michigan. She attended Wilberforce University and graduated in 1881 and taught and was assistant principal at Kansas City, Missouri’s Lincoln High School.

She became Mrs. Jefferson Alexander Carey, Jr. in 1885. They married at the residence of Dr. Benjamin W. Arnett, in Wilberforce, Ohio, in a small private ceremony. Her spouse, Rev. Jefferson Carey, was a minister in the A.M.E. Church. At some point the spelling of Carey became Cary.

The couple moved to Atlanta, Georgia. She was appointed second principal of Morris Brown College in 1886. A year later, she took on the additional role of first principal at Mitchell Street School.

In addition to Wilberforce, Cary studied at the University of Chicago, Howard University, Clark College and Morris Brown College. She became a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., which was founded at Howard University on January 16, 1920. Cary helped establish the second chapter at Morris Brown College in 1921.

Cary was foremost in the fight to establish a library for African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia. She became the first librarian of Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue Branch of the Carnegie Library when it opened in 1921. It was the first Atlanta library available to African Americans when the city of Atlanta was segregated by race.  In a 1926 letter to the editor in the Atlanta Constitution, Cary noted that the library had circulated more than 1,000 books and had a juvenile membership of 4,000. She signed the letter, “Yours for the children’s sake.”

Cary was also involved in many political and community activities, including as the Georgia State Chairman of the Colored Woman’s Committee and the Georgia State Federation of Colored Women, of which she was a charter member and president.

Cary died in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941. Her obituary noted that she requested “no flowers.”

In 1996, the Sweet Auburn Area Improvement Association and the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta, dedicated a cast bronze relief sculpture by Brian R. Owens honoring Cary. It is at the intersection of Auburn Avenue NE and Hilliard Street NE.

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Aimee Vanneman Higdon, Chi Omega, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Aimee Vanneman (Higdon) was born in what was then called Persia; today it is Iran. The daughter of a missionary surgeon, she spent her childhood there and left to attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She received a B.A. from Vassar in 1914.

From Vassar, she enrolled in a Master’s program at the University of Texas. While at Texas, she became a member of the Iota chapter of Chi Omega. The February 1915 Eleusis of Chi Omega describes her as “a graduate student in this university and technician in the zoology department.” She is listed as a faculty member in the 1915 yearbook.

1915

At the 1915 Spring Pageant, the largest event coordinated by the female students of the university, she was a Duchess to her Chi Omega sister Pauline Murrah, who was Queen. She was also the chapter’s correspondent to The Eleusis of Chi Omega  and she attended a Chi Omega convention.

She spent the summer of 1915 taking a summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the summer of 1916 in Ventnor, New Jersey. She also attended pledging at the Sophie Newcomb College Chi Omega chapter in the fall of 1916.

It was at the University of Texas that she met the man with whom she would spend more than 65 years. Two different stories were told of their meeting, one hers, one his.

John Cline Higdon, who was known as “Jay” or  “J.C.”, was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. The “Vassar girl” who transferred to Texas was the subject of chatter, especially with the pre-med students. She was a whiz at science and she was working as a technician in the zoology department.

He said he first saw her one day when he was walking across campus. His friend pointed out the “new girl.” The petite brunette wearing low heels did not appear to be the least bit scientific. He later saw her again at a picnic and introduced himself. They became an item from then on in, according to one account. And since his family was in California and hers was across the world, they spent the Christmas holidays on campus.

The Higdons were profiled in an article in the February 14, 1984, Kansas City Star. At that point they were married for 65 years.  In this account, the story was told from the feminine perspective:

Sixty-eight years, Aimee Vanneman sat in a University of Texas concert hall listening to a violin recital. She was working as a zoological technician. She was with a date sitting in back of J.C. Higdon. She married him three years later.

The couple became engaged during Jay’s senior year. She earned her master’s degree in 1917 and was elected to Sigma Xi. Her master’s thesis was published and her chapter boasted in The Eleusis of Chi Omega, “We feel that we have a s great scientist in our midst.” The couple married on August 17, 1918.

Vassar Alumnae News, February 1919

An article in the November 9, 1961, issue of the Kansas City Times told of the couple’s experience in the country in which she had been born. In 1918, the American Committee for Relief in the Near East was looking for Turkish speakers to help. Aimee Higdon’s father was a hostage and had not been heard from in five years. She thought by volunteering for the assignment she might have the opportunity to find out what happened to her father. It was said she told her  husband she was heading to Turkey and that he said he was going along, too.

The January 16, 1919 Fort Worth Star Telegram noted that the Higdons had been:

appointed members of the Relief Commission for the reconstruction of Turkey which will set sail for the Near East in February. Mrs. Higdon will work in a medical laboratory or take charge of orphan babies. Higdon will do electrical work.

Six months after applying to help, they sailed on a Navy transport. What they found was heartbreaking. Although she thought she would be using her bacteriology degree, she was charged with running an  orphanage. She also had to deal with newly orphaned children roaming the streets. Some young children were found dead and she supervised their burials. Her proficiency in Turkish and French helped her act as a translator when volunteer doctors needed those skills to work with patients.

Her husband thought he would be using his physics degree, but he was put in charge of getting wheat shipped around the country.  They lived on the British Regimental compound. One day she took a phone call at the compound and it was her father on the other end of the line. He didn’t know she was there. She heard a voice say, “Dr. William Vanneman, asking permission for his train to pass through Nachevan en route to the Black Sea.” She quickly identified herself and father and daughter were able to have a short reunion.

The Higdon’s time abroad was harrowing. Her account of the genocide was published in many newspapers. In addition, she developed typhus, delivered a baby boy named William and they all barely made it out of the country alive. In April of 1921, they made their way to New London, Connecticut, where her parents then lived. Another baby was born there.

The couple settled in Kansas City, Missouri, where three additional children were born. The Higdons spent the rest of their lives there.

Higdon kept herself busy with volunteer opportunities including as a worker with the tuberculosis clinic, the public health office at General Hospital, the polio ward at St. Luke’s Hospital, the American Red Cross and as a general hospital volunteer. Higdon was also a trustee of the Student Nurses Loan Fund, a director of the Children’s Cardiac Center, a member of the Woman’s City Club, Women’s Division of the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and a past board member of the Gillis Home for Children, among many other organizations.  She received Matrix Award from Theta Sigma Phi 1966 for distinguished cultural and community service.

She died on June 12, 1989 at the age of 96.

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Vee Shakarian Toner, Delta Zeta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Venus “Vee” Shakarian (Toner) was born on December 19, 1906, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to immigrants from Istanbul, Turkey. She became a member of Delta Zeta while attending the University of Pittsburgh. She was a prominent athlete when she was in college and served as the president of the Women’s Athletic Association. A member of Mortar Board, she was listed in Who’s Who of American Colleges and Universities.

Her father, Hogop David Shakarian, started selling lackzoom, a yogurt, door to door. That led to a storefront sandwich and yogurt shop. After her father’s death in 1936, her  brothers, David and Bart, grew the company into General Nutrition Centers (GNC).

“Three Verona, Pa, teachers – Vee Shakarian, Jo Pinkerton and Betty George” Pittsburgh Press, August 26, 1929

She married Arthur C. Toner, Jr., on Friday, September 24, 1937. The headline in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph read “Pittsburg Aviatrix Will Wed Engineer.” Their romance began on a tennis court. At the time of her wedding she taught at Gladstone Junior High School.

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 17, 1937

It was noted that the bride was “one of the few women to hold a Department of Commerce pilot’s license and has flown in national aviation races.”­­ She served as secretary and president of the Ninety-Nines, a national organization of licensed female pilots.

A health and physical education teacher in Pittsburgh junior and high schools, she did graduate work at Pitt, Wisconsin, UCLA and Oxford College in England.

Toner was also known internationally and officiated at the 1955 Pan-American Games in Mexico City and the games in 1959 in Chicago. She chaperoned the 1956 women’s Olympic swimming and diving team and in 1960 was on the Women’s Olympic Swimming Committee for the Rome Olympics. She continued to serve on the U.S. Olympics Committee at various points. Later in her life, she served as a guest speaker in the subject of sports, athletics and Olympics. Her speaking fees were donated to the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Tennis remained a part of her life, too. Toner was the first American woman named chair umpire at Wimbledon. She officiated at International Federation Cup matches and tournaments in England and umpired the Wightman Cup matches.

Toner was also the first woman cited for civic and social leadership and community achievement at the Pittsburgh’s Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) 1964 Man of the Year Banquet.

A 1965 Lamp of Delta Zeta noted, “Vee’s spare time is devoted to Delta Zeta youth and members of Omicron chapter at the University of Pittsburgh. She is one of the best-known alumnae.”

1965 Lamp of Delta Zeta

Toner was Delta Zeta’s Woman of the Year in 1970, although some publicity was published in 1969. The October 30, 1969 edition of the Indiana Evening Gazette in Indiana, Pennsylvania, reported that “Mrs. Arthur C. (Vee) Toner, Jr., was given the honor at a reception on October 21 at the Cathedral of Learning. Delta Zeta’s national president Betty Heusch Agler presented a medallion to Toner for her contribution and participation in international amateur sports.”

Delta Zeta established a loan fund in her name. The Vee Shakarian Toner Student Loan Fund was announced at the 1973 Convention in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Toner served as chairman of Women’s Swimming of the Alleghany Mountain Association of the Amateur Athletic Union, U.S.A., an organization of which she was vice president and president. She was the first woman from western Pennsylvania to be named to the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. She also won numerous civic honors including Pittsburgh’s Woman of the Year and the Leyman Honor Award from what was then the Pennsylvania State Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

Vee Shakarian Toner died on March 6, 1995. It was noted that she was “the Grand Dame of tennis and swimming in Pittsburgh area.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 18, 1986

 

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Rev. Hannah J. Powell, Sigma Kappa, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 19, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Hannah Jewett Powell was born in Clinton, Maine, on October 6, 1866. She enrolled in a teacher’s course at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. There, in 1893, she became a member of the Beta chapter of Sigma Kappa. The sorority was founded at Colby and its first three chapters, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, were there.

Powell taught at the Plains Primary School and the Oakland Street School in Waterville and was principal of Clinton High School and New Boston High School in New Hampshire.

She enrolled in Tufts Divinity School and was ordained in 1899. Powell had pastorates in South Portland, Livermore, North Jay, South Paris, Sangerville, Machias.

Powell played a role in the sorority’s philanthropy, the Maine Seacoast Mission. She was its first female worker and served seven years with the Mission’s headquarters at Bar Harbor. For a time, she lived at Muscongus (Louds) Island for the summer as a resident pastor.

She wrote of Seacoast Mission in a 1913 Triangle of Sigma Kappa, “The voice of our sisters mingled with the cry of the ocean everywhere calls us from the coast of Maine – Come, let us live together and work together; let us play together and love together, bound to the highest purpose of our common womanhood by a bunch of violets.”

In 1921, she left her post at Cyrus Cole Memorial Universalist Church in South Portland and headed to Sunburst, North Carolina. There she lead the congregation at Inman’s Chapel. According to an article in a 1921 Triangle of Sigma Kappa:

There are practically not women preachers in the South as it generally known, and Miss Powell’s call to this little pastorate among the mountains of NC is attended by circumstances which are somewhat out of the ordinary, everything considered. In the first place it is rather in the nature of coincidence that the seeds of the Universalist faith should have been planted in the settlement in Sunburst by a Maine Missionary, Rev. Q. H. Shinn, who labored there many years ago. Then Rev. J.A. Inland (sic – should be Inman), the preacher who followed with a pastorate covering a long period and whose grave for several years has lain in the churchyard behind the little mountainside church, had a strange vision that a woman would prove the deliverance of the people in the locality. At the time  he proclaimed this vision, women preachers were so little known that it was not interpreted to mean that a woman having pastoral charge over them would be its fulfillment.

Over her career she wrote many articles for denominal  publications and magazines.

Honored guests at the 50th anniversary of Rev. Powell’s ordination, Morning Sentinel, June 6, 1949

On June 5, 1949, she celebrated the 50th anniversary of her ordination. The festivities took place in the church where she was ordained, the First Universalist Church in Waterville. A classmate from Tufts who was at her ordination took part in the program. Testimonials were presented to her from her former congregations as well as Colby College and Universalist organizations. The Sigma Kappas presented her with a gift. Colby College gave her a copy of the newly published Holy Imperative. It was written by Waterville resident  Rev. Dr. Winston King. A group of boys whom she taught at Sunday School early in her career gave a memorial window to the church and four of them were ushers at the service.

In 1951, she celebrated her 85th  birthday and it was noted that she was one of the oldest members of Sigma Kappa.

In her retirement, she was active in Sigma Kappa alumnae activities and was the guest speaker at sorority activities. She died on November 17, 1954, at the age of 88.

 

 

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LaRona J. Walls Morris, Ph.D., Sigma Gamma Rho, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Dr. LaRona J. Walls (Morris) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1942. She graduated from East St. Louis Senior High School in Illinois in 1960. After graduation, she attended Mildred Louise Business College. (Dr. Mildred Louise Sammons, the founder of the East Saint Louis institution was also a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.). With her skills from the business certificate, she took a job at Scott Air Force Base. In 1962, she married Oreido Morris. They became the parents of three children.

In 1970, as a young mother, she enrolled at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and earned a bachelor’s in 1973 and master’s degree two years later. She also joined the Gamma Beta chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. at SIUE in 1970. Morris quickly became a leader in the sorority and she served at the regional level and received national attention.

 

Morris and her sister, Stephanie Carpenter, enrolled in the doctoral program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Night classes were offered to doctoral students, and they would leave work in the metro St. Louis area and travel east for an hour and then head south for another hour to get to the evening classes. After class, they would head back, driving in the dark and getting home very late. They both earned their doctorates in 1988.

From 1996-2000, Morris was the 18th Grand Basileus (President) of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. She created Operation Book Bag, which provides school supplies to those who need them. She also established the nationwide Youth Symposium to address the problems affecting young people.

Morris spent the majority of her career in education. For 13 years she was Special Assistant to the St. Clair County (IL) Regional Superintendent of Schools. She was assistant principal and principal of  Edward R. Wirth Middle School in Cakohia, Illinois. She became principal of Clark Middle School in September 2003. She also served on the East St. Louis Board of Education and resigned when she took a position as assistant principal of her alma mater, East St. Louis Senior High School.

In addition to her sorority activities, Morris was a member of the St. Louis chapter of MENSA and was active in many other community and professional organizations.

Morris died of lung cancer on July 1, 2005, at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. She was 62 years old.

On October 12, 2007, the Dr. LaRona J. Morris Library at Mason-Clark Middle School in East St. Louis was dedicated. The effort was led by the Alpha Upsilon Sigma chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. On the occasion of the sorority’s 100th anniversary, a rededication ceremony was held in November of 2022.

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Ida Erbesfield Horowitz, Delta Phi Epsilon, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

In 1937, Ida Erbesfield (Horowitz) became a member of the Psi chapter of Delta Phi Epsilon at the University of Georgia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in merchandising and began her career as a buyer for Rich’s department store in Atlanta.

Atlanta Constitution, January 24, 1937

She married Maurice K. Horowitz on December 25, 1941. The wedding took place in the Newton, North Carolina, and the officiant was Rabbi William Greenberg. The bride wore an ice blue dress. After the wedding, the couple traveled to Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, the bridegroom’s hometown.

Note the date of the wedding. It was a little more than two weeks after Pearl Harbor was bombed and the thoughts of the newlyweds became serving their country.  Maurice was classified as 4F and could not serve in the military. The couple chose to serve as civilians and spent a year manufacturing munitions in Alabama. Then they headed to Pearl Harbor and worked in civilian capacity for the U.S. Navy.

After the war, the couple joined with another couple they met in Hawaii and opened a chicken restaurant in Roanoke, Virginia. They sold the restaurant and moved back to Atlanta to be closer to family in 1947. The family now included a son and a daughter.

Maurice sold coffee and then joined Libby’s as a regional manager of frozen foods. In 1953, the couple founded M.K. Horowitz Company, a frozen food brokerage. Ida managed business operations, leaving Maurice free to work with customers. The Horowitzs sold the business in 1988. By then, they had grown the company into one of the southeast’s premier food brokerages.

The top American broker of Coldwater Seafood’s Icelandic Fish, Maurice served 42 years as the Consul and Consul Gerald of Iceland. The company invited him to Iceland in 1962 and the government bestowed the title first Atlanta Honorary Consul. That ultimately led to him being given one of the country’s highest honors – Knighthood in the Order of the Falcon. Ida was right beside him for his duties in Atlanta, DC, and Iceland.

After his death on May 19, 2008, the family established the Maurice Horowitz Memorial Scholarship at the University of Georgia. After his wife died, the name of the scholarship was changed to the Ida E. and Maurice K. Horowitz Memorial Scholarship.

Horowitz was a lifelong volunteer, following her children’s activities and dedicating herself to Ahavath Achim Synagogue. She died on February 28, 2012 at the age of 92.

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Vivian Charno Wren, Zeta Tau Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Vivian Charno (Wren) was born on June 11, 1921, in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from Central High School in 1937, she entered Baker University in Baker, Kansas.

At Baker, she joined Zeta Tau Alpha. She entered Mercy Hospital’s School of Nursing  and graduated as a Registered Nurse in 1939. Enlisting in the U.S. Navy, she served as her country as a nurse for four years.

Kansas City Times, February 5, 1945

Her first post was at Mare Island, the first Navy base in California. There she worked with amputees. She was then transferred to Fort White, Oregon, a German POW camp. Lieutenant Charno finished her Navy career at San Diego Naval Hospital.

On February 21, 1947, she married Roger J. Wren. The couple remained California residents for the rest of their lives, although they loved to travel.

She battled polio while pregnant with her third child, whom she lost before birth. She recovered and had two more children. Her husband, a football coach, took a job at Ukiah High School and she was a surgical and floor nurse at Ukiah General Hospital.

Wren then began teaching psychiatric nursing at Mendocino State Hospital. This led to her enrolling in a public health nursing degree program at Sonoma State University. Following graduation, she became the school nurse for the Ukiah Unified School District.
She was an active PTA member, served as nurse for the Camp Fire Girls’ Mendocino Woodlands camp, volunteered at the Hospice Gift Store and even served as the Easter Bunny for a Lion’s Club Easter egg hunt.

Vivian Charno Wren died on November 28, 2014, at the age of 93.

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Eunice Lundbeck Mannheim, Delta Gamma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 15, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Eunice Lundbeck (Mannheim) was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 31, 1907. She became a member of Delta Gamma during her undergraduate years at Adelphi College. She previously attended the Packer Collegiate Institute. After graduation from Adelphi, she taught school for a few years.

She married Phi Gamma Delta L. Robert Mannheim on October 10, 1930. She wore a green chiffon dress and carried orchids and lilies of the valley. The ceremony took place at her mother’s home (her father had died the year before). The bridegroom was an alumnus of Columbia University. After the wedding the couple took a motor tour of New England.

The couple had three sons and moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1946. There, she was active in PTA and she served on the committee that affiliated the local parents group with the national Parent Teacher Association. She was also a resource chairman for the Little White House Conference on Education.

She served the community in many ways. Mannheim was a member of the Amherst Women’s Club. She belonged to the Hampshire County Business and Professional Women’s Club. She was on the state board of the American Association of University Women as well as the state organization of League of Women Voters. Mannheim was a member of the area Mental Health Center Association and as chairman of the Massachusetts Conference of Mental Health Centers. She was also president of the Delta Gamma Pioneer Valley alumnae organization.

North Adams Transcript, October 16, 1956

Mannheim won election of the Amherst Board of Selection in 1954 after serving eight years as a member of the Amherst town meeting. She was the first woman elected to the Board of Selectmen. During her early years in Amherst, she was a proponent of the town manager form of government and was a member of the committee that recommend the change. Mannheim was reelected to the Board twice and was elected chair in 1960. She was the Hampshire County Selectmen’s Association’s delegate to the executive committee of the Massachusetts Selectmen’s Association.

Recorder-Gazette, September 18, 1958

In the beginning of December 1960 she received the Citizen of the Year award. It was given by the Amherst Chamber of Commerce for “outstanding community spirit and service.” She died shortly thereafter, quite suddenly, on December 13, 1960, at the age of 53. Later that year, the Amherst League of Women Voters, of which Mannheim was president 1947-1949, established a memorial fund in her name.

A letter to the editor written by her friend appeared in the Transcript Telegram on January 7, 1961.

 

 

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Lucy Somerville Howorth, Alpha Omicron Pi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 14, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Lucy Somerville (Howorth) was born on July 1, 1895. Her mother was Nellie Nugent Somerville, the first woman to serve in the Mississippi Legislature. Howorth’s upbringing in Greenville, Mississippi, was a bit unconventional as Mississippi was not a hotbed of suffrage and yet her mother was a committed suffragist.

She traveled to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Today the institution is know as Randolph College. There, in 1913, she became a member of the Kappa chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi. Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, she was also a member of Pi Gamma Mu honor society.

In 1975, she recorded an oral history at the University of North Carolina. Howorth began the interview with this disclaimer:

I wish to make a statement similar to the one that I made when Delta State University initiated a series of tape recordings. It is to this effect, that I have made many mistakes, I have committed blunders, I have done things that I wish I hadn’t done and not done some that I should have, but I am not the type to go dwelling on errors. I think that life has to be lived positively and affirmatively. If I could learn from a mistake, I tried to do so. Otherwise, it was washed out. This may make my tape sound like a pompous egotist, and if so, it just has to be.

She also told this story about her time at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College:

Oh, I went to several of the state conventions and acted as a page and then in the year before I went to college, the spring of 1912, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw came and I went to the state convention where she spoke and then she came . . . well, maybe the convention was in Greenville, but anyhow, she spoke in Greenville. Then when I went on to college that fall, she came to Lynchburg to a meeting and spoke and I arranged,  freshman girl that I was, I stirred them up and arranged to have her come out to the college. Now, there’s where I began to run into this narrow-minded business that really burned me up. They wouldn’t let Anna Howard Shaw speak in the college auditorium.

This was the fall of 1912 and I found out, or somebody helped me out, because I was a freshman, that the rule of the college was that the seniors could entertain anybody that they wanted in what was called the Senior Parlor. So, some of the seniors agreed that Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could speak in the parlor and we had a reception for her and we had them hanging out the windows.

Lucy Somerville was part of this effort.

Her post-graduate studies in psychology and economics at Columbia University opened  her eyes to life in New York City. She visited settlement houses and sweatshops and those images help shape her future views. She applied to the Columbia University School of Law but her application was denied because she was a woman.

In August of 1920, she drove with her mother from Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. Their goal was to be there when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified. It happened on August 18, 1920 and they were there.

She went back to Mississippi for law school and was one of two women in her class. She graduated with a LL.B. in 1922 from the University of Mississippi, summa cum laude, and  was the first woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. Setting up a practice in Cleveland, Mississippi, she struggled to get clients. A move back to Greenville ensued. She was appointed as a member of the Mississippi Board of Bar Examiners and then as commissioner of a United States District Court. It was through the first appointment that she and a fellow classmate, Joseph M. Howorth, renewed their acquaintance. They married in 1928. Together they worked in Jackson, Mississippi.

A Democrat, Howorth, served as a Hinds County Representative and in the Mississippi State Legislature from 1932-1936. She also served on the Board of Veterans Appeals from July 1934 to April 1943. For five years, from 1949-1954, she was a member of the War Claims Commission, serving as associate general counsel, deputy general counsel, and general counsel.  In 1954, she moved back to Cleveland, Mississippi, and practiced law with her husband for another 25 years. John F. Kennedy appointed her to his Commission on the Status of Women.

Early in her alumna life, she served Alpha Omicron Pi as a member of the Executive Committee. In 1985 Alpha Omicron Pi gave her the Elizabeth Heywood Wyman award in recognition of her outstanding success in her profession, the arts and service to humanity.

Joseph Howorth died in 1982. Lucy Somerville Howarth died on August 23, 1997, at the age of 102.

March 1935 To Dragma

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Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer, Alpha Xi Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 13, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Ella Lillian Wall (Van Leer)  became a member of Alpha Xi Delta at the University of California-Berkeley. She was born in the city in 1892 and graduated from Berkeley High School.

At Berkeley, she founded Delta Epsilon, an art honor society for women. She also received a letter for her crewing efforts and was awarded the Alpha Xi Delta honor ring for scholarship. Her major was architecture and she earned a bachelor’s in 1914 and a master’s degree in 1915. Her master’s thesis was “The Functions of Rhythm Motives in Decorative Design.”

Because it was difficult for women to get taken seriously and find employment in the architecture field, she turned to teaching. For two years she taught art and architectural design at Glendale High School. She was hired by San Mateo High School as head of the art department.

According to an article in a 1921 Quill of Alpha Xi Delta, after a year teaching at San Mateo, she took a leave of absence to serve the United States Army as a physiotherapist during World War I. She had three months of intense training and was then sent to New York to wait for transport to Europe. She never boarded the ship. After the Armistice was signed, she was ordered to Camp Custer in Michigan. She worked with paralysis cases. Colonia, New Jersey, was her next post and she received a Reward of Merit for her work with facial paralysis victims.

1921 Quill of Alpha Xi Delta

In August of 1919, she headed back to the west coast and was discharged from the Army at Letterman Hospital on the Presidio of San Francisco. She resumed  her teaching duties at San Mateo High School. Her next teaching position was at the Technical High School in Oakland.

In the late 1910s, she was experimenting with batik designs, decorating scarves and smocks as well as lecturing on the topic. She was a member of the American Legion’s Berkeley Post No. 7 and became the first woman to serve in an office of the American Legion in California. She was second vice commander of the post.

Her marriage to Blake Ragsdale Van Leer took place on September 6, 1924, in Chicago, Illinois. He was a Purdue alumnus. He later became an honorary member of Theta Tau while he was the Dean of the Engineering School at North Carolina State University. The couple had three children.

During World War II, she worked as a principal draftsman in the office of the Quartermaster General in Washington, DC. In 1944, her husband was named president of Georgia Institute of Technology. At that time, Georgia Tech was an all-male school. Ella Wall Van Leer made it her business to see that women would be admitted to the school. And they were but it took some time and persistance. There were five women enrolled in 1954.

According to the website of the Gamma Eta chapter of Alpha Xi Delta, those five women were invited to a tea at the president’s home. Several Alpha Xi alumnae were also there and at the end of the tea the women decided that they, too, wanted to be Alpha Xis.

The March 26, 1954, Atlanta Constitution carried a story on its social pages that the members of the Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta and four honor guests would be entertained at a tea at the Van Leer home. The honored guests were: Dr. Elizabeth G. VanBuskirk, national president of Alpha Xi Delta; Dr. Nola-Stark Rogers, dean at UCLA; Dean Edith G. Stallings of the University of Georgia; and Dean Karen Carlson of the University of Arizona. The deans would join Ella Van Leer and attend the National Association Dean of Women meeting in Washington, D.C. It’s almost certain that the women who wanted to become an Alpha Xi chapter were introduced to VanBuskirk and the other  honor guests. What sounds like two teas may have been one and the same although the newspaper story does not mention the five young students who may have attended the tea.

It was reported in the September 3, 1954, Atlanta Constitution that Alpha Xi Delta was  installing its 65th chapter at Georgia Tech the next day. VanBuskirk and Stallings, visitors that previous May, were back to do the honors. According to the newspaper article, Georgia Tech President, Col. Blake Van Leer, was the principal speaker. A reception at the Van Leer home was scheduled for Sunday. The chapter was installed with seven young women, the five who attended the tea and two others. It’s likely that special dispensation was needed to install a chapter with only seven members. It was the first National Panhellenic Conference organization at Georgia Tech and the chapter’s website notes it was the first sorority chapter to be installed at an engineering school. Van Leer provided her home as a space for chapter meetings.

In addition to the Alpha Xi Delta Alumnae chapter, Van Leer was active in the Atlanta Area Alumnae Panhellenic. She hosted its February 11, 1955, meeting.

Blake Van Leer died on January 23, 1956. His widow moved to a house near campus and stayed involved with campus life and community affairs. She was active in the Georgia Tech Society of Women Engineers chapter, which her daughter Maryly helped found.

Atlanta Constitution, September 27, 1956

Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer died on August 8, 1986, at the age of 93,

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