Vetabelle Phillips Carter, Alpha Xi Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 27, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Vetabelle Philips Carter became a member of the Alpha Xi Delta chapter at the University of Washington. The chapter was founded in 1907. In one of its first chapter reports includes this information:

two pledges have also been added to our number, Vetabel (sic) Phillips and Zelda Connor – two lovely girls, whom we will initiate before we part for the summer.

The next edition of The Quill reported”

On the morning of May 30th an initiation ceremony was held for our two new girls, Vetabel (sic) Phillips and Zelda Connor. Nu feels that she cannot be congratulated enough on her success in winning these two strong local member for dear old Alpha.

Although she had musical ability and wanted to be a dancer or musician, her family was against those careers. Instead, she became a teacher and taught at a Native American reservation in Washington for a few years.

On July 7, 1913, she married an engineer and graduate of Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School, Fred Mortimer Carter, Jr. Their first few years of marriage saw the couple moving and following his career. The Carters were in San Francisco in the early 1920s.

Automobiles were becoming part of American life, and she was becoming concerned about the number of traffic fatalities being reported in the newspaper. In 1927, there was one fatality per 1,000 cars on the road. And as more cars appeared on the road, more accidents and fatalities happened.

She thought of ways to help stop the number of traffic accidents. Using potatoes and a paring knife, she designed prototypes. Her more successful potato creations were redesigned using other mediums – clay, cardboard and finally metal. She created a working traffic signal. In a 1928 newspaper article, she described it:

My first achievement was an illuminated ‘through street sign, bearing on its face the words ‘Stop, through street,’ the lettering of opalescent glass, and lighted from behind by a flashing bulb, which enabled it to function equally well by day and night.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 26, 1928. Vetabelle Phillips Carter posed with her invention.

Five hundred of the signs were installed on San Francisco streets by the California State Automobile Association.

1927 patents

Daughter Paulena was born in 1930. Her mother doted on and nurtured her daughter’s musical ability and Paulena became a concert pianist. Fred Carter died on May 1 1954. Later that year, Vetabelle purchased a 1954 Lincoln Capri. Although Vetabelle died in 1978, the car still lives on.

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Helen Maxine Burke Porter Jackson, Sigma Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 26, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Maxine Burke Porter Jackson was raised in Topeka, Kansas. After graduating from Topeka High School she enrolled at Kansas State Teacher’s College (now Emporia State University). There she became a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma and excelled at dramatics and forensics.

The Emporia (KS) Gazette, May 17, 1946

She won a scholarship to Stanford University to study drama and she earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Kansas.

One of her jobs involved raising the funds needed to build the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas. She taught in the Topeka Public Schools until her retirement. She helped establish the student teaching program with collaboration between Washburn, Kansas, and Kansas State Universities.

The first president of the Pi Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, a sorority for teachers, she often served on district curriculum committees. For four years, she sat on the Washburn University Board of Regents. She served on many local, national and international boards. A member of P.E.O. , she was president of Chapter DV/KS.

In 1982, she married Walter Porter and until he died in 2004, they enjoyed travelling the world. On July 15, 2010, Dr. Donald Jackson, M.D. became her husband. She died four years later, on August 11, 2014, at the age of  89.

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Barbara Ann Weintraub Ciongoli, Sigma Delta Tau, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On March 25, 1917, seven young Jewish women founded Sigma Delta Tau at Cornell University. The Beta Chapter was chartered at the University of Pennsylvania on June 20, 1920.

In the mid-1960s, Barbara Ann Weintraub Ciongoli became a member of the Beta Chapter after she enrolled at Penn. She graduated from the prestigious Hunter College High School in New York City. Beginning in seventh grade, she took two subways to get from her home in Forest Hills to school and then reversed the trip to get back home. She was 17 when she graduated from high school.

In 1966, she studied in a Penn sponsored program in Florence, Italy. It was life changing experience for her. She met her future husband and she fell in love with Italy and all it had to offer. She became fluent in Italian, too. In 1967, she graduated from Penn summa cum laude. A year later, she earned a master’s degree in International Relations.

She married A. Kenneth Ciongoli, the young Penn student she met in Italy, when she was 21. In 1969, they moved to Burlington, Vermont, for his medical residency in neurology.

The Ciongolis shortly after their marriage.

While pursing a Ph.D. at the University of Vermont, she taught history. And although they moved 11 times in the first years of their marriage, they ended back in Burlington in 1975. There they raised their two daughters and three sons.

The couple opened an Italian restaurant, La Bottega, and the menus and recipes were her domain. And she worked behind the counter, too. And the Ciongolis were instrumental in starting the Vermont Italian Cultural Association. A 1986 article in the Burlington Free Press described the elegant Carnevale held on Strove Tuesday at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum. The attire was black tie or costume to celebrate the final day before Lent. There was a spread of traditional Italian desserts made by Ciongoli and two friends. It took them a week to prepare the dolci for the 150 attendees.

She was a trustee of John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Dr. A. Kenneth Ciongoli died in 2008. Barbara Ciongoli spent the last seven years of her life waging a valiant battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – Lou Gerhig’s disease). She died on June 29, 2021.

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Eva B. Dykes, Ph.D., Delta Sigma Theta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 24, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The library at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, is named for Eva B. Dykes. She was the first African American woman to complete the requirements for a Ph.D. and the third African American to be conferred the degree because of the graduation ceremony dates.

Dykes grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended M Street High School, which was later named Dunbar High School. After graduation, she enrolled at Howard University. While there she became a member of the Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority, Inc. As her class valedictorian, she won the $10 scholarship awarded by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

In 1914, she graduated from Howard University summa cum laude. Dykes enrolled at Radcliffe University, which at that time was the women’s coordinate to the all-male Harvard University. At Radcliffe, she was forced to earn another bachelor’s degree before she could do graduate work. The Radcliffe B..A. was conferred magna cum laude. She earned a master’s and a Ph.D. from Radcliffe, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Dykes was the first African American woman to complete the requirements for the degree although because of Radcliffe’s late graduation, she was not the first to be awarded the degree. She was the third. The first Ph.D. awarded to an African American woman was conferred upon Dyke’s sorority sister, Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander. The University of Pennsylvania where Alexander studied had graduation ceremonies on June 15, 1921. Radcliffe’s graduation was a week later.

Dykes taught at Dunbar High School while working and defending her dissertation. She studied the attitudes and writings of Alexander Pope in her dissertation, Pope and His Influence in America from 1715 to 1815. She had a short stint teaching at the now defunct Walden University and spent 15 years on the faculty of Howard University. While at Howard she coauthored Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges. In 1942, her book, The Negro in English Romantic Thought: Or a Study in Sympathy for the Oppressed, was published.

She became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1920. When she joined the faculty of Oakwood University. a Seventh-day Adventist college in 1944, she was the only doctorate holding faculty member. Moreover, the school was unaccredited. As chair of the English Department, she was an integral part of leading the academic accreditation process to a successful outcome. She spent the rest of her career at Oakwood. After retirement in 1968, she remained in Huntsville and continued to teach as the opportunity presented itself. The Oakwood library was named in her honor in 1973 and she was became a Professor Emerita in 1980.

Dykes was also awarded a Citation of Excellence from the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for her contributions to its educational efforts. Dykes was 93 years old when she died on October 29, 1986.

The inscription at the bottom of the gravestone reads “First African American Female to complete studies for PHD Degree in US (1921).”

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Sara C. Yakovac, Alpha Sigma Tau, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Sara C. Yakovac was born when her father’s Army career had him posted at West Point Military Academy. Her childhood was spent in several different places including Germany.

She enrolled at James Madison University where she became a member of Alpha Sigma Tau and served on the chapter’s executive board. It was shortly after spring break her senior year that she was diagnosed with leukemia.

An economics major, Yakovac served as president of the Economics Club and was a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon economics honor society. She graduated magna cum laude in 2000, and was hired by KPMG Consulting. Yakovac began as a consumer loan researcher, but her career was cut short and she took a medical leave.

Yakovac underwent treatment at Ohio State University’s medical center including a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy. While the odds of the procedure being successful were about 20%, she remained positive that she would be one of the lucky ones.

She died April 17, 2001 at the age of 22. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Her parents, Major General and Mrs. Joseph L. Yakovac, endowed a scholarship for a student in the James Madison University economics program. The Psi Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau established a scholarship in her memory which is administered through the Alpha Sigma Tau Foundation.

The Breeze, October 3, 2002

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Helen Poole Rush, Delta Zeta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM 2022

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Poole Rush enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh and became a member of the Omicron Chapter of Delta Zeta. Although she graduated in 1919, she never really left the university. Along the way, she earned a master’s degree from the institution. When she retired more than five decades later, she was the University of Pittsburgh’s first female vice chancellor. She served under eight chancellors.

The Omicron Chapter of Delta Zeta when Helen Poole Rush was a collegiate member.

The March 1952 Lamp of Delta Zeta included this tidbit from the Omicron Chapter:

Our October meeting was a dinner at the Royal York in honor of the founders of Omicron chapter, Guests included the entire membership of the college chapter and Miss Helen Poole Rush, Dean of Women and first pledge of Omicron chapter.

During her tenure, she served as Dean of Women and Dean of Students before becoming Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. She studied at Columbia University and the University of Oslo, spending several months in Norway.  She received a Winifred Cullis Lecture Fellowship from the British American Association and delivered more than 35 lectures in England during 1957-58.

Pittsburgh Press, May 23, 1941

In 1963, Beaver College (now Arcadia University) awarded Rush an honorary doctorate. The following year, she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania. Upon her retirement, the university named her a Vice Chancellor Emerita.

The University of Pittsburgh awarded her a Bicentennial Medal for achievement and service in 1985. She died 1992 at the age of 94.

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Bessie Margolin, Alpha Epsilon Phi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Bessie Margolin became a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi chapter at Sophie Newcomb College. Born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants, she and her family moved to Tennessee. Her mother died when Margolin was a child, and her father was unable to care for their children. A prominent Memphis rabbi suggested they be sent to the Jewish Children’s Home in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Isidore Newman School, where the home’s children were enrolled, provided a milieu in which Margolin could thrive. She graduated with honors at 16. A scholarship led her to Sophie Newcomb College, part of Tulane University.

While at Newcomb, Margolin held an office in AEPhi, was in clubs and played intramurals. She became aware that it was possible to attend Tulane, which was then all male. She could earn a degree from Arts and Science and one from the Tulane Law School simultaneously, although it would take an extra year. Of the 23 students in her law school class, she graduated second.  She was the first woman member of Tulane’s Order of the Coif as well as being a member of the charter class.

Margolin then went to New Haven, Connecticut, where she began work on a J.D. at Yale Law School. After graduation she encountered the same fate as the other female lawyers of her time. Law firms, especially prestigious ones, were not welcoming and would not hire them.

She became the first female attorney working for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Margolin then joined the U.S. Department of Labor. Margolin was a fair labor law advocate and expert. She won almost all of the more than 20 cases she argued before the United States Supreme Court.

Margolin served temporarily in the War Department after World War II and helped draft the regulation which established the Nuremberg Tribunals. She also attended the Nuremberg Trials.

An advocate for equal pay, Margolin helped create the Equal Pay Act. In 1966, she was a cofounder of the National Organization of Women. One hopes that she crossed paths with AEPhi sister Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

She retired in 1972 but occasionally taught a class at George Washington University. Margolin died on June 19, 1996, at the age of 87.

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Sybil Bauer, Gamma Phi Beta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On January 31, 1927, Sybil Bauer, an initiate of the Gamma Phi Beta chapter at Northwestern University, died. She was 23.

Bauer was also a gold medal Olympian who, at the age of 22 held 23 swimming records in the women’s backstroke. She was the first woman to break a man’s swimming record.

Her family, immigrants from Norway, had a summer home at Loon Lake and she learned to swim early. She began swimming at the Illinois Athletic Club. Her training partner was Johnny Weissmuller, of Tarzan fame.

She broke high school records. Bauer began her studies at Northwestern University in 1922. That October she broke by four seconds the 440-yard backstroke record for men held by Stubby Krueger. Because the meet was unsanctioned, her time was never officially recognized.

At the 1924 Paris Olympics, she broke her own world in 100 meter backstroke with a time of 1:23:2. A month before the event, a few Gamma Phi friends saw her off as she and her teammates sailed to Europe on The America. In an article in the September 1924 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, her sorority sisters felt they had a hand in her gold medal:

 On the day of the meet, according to Sybil’s own story, she had a wretched cold and was feeling decidedly blue and homesick. The mail arrived that very day, bringing her many letters and a writing case from the girls at convention. Immediately the blues took leave and she knew that everyone in Gamma Phi was behind her. She went in with a vengeance and won – so we feel as it we had a little part in her victory.

After the Olympics, she competed in Brussels and England and then went on a family visit to Norway, where she won first place in an exhibition.

Her Gamma Phi sisters were proud of her and an article in The Crescent reported that although she had:

received prizes and medals without number – and still she is modest and retiring. It seems remarkable that a girl can do so much and remain unchanged and unspoiled through it all. She is not only a swimmer but an all-around athlete, for she has made hockey, basketball, baseball and golf teams at college, in addition to being head of the swimming for the coming year.

In February of 1926, she competed for the last time. There are reports that she felt dizzy at that meet in in St. Augustine, Florida. Medical attention was sought and surgery was performed in late 1926. It appears to have been intestinal cancer.

 

Tacoma Daily Register, January 17

Newspapers reported that she fought valiantly for 92 days while in Michael Reese Hospital. The Northwestern senior was getting ready to graduate and her fiancé was Edward Sullivan, a New York newspaper man who became smitten with her when he was covering the 1924 Paris Olympics. Years later the world would know him as Ed Sullivan, host of a Sunday evening television show. They were to be married that June. One report stated, “her sorority sisters have been visiting her in the hospital and assisting in the gathering of her hope chest.” Sullivan, along with her family, were at her bedside when she died. Weissmuller and other local swimmers served as pallbearers.

The International Swimming Hall of Fame honored Bauer with inclusion in 1967. In 1984, when Northwestern University created its Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984 she was a charter member.

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Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye, Ph.D., Alpha Gamma Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye moved to Baltimore, Maryland when she was a young child and her father started teaching at Johns Hopkins University. After high school graduation, she enrolled in Goucher College, which was then located in downtown Baltimore. There she became a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. She majored in math and psychology.

The Alpha Gamma Delta Executive Board. Jenkins-Nye was Vice President and is pictured on the left.

A 1945 announcement in the Baltimore Sun told of her engagement to Edwin Nye:

Lieutenant Jenkins is a 1942 graduate of Goucher College, where she was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta. She joined the Naval Reserve in 1942 and has been stationed in Washington three years.

Jenkins-Nye likely hadn’t planned on becoming a WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She along with small group of Goucher women, who excelled in math and had keen analytical minds, were recruited to help break the codes used in enemy radio transmissions. But they really didn’t know that’s what they were doing when they signed on, The women were unable to tell anyone what their day-to-day duties were like and had no idea what any of them were working on, even though many of them lived in the same place and socialized together after work. Working independently, these highly intelligent were able to break the codes. The stories of these code breakers did not come to light until more than half a century later.

The Nyes had three children. One son is Bill Nye, “the Science Guy.” They divorced in the late 1970s.

After her children were grown, Jenkins-Nye earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from George Washington University. Her dissertation, which she defended in 1982, was titled, “Program manager tasks performed by Federal HRD practitioners as perceived  by incumbents and their supervisors.” She taught in DC schools as a substitute and at George Washington University. She then started working for federal agencies until her retirement from government work. In her mid-60s, Jenkins-Nye started a human resource firm and did consulting work.

She died on March 30, 2000, at the age of 79 and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

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Dr. Bette Catoe Strudwick, Alpha Kappa Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 18, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Dr. Bette Catoe Strudwick, known professionally as Dr. Catoe, was born in 1926. In 1944, she graduated from Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. and received a scholarship to Howard University.

Although most people told her she could be a nurse, it was a physics professor who convinced her she could be a doctor. In 1948, she was awarded a B.S. in chemistry and physics and another scholarship, this time to the Howard University College of Medicine. While studying to become a doctor, she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Her medical school class of 75 had only seven women in it.

She married Warren Strudwick, Sr. when she was 23 and in medical school. In an interview, she said, “After I got married, they took away my scholarship because married women were not supposed to be in medical school. I persisted.”

The couple had three children, two boys and a girl. At first, her pediatrics office was in the basement of her home. She explained:

As a two-doctor family, we had to work on our schedules. When we were in medical school, my husband would come home and study, and I would come home to study and cook. I did what all other housewives did, and then did medicine. When we started working as doctors, we scheduled our work so that there would always be one parent with the children.

In the late 1950s, she and her husband, who was a surgeon, helped integrate DC area hospitals. She moved her office to a building she and other Black professionals owned in the Brightwood neighborhood.

In the mid 1960s she became a member of the Board of Trustees of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia, a position she held for more than three decades. She was involved in many community, civic, social and medical organizations. And over her lifetime she was honored by a number of those organizations.

She was honored with a drive-by celebration for her 95th birthday in 2021.

She retired from her practice in 2003. Her husband of 59 years passed away in 2008 when he was 84. She died on February 1, 2022 at the age of 95.

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