On Carrie Chapman Catt’s Birthday

Posted on January 9, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

“Carrie Chapman Catt, the person who was instrumental in getting women the right to vote, was in a sorority? You’ve got to be kidding me!,” exclaimed a student in the women’s studies discussion session I led years ago as a graduate student. Well, technically Catt was a member of a women’s fraternity, but the terms “sorority” and “women’s fraternity” are essentially the same, so yes, in fact, she was. And so this post will not be about Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffragist as there are many who write about her in that way, but as Carrie Chapman Catt, the fraternity woman.

Carrie Lane (Chapman Catt) was among the first females to graduate from Iowa State University. While there she became a member of Pi Beta Phi. Although she worked her way through school, she made time to be a member of the chapter. After graduating as valedictorian and the only woman in her class, she started teaching.  While she was teaching school in Mason City, Iowa, she posed for pictures wearing her Pi Beta Phi arrow badge.

After graduation, Catt remained an active member of Pi Beta Phi and she utilized her fraternity connections. In 1887, she wrote the Iowa Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi at Simpson College offering to speak in Indianola, where Simpson College is located. She attended Pi Beta Phi’s 1890 convention in Galesburg and spoke about “The New Revolution.”

Carrie Chapman Catt is in the second row, fifth from the left, in this photo taken of the 1890 Pi Beta Phi convention attendees.

In May 1902, Elizabeth Gamble, Pi Beta Phi’s Grand President wrote to a friend:

While in Chicago station I met Mrs. Catt on her way from Montana – Had a long talk. She is going to try to get the N.Y. City – Pi Beta Phi together for a meeting Saturday morning before I sail, to organize. Have you met Mrs. Catt? I liked her.

When Gamble arrived in New York City a few days later, prior to boarding a ship for Europe, she received a letter at the St. Denis Hotel where she way staying. The Pi Beta Phi Alumnae in New York City had not yet organized an official alumnae club. Catt wrote to Gamble:

We talked with the Manager of the St. Denis over the telephone and secured their consent to hold our meeting in the reception room near the elevator, on the second floor, from 9:30 A.M. to 11:00 on Saturday morning. I then sent a letter to the seventeen names whose addresses were given on the list. There will not be time for them to send replies to me, and therefore, I did not ask them to do so. I do not know how many will come or whether any will come.

I would suggest that you speak to the management on Saturday morning, mentioning the fact a promise was given for this room, and that they should inform the elevator boy that the persons wishing to see Miss Gamble should be shown to this reception room. It would be well for you to be there a few moments before half past nine. I shall expect to be there promptly if possible, but as I live a long ways away, I may be delayed. We must arrange to dismiss you at eleven o’clock sharp so that you many have the full hour for you to reach your Steamer. Hoping to see you Saturday, I am, Yours Fraternally,”

She was the keynote speaker at Pi Beta Phi’s Eastern Conference in 1924. There, the portrait of First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge, a fellow Pi Phi, was presented to the nation.

She was the first fraternity woman to receive Chi Omega’s National Achievement Award, a gold medal presented to a woman of notable accomplishment.

Mrs. Roosevelt presents the National Achievement Award to Carrie Chapman Catt. Mrs. Catt’s dress was navy and the corsage was given to her by Pi Beta Phi’s Grand President, Amy Burnham Onken. Miss Onken attended the presentation at the White House.
From a display at Chi Omega’s Executive Office

In 1939, she was one of the speakers at the Panhellenic Day at the New York World’s Fair.

Genevieve B. Earle, Kappa Alpha Theta, Carrie Chapman Catt, Pi Beta Phi, Josephine Schain, Pi Beta Phi and Eloise Davison, Gamma Phi Beta, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

In Catt’s honor, Pi Beta Phi celebrates Chapter Loyalty Day on her birthday, January 9.

The inside of the favor for the Founders’ Day Luncheon of the New York Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club. It took place at the Hotel Astor on April 15, 1924. Catt signed each favor.
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Zenobia Wooten Keller on Phi Mu’s Founding Day

Posted on January 4, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The Philomathean Society was founded on January 4, 1852, at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Mary Ann DuPont (Lines) likely came up with the idea. She joined with Mary Elizabeth Myrick (Daniel) and Martha Bibb Hardaway (Redding) and they are the founders of Phi Mu. Founders’ Day is celebrated on March 4, the day the new society was announced. In 1904, the Philomathean Society became Phi Mu and established its second chapter at Hollins College in Virginia.

At the 1919 Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Zenobia Wooten Keller, became National President, following in the footsteps of Nellie S. Hart. She was a charter member of Theta Chapter at Belmont College, established in April 1907. In addition to being her chapter’s president, she was vice president of her class. She earned a “Certificate of Distinction” for having the highest GPA for two semesters. A soloist for the Belmont Glee Club, she was also its president. She served as vice president of the YWCA and on the yearbook editorial staff.

In 1908, she was elected First Vice President and three years later she became National Secretary. The Chicago Alumnae Association was established in 1909, the first of Phi Mu’s alumnae associations. She served as its president. She married Irvine M. Keller, a Sigma Alpha Epsilon, in 1912. A year later, she served as President of Gamma Province while serving as chair of Phi Mu’s Discipline Board. Additionally, she attended the 1913 meeting of the National Panhellenic Congress, as the Conference was then known. At the 1910 Phi Mu Convention, she seconded the motion to abolish all chapters institutions that were not up to NPC standards (sometimes call B-rank chapters or non-collegiate rank chapters). The motion carried and by closing the chapters, Phi Mu could join NPC. It also meant that Keller’s chapter was one of the chapters that had to close.

She rejoined the national council in 1916. It was noted that “poise and dignity are indeed characteristic of our new President. Business-like she can be; but she is very human and approachable, too.” After serving as National President from 1919-1923, she served as National Secretary until 1956. That year Phi Mu honored her at convention as its Woman of the Years. She died later that year at the home of her only child, a daughter.

Keller spent 45 years as a national officer and nearly 50 years as a Phi Mu volunteer. For 33 years, she ran the Phi Mu Executive Offices. Her knowledge of Phi Mu business and history was likely second to none. Woman of the Years was certainly an appropriate title for her.

 

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On Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founding Day

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Although Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897, its Founders’ Day celebration begins on December 8, Founder Stella George Stern Perry’s birthday.

One of AOPi’s early members was Madeleine Zabriskie Doty. In 1900, she earned a B.L. from Smith College. She then enrolled in law school at New York University. There she became a charter member of the Nu chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi.

The members of AOPis Nu Chapter. Doty is the second from the left in the top row.
The charter members of AOPi’s Nu Chapter. Doty is the second from the left in the top row.

In the alumnae notes section of To Dragma, she is identified as Madeleine Z. Doty ’02. One early post stated that she was writing under the pen name of Otis Notman for the New York Times Saturday Book Review Supplement. In addition to freelance writing, she also practiced law.

I found her in the May 1916 To Dragma, the Social Service edition, in an article which appeared in the April 1916 Good Housekeeping magazine. The article was reprinted in its entirety. Its title,  Wanted – a Mother, seemed nebulous. Here is the introduction to the article, written by William Frederick Bigelow, Editor of Good Housekeeping:

Once upon a time a young woman took her law sheepskin as a license to open an office and offer her services in getting people out of trouble. The usual number of clients came to her, and she was satisfied until it occurred to her that she was doing only what a man could do and probably do better. In other words, her womanhood was counting for nothing. So she decided to turn her attention and energies in a direction where the fact that she was a woman and knew women could count. She chose prison reform. As a beginning she served a voluntary week in prison and came out hating the prison system with an intensity that fired her with an unquenchable zeal. A few weeks ago, Warden Kirchwey of Sing Sing introduced her to a thousand convicts as the best friend the man behind bards ever had. Many of those convicts knew her personally; she had won their confidence and held secrets of their lives that no one else knew. To her they had admitted things that they had lied to keep from judges and officers of the law. One of these things was that the majority of inmates were “old” offenders, that two-thirds of them had, as children, been in reformatories. This being true – and she verified the stories – the best place to work for prison reform was seen to be in the institutions which took young and essentially innocent young boys and gave them criminal tendencies. The beginning of this work was in this magazine last month. Madeleine Z. Doty hopes by the grace of God and the help of good women of America to open the doors of reformatories, to break the connection between them and  the prisons. Will you join her?  

Madeleine Zabriskie Doty

Doty wrote several articles and books about her experiences and spent her life as a reformer. Here is a National Humanities Review review of one of her books:

An epoch making book on prison conditions has just come from the press of The Century Co. in Society’s Misfits.  A member of the Commission on Prison Reform Miss Madeleine Z. Doty, with a friend, spent a week as a convict in the state prison at Auburn, NY. Her description of the treatment of women prisoners equals the account left by O. Henry. The everlasting nagging of the matrons, the unyielding system which took all life and enthusiasm out of the prisoner, the threat of the cooler or dungeon in which women were thrust for the slightest infraction of rules and left for hours, possibly days, on bread and water. All these things emphasize the fact that prison reform is just in its infancy. Miss Doty made a study of 1,700 records and 200 stories gathered from the convicts of Auburn and Sing Sing Prisons. After gaining the prisoners’ confidence, she asked them why they were there. A study of these records and the verification of the stories led her to state that two-thirds of those confined in prison had been as children in some sort of juvenile institution. The pitifulness of the stories told made plain why so many reformatories do not reform. Physically, mentally, and morally, children in institutions were being abused. When not abused, the spirit was neglected. There was no love. Another study of the records reveals the fact that 50 percent of the two-thirds came from broken homes in which either the father or the mother died before the child was 15. Hundreds of lonely little children in institutions exist year after year unkissed, unloved, uncared for. The heart sickens without love the soul grows hard evil enters and society pays. Imagine a system which prevents a child from hearing from his mother more than once a month and not this often if he happened to be naughty in the meantime. Can you imagine a system which allows children eight and nine years age to be beaten to the point of unconsciousness, their wounds smeared over with iodine and then forced to kneel or stand in an awkward position for hours at a time in the sight of all the other inmates?

Doty died in 1963. Her papers are in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. There is a file of correspondence from Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a Kappa Kappa Gamma.

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The Promise of 2020 Vision

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On this the last day of the decade, I find it hard to write a post. Does anyone read these things? Does anyone care about Greek-letter organizations? The anti-fraternity sentiment of the late 1800s is alive and well today. There are those who see GLOs as nefarious and without any redeeming qualities. Moreover, each year collegiate members prove these detractors correct by the transgression, small and large, that capture the media’s attention.

One stupid little act by one random member on any campus in North America will reflect poorly on every person who has ever joined a fraternity or sorority. Our detractors do not care about the letters, nor do they care that 95%+ of collegiate membership are good and productive members. The rotten apples become the face of us all.

I, along with many others, contend that when the fraternity and sorority experience is done correctly, it is one of the best experiences a college student can have. Am I preaching to the choir? Probably. More than once this year, I have asked myself why I bother to write these posts and maintain this blog. Does any of it really matter?

This year holds many centennials including women finally obtaining the right to vote in federal elections and my favorite Phi Gam being elected Vice President. And then Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma turn 150. And there is March, Women’s History Month, when I try to write a post a day about #NotableSororityWomen. It’s an Olympic year and it’s always fun to know which competitors also juggled GLO membership alongside athletics. And there’s a Presidential election with a sorority woman still among the top contenders. Can I stop writing when there are so many potential posts?

Who knows what the new decade will bring. Before 2019 ends I give gratitude to those of you who believe and work for the fraternity and sorority experience. Thank you.

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Remembering Jerry Herman, Zeta Beta Tau

Posted on December 28, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

As I was working on yesterday’s post, the words to Look Over There from the musical La Cage aux Folles was an earworm running through my head (specifically, When your world spins too fast, And your bubble has burst, Someone puts himself last, So that you can come first.) It wasn’t until after I hit “publish” on the post that I found out that Jerry Herman passed away on Thursday night. Herman became a member of Zeta Beta Tau at the University of Miami.

Herman moved into the fraternity dormitory and shared a suite with three Zeta Beta Tau members. Their suite had a piano and Herman played all the popular songs and Broadway show tunes. He was a natural to write and produce the fraternity’s entry in the annual musical competition. Potpourri, for he had spent summers doing the same thing at summer camp his parents ran in upstate New York. His first effort for the 1951 Potpourri was about a college on Saturn.  The Zeta Beta Taus won handily. And they won easily again the following year. In 1953, there were not enough entrants in the Potpourri competition because no one wanted to compete against the ZBTs. Herman suggested they do a musical revue, Sketchbook , instead, so that all interested students could take part. The 1953 Sketchbook was a Jerry Herman production, with 19 of his original songs. Because there were nearly 100 students in the cast, and more working behind the scenes, the venue changed from the small Ring Theatre on campus to the Dade County Auditorium. In 1974, the University of Miami built a new theater and named it the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre. 

Zeta Beta Tau was created on December 29, 1898 when a group of young men attending several New York universities met at the Jewish Theological Seminary and formed an organization called Z.B.T. (yes, with the periods between the letters). The organization was inspired by Richard J. H. Gottheil, a Columbia University professor of languages. For a few years the organization served as an organization for the Jewish students who were excluded from the other Greek-letter organizations in existence on the campuses where they were studying. In 1903, the organization became Zeta Beta Tau. Six years later, there were 14 chapters, all but one in the Northeast. The first chapter outside the Northeast was at Tulane University. In 1913, the fraternity became international with the establishment of a chapter at McGill University.

Although Zeta Beta Tau began as a Jewish fraternity, in 1954, sectarianism was eliminated as a membership qualification. Five other national Jewish fraternities became a part of Zeta Beta Tau. Phi Alpha merged into Phi Sigma Delta in 1959. Two years later, Kappa Nu merged into Phi Epsilon Pi. Phi Sigma Delta and Phi Epsilon Pi merged into Zeta Beta Tau in 1969-70.

In 1967, Herman and his sometime collaborator Jerome Lawrence won a Zeta Beta Tau Man of Distinction Award. Lawrence joined ZBT at The Ohio State University.

The Jerry Herman Ring Theater at the University of Miami courtesy of the University of Miami
The Jerry Herman Ring Theatre at the University of Miami (courtesy of the University of Miami)
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Remembering Bob McCully, Sigma Nu’s Grand Historian

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Yesterday, I received a copy of the Fall/Winter 2019 The Delta of Sigma Nu. In it was a tribute to Sigma Nu’s Grand Historian, Robert A. “Bob” McCully. He was a regular attendee at the Fraternity and Sorority Archivist Conference and he passed away on July 3, 2019. He loved Sigma Nu and its rich and vibrant history. And he loved sharing that history with his brothers.

Drew Logsdon, Editor of The Delta, wrote:

He inspired a generation of Sigma Nus to appreciate the Fraternity’s history and take note of its preservation…Bob’s spirit will never leave Sigma Nu. The archival work he did, the columns he wrote, the connections he made to young brothers, and the ever-lasting presence of his touch on the Headquarters campus will last forever.

I know I speak for the Fraternity and Sorority Archivists’ group when I say that Bob’s presence will be sorely missed at our conferences. May his memory be a blessing.

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Happy 146th, Delta Gamma!

Posted on December 25, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Imagine three young school girls longing to be at home with their families on Christmas. Eva Webb [Dodd], her cousin Anna Boyd [Ellington], and Mary Comfort [Leonard], all from Kosciusko, Mississippi, were unable to be travel home from the Lewis School in Oxford, Mississippi, over the Christmas holidays in December of 1873. The 100 miles between Oxford and home must have seemed like the other side of the world. Phones had yet to be invented, so they could not even talk with their families on Christmas.

They spent the holidays with the lady principal, Mrs. Hays. Her son was a fraternity man at the University of Mississippi. According to founder Dodd (1909):

When the idea first came to three homesick girls during the Christmas holidays of 1873 to found fraternity or club as we then called it, little did we realize that we were laying the cornerstone of such a grand fraternity as Delta Gamma. The school we attended at Oxford, Miss., was not much more advanced than a high school of today. During the week we decided on our motto and selected the Greek letters to represent it. We did not know that there were any other fraternities for girls in the United States known by Greek letters when we gave our club its name. We spent the holidays deciding on our pin and initiation and writing our constitution. In January 1874, we had our first initiation. We initiated four girls. The initiation was in one of the rooms of the house where we were boarding. We were careful to select only the girls we thought would be in sympathy with us and make our fraternity worthy of its name. (p. 226)

During the first few years of its existence, Delta Gamma installed several chapters at southern seminaries. These were schools for young women, not religious institutions as we regard seminaries today. These included: Fairmount College in Monteagle, Tennessee, a chapter that was formed in 1877; Water Valley Seminary, in Water Valley, Mississippi, established in 1877; and Bolivar College in Bolivar, Tennessee, a chapter founded in 1878. By 1881, all three of these chapters had disbanded. In 1880, a short-lived chapter was installed at Trinity College in Tehuacana, Texas. It was the last chapter installed in the South until after the turn of the century. The “Mother” chapter at Oxford was active until 1889 (Robson, 1968).

It was a man who took Delta Gamma north. Phi Delta Theta George Banta was a student at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. He was seeking to have a national woman’s fraternity come to Indiana to even the field for his fraternity during the Indiana State Oratorical Contest. Through a chance conversation on a train with a Phi Delt from the University of Mississippi, Banta learned of Delta Gamma’s existence. He corresponded with the chapter. On May 27, 1879, Corinne Miller of the Alpha chapter wrote Banta to let him know he was voted to full membership. Banta then initiated three women, Mary Vawter, her cousin and Banta’s future wife, Lillian Vawter,** and Banta’s cousin Kitty Ellis.

The chapter at Franklin College lasted from 1878 until 1885, but even in its short life it provided the impetus to expand in the north and gave new life to Delta Gamma. Banta was later a pioneer in the fraternity publishing world and he attended Delta Gamma conventions and shared with the members in attendance his part in Delta Gamma’s history.

The Delta Gamma chapter at Franklin College installed a chapter at Hanover College, in Indiana. It was the first women’s fraternity on Hanover’s campus and it was in existence from 1881 until 1887. Lillian Thompson of the Franklin College chapter was instrumental in locating potential members.

The Franklin College chapter also established the Eta Chapter at Buchtel College in Akron, Ohio, on March 15, 1879. It is Delta Gamma’s oldest existing chapter. Banta’s Phi Delta Theta connection proved to be an influencing force in the founding of the Delta Gamma chapter. It was with the assistance of Buchtel College’s Phi Delta Theta chapter that the Eta chapter of Delta Gamma became a reality (Delta Gamma Fraternity, 1966). March 15 is the date that Delta Gamma celebrates Founders’ Day.

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December 24 Through January 2 – A Busy Time in Fraternity and Sorority History

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

It’s hard for today’s collegians to contemplate spending December 24 through January 2 on campus. Most higher education institutions shut down for the holiday week. However, that week has been a significant one in the history of Greek-letter organizations.

Delta Gamma was founded over the 1873 Christmas holiday when three young women were unable to go home from the Lewis School. Alpha Omicron Pi began on January 2, 1897. Delta Gamma celebrates Founders’ Day on March 15, the date of Eta Chapter’s founding at Akron University. It is Delta Gamma’s oldest continuous chapter. Alpha Omicron Pi celebrates on or around December 8, founder Stella George Stern Perry’s birthday.

Chi Phi traces its history to the Chi Phi Society established on December 24, 1824 by Robert Baird at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University). Phi Delta Theta, one of the Miami Triad, was founded on December 26, 1848. Its Founders’ Day is celebrated on March 15, the birth date of founder Robert Morrison.

Zeta Beta Tau was created on December 29, 1898 when a group of young men attending several New York universities met at the Jewish Theological Seminary. They formed an organization called ZBT. Sigma Nu became a Greek-letter organization on January 1, 1869. It was founded at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia by three young men opposed to the hazing that was a part of a cadet’s life at VMI.

It is also hard to believe that any organization would plan a convention during the holiday season, but I know of several that occurred at that time. A convention that took place in Troy, New York from December 26-28, 1931, resulted in the creation of Phi Iota Alpha, the oldest Latino fraternity still in existence.

One of Pi Beta Phi’s conventions started in 1907 and ended in 1908. It took place in New Orleans over New Year’s Eve. (Am I the only one who thinks risk management nightmare about such an event happening in 2019?). Phi Gamma Delta held an Ekklesia that took place from December 31 through January 3, 1925 in Richmond, Virginia; there were 374 registrants. Another Ekklesia took place from December 29, 1933 through January 1, 1934 in Washington, D.C. Phi Gam held several Ekklesiai in the week between Christmas and New Year’s; these took place in 1916, 1917, 1920 and 1921.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who read these posts. 

 

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Austin Peay on Kappa Alpha Order’s Founding Day

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

I never heard the name Austin Peay until I moved to southern Illinois. It’s mentioned frequently on local news, especially the Paducah station, during the sports update. Austin Peay State University, or “Austin P.” as some sportscasters call it, is located in Clarksville, Tennessee. I figured the university was named for a person, but I gave it little thought. It turns out that the person it is named for was initiated into the Centre College chapter of Kappa Alpha Order.

Kappa Alpha Order was founded at Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia on December 21, 1865. Its founders are James Ward Wood, William Archibald Walsh, William Nelson Scott and Stanhope McClelland Scott. Samuel Zenas Ammen, an 1866 initiate, who had fought in the war, is revered as a “Practical Founder.” Ammen’s “constant refinement of the ritual and creation of the constitution, by-laws, grip, symbols and regalia of the Order, along with his lifelong commitment,” afforded him that honor, according to the fraternity’s website. Robert E. Lee, the President of Washington College when the fraternity was founded, was named a “Spiritual Founder” at the 1923 convention.

Its original name was Phi Kappa Chi. Phi Kappa Psi was the first fraternity to have a chapter at Washington College and that organization protested the similar sounding name. The fraternity took on the name Kappa Alpha in April of 1866. Although the organization changed its name early in its history, it is sometimes confused with Kappa Alpha Society, one of the Union Triad, founded at Union College in 1825.

Austin Peay was the Governor of Tennessee from 1923 until 1927 when he died in office. Austin Peay Normal School was established in 1927 as a two-year junior college and teacher-training institution. In 1943, its name was changed to Austin Peay State University. Its sports teams are the Governors and the Lady Governors.

On November 19, 2011, the Zeta Tau chapter of Kappa Alpha Order was chartered at Austin Peay State University. It is the fraternity’s first active chapter on a campus bearing the name of an alumnus of the fraternity. Additionally, the fraternity was given Peay’s Kappa Alpha Order badge by the family and it is on display in the fraternity’s headquarters in Lexington, Virginia.

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Miss America 2020 is a Kappa Delta and NPC Woman

Posted on December 20, 2019 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Congratulations to Camille Schrier, Miss America 2020, who was Miss Virginia 2019. She is a Kappa Delta and was initiated into the chapter at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (“Virginia Tech”).

Second Runner Up – Miss Missouri 2019, Simone Esters, Alpha Chi Omega, University of Missouri

Second Runner Up – Miss Missouri 2019, Simone Esters, Alpha Chi Omega, University of Missouri

Third Runner Up – Miss Oklahoma 2019, Addison Price, Pi Beta Phi, Oklahoma State University

Five of the Top Seven were sorority women. It would be wonderful to have a group picture of the sorority women who competed. Can someone in the know please arrange that for next year’s contest. The women who competed were an impressive bunch as they all spoke about themselves in their intros as the beginning of the show.

Back-to-Back Titles
Click on the Back-to-Back link above to read about the Chi Omega Miss Americas who were in the same chapter.
SORORITY WOMEN WHO HAVE WON MISS AMERICA AND MISS USA
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