Dr. Helen Binnie Zank, Alpha Gamma Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Archibald Binnie was born in 1882. Her father was a physician. While a student at the University of Wisconsin, she became a member of the Beta chapter of Alpha Gamma Delta. Her sister Nora Belle, who became a teacher, was also a member of the chapter.

In June 1911, Helen graduated from the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons in Milwaukee. According to a report in the Alpha Gamma Delta Quarterly, “Only one other woman beside Helen graduated in the class. Helen’s home is in Poynette, Wisconsin, but her attendance at medical school during the last two years allowed her to become one of the most active of the Milwaukee alumnae.” She did extensive hospital and clinic work at Johns Hopkins, Rush Medical College, Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee and Government Hospital in D. C.

She attended the 1913 Alpha Gam convention. The Quarterly mentioned that she was toast-mistress at the banquet of the Wisconsin Medical Women’s Society held at the Hotel Pfister, Milwaukee, on September 30, 1913.

In 1914, an update in The Quarterly reported that she was the superintendent Frostburg’s Miners’ Hospital at Frostburg, Maryland. She found it “difficult but interesting work.” She returned to Poynette in 1916 to practice in her father’s office.

In an article she wrote for The Quarterly, she said:

As the earliest women physicians practiced principally or entirely with women, we undoubtedly grew into the medical profession from a demand for women physicians by our own sex. Now however, from the many different avenues in the vast field of medicine we have the opportunity of selecting what we seem best adapted for and may specialize in children’s diseases, mental and nervous diseases, obstetrics and diseases of women, surgery, internal medicine, research work, laboratory and many more. Women physicians are particularly adapted for many of these named. Unless a woman has a real love for the profession she should not take up the work as it is a life of constant study, hard work and enormous responsibility no matter what line she chooses, and in a science in which such rapid progress is being made one must be constantly a student.

In 1922, she moved her practice to Kenosha, Wisconsin. There, she married Otto Zank in 1927. A life member of the American Medical Association and the Wisconsin State Medical Association, Dr. Zank retired from practice in 1950. The couple retired to Portage, Wisconsin, where she was a member of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Otto died in 1970 and she died on February 3, 1976 at the age of 93.

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Miriam Olden Fendler, Phi Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Miriam Olden (Fendler) entered the University of Michigan when she was 15. The Dean of Women at Michigan thought she was too nervous and high strung to make it in college and suggested she leave Ann Arbor and go home. Mirian Olden knew she wanted to be a lawyer and threw herself into her studies and extracurriculars. She became a member of the Eta chapter of Phi Sigma Sigma, acted in a play, and joined the debate team and a literary society, to name a few of her college activities.

After graduating from Michigan with a Bachelor’s, she entered the law school there. She left Ann Arbor after a year and enrolled at the University of Southern California to complete her legal education. She was a member of the USC Debate Team. Her field was civil law and community property. She passed the California bar exam in 1929 when she was 21 years old.

Los Angeles Evening Express, November 6, 1931

Although she wanted to join a law firm, in 1929 law was primarily a male dominated field. She met her future husband, Howard Fendler, also a lawyer, on a blind date to the Valentine’s dance hosted by the Phi Sigma Sigma alumnae.

Circa 1932

Active in the Los Angeles Phi Sigma Alumnae Association, she attended the 1930 convention in Cincinnati and served as the National Convention Chairman of the 1932 convention in Los Angeles.

She opened her own law office. Although She and Howard Fendler hit it off, they had a major disagreement and avoided each other for a year. A reunion on another Valentine’s Day led to a quick engagement and a March 1933 marriage. She was 25. She also became Phi Sig’s Grand Archon (National President) and served from 1933 through 1935.

After her wedding, she kept her maiden name. However, she relented when she became pregnant and thought it odd that a client called her “Miss Olden.” The Fendlers had two sons who were born within 20 months of each other. When her sons were growing up she became an active member of the League of Women Voters. Her efforts were toward legislative and election work. She conducted study groups on government and educated the public on the need for changes.

Fendler was also active in the Southern California Association of Women Lawyers. She said, “Women are taking a more active interest in government and I am convinced that if we are to have a peace-loving world a lot of the responsibility will have to rest with the women. Therefore they must be prepared to shoulder it.”

After World War II, Fendler entered practice with her husband. Together, the couple traveled to D.C. where they were admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Fendlers spent their last years in Hawaii. In 1978 Miriam Fendler was one of the founders of Art Maui. She died in August 1987. A bequest was left to the Phi Sigma Sigma Foundation for the establishment of a book award to be given to a Phi Sig attending a Michigan school.

San Bernardino County Sun, June 29, 1935
Los Angeles Times, September 7, 1937
Circa 1945
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Anna Harbottle Whittic, Kappa Kappa Gamma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Anna Harbottle (Whittic) was born in Ossining, New York, and she attended Syracuse University. There she joined the Beta Tau chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma. Graduating in 1895, she earned a master’s degree from Syracuse the following year. She won a scholarship to Columbia University. According to a write up in The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma, she was a “great student” and had a broad knowledge of “all world movements — in politics, economics, religions and education.”

She taught briefly in upstate New Yor and was president of the Syracuse University Alumnae Club for three years. On February 20, 1903 she married Lieber E. Whittic, a Syracuse lawyer. She devoted herself to suffrage working in civic and political affairs. Whittic was the founder of the Women’s Congress of Syracuse. She campaigned for women’s rights before the state legislature and worked to get women the right to serve on juries. She opposed labor laws which discriminated against women. Whittic served as the Vice President and Chairman of the Syracuse branch of the National Woman’s Party.

After women won the right to vote, she kept up her efforts to get women equal rights. In a 1939 interview, she said, “At present, only five states of the Union give women equal right with fathers over children and in less than  half the states may women be tried by a jury of their peers.” She added “With all the great democracies backed to the wall, it is time that this country reaffirmed its ideals by giving all people, male and female, equal rights of citizenship under the Constitution.”

Anna Harbottle Whittic died on January 24, 1947 at the age of 72.

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Julia Fuqua Ober, Kappa Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Julia Fuqua (Ober) grew up in Norfolk, Virginia. One of her neighbors was Sara Turner White, a founder of Kappa Delta. When Julia Fuqua entered Hollins College, she joined the Gamma chapter of Kappa Delta. She pursued a degree in music and after graduation studied voice privately with voice teachers in New York and Virginia.

Music education was a cause near and dear to her heart and she served as president of the Scherzo Music Club and the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra Association. In 1930, she became President of the Virginia State Federation of Music Clubs.

She married Dr. Vincent Hilles Ober on Saturday afternoon, November 19, 1932. The ceremony took place in her family home on Westover Avenue in Norfolk. She wore a “traveling dress of medieval brown crinkled crepe made in the Molyneux style of high neck and full sleeves. A band of yellow fox gave the contrasting note. Her hat was a brown soleil with a small nose veil.” Her mother was her only attendant. Southern smilax, pom-poms and large chrysanthemums, palms, ferns and cathedral candles decorated the home, and she carried lilies of the valley and roses.

Ober went on to serve as the 14th president of the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC), an organization founded in 1899. She was elected at the NFMC’s Indianapolis, Indiana, convention in 1937, and she was reelected at the 1939 Baltimore, Maryland, convention. Ober interpreted the meaning of NFMC’s Insignia, the blue and gold emblem worn by members of the organization. During World War II, she created and directed the NFMC’s War Service Committee. The Federation helped supply the armed services with musical instruments. Ober was awarded a joint certificate of commendation from the Navy and War departments in appreciation of service. She served a consultant to the Secretaries of Navy and War. She was also a member of Sigma Alpha Iota.

In 1944, she became Kappa Delta’s national publicity director. A year later Ober was named the Editor of The Angelos of Kappa Delta. She served until 1951 when she became Kappa Delta’s National President. During her tenure, Kappa Delta installed 10 chapters. Appropriately, given her penchant for music, a new songbook debuted. After she retired as National President, she served as National Panhellenic Conference Delegate until 1961, and as Extension Director from 1962-64.

She died in 1978. Julia Fuqua Ober was posthumously inducted into Kappa Delta’s Hall of Honor in 1981.

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Ildra Jessup Larson, Phi Mu, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 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.

The Sigma chapter at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, was founded in 1912. Several years later, Ildra Jessup became a member of the chapter. As a collegian during World War I, she honored the men from Knox who fought by drawing these illustrations for the Gale yearbook. She was active in many college activities and was a member of Mortar Board.

For several years she was a society editor and proofreader at the Galesburg Evening Mail newspaper. She married Robert Hamilton Larson, a Knox Phi Delta Theta, on June 20, 1922 in Galesburg, Illinois. The couple had two sons.

For the first years of their marriage while they lived in Galesburg, she was an active member of the Galesburg Alumnae Association and helped the Phi Mu chapter with recruitment efforts. In the fall of 1927, the alumnae hosted a dinner party for the chapter and the potential new members. Larson and the two other members of the committee “did the buying, most of the cooking and serving of a three course dinner.” The event was a doll party, “doll lamps being given as favors to the rushees and dolls of all kinds being used as house decorations. The dessert of the dinner was worked out with candy, jello, whipped cream and tiny cakes to represent dolls.” Larson also was a cohostess of a May 1927 meeting  “All members are cooperating to raise money to pay for our share in the new Panhellenic House Association of New York and later on the amount due for the insurance endowment plan.”

Larson served Phi Mu as the editor of the Pi Mu Star, a convention newspaper. She also served as Assistant Editor of The Aglaia. In 1931, she was third place winner in a Sears, Roebuck and Company interior design contest. She won a complete dining room set for her design efforts.

 

The 1940 Phi Mu Star

Larson spent 16 years as Director of Volunteers at Grant Hospital in Chicago. After her husband’s retirement in 1970, they moved to North Carolina. Her residency there was short. She moved to Wilmington, Delaware in 1974, after her husband’s death to be closer to family. In 1977, she was added to Knox College’s Scroll of Honor. Larson spent her retirement years writing letters to the editor. She died in 1991 at the age of 91.

Ildra Larson is on the left in the first row.
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Louise Fargo Brown, Ph.D., Alpha Phi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

In 1899, as a student at Cornell University, Louise Fargo Brown became a member of the Delta chapter of Alpha Phi. Her nickname was “Brownie.” She graduated in 1903 and she returned to her hometown of Buffalo, New York. There she taught history at Lafayette High School, which had just opened. A 1905 Alpha Phi Quarterly reported that “Louise Fargo Brown ‘03 and Alice Brown ‘06 spent the summer at their summer home Point Abino, Lake Erie.”

She then accepted a graduate scholarship in European History and returned to Cornell. While doing graduate work, she went to Toronto “at the request of the General Board and made her enthusiastic report of the would be Alpha Phis there.” Her report was evidently favorable as the Xi chapter of Alpha Phi at the University of Toronto was chartered on December 4, 1906.

Brown won the Andrew White Traveling Fellowship two times and studied in England and Switzerland. The research she undertook on the first trip to Europe resulted in The Religious Factors in the Convention Parliament; it was published in the January 1907 England Historical Review. In the article, Brown stated that “the customary historical assumption that the Presbyterian was the dominant party in the Convention Parliament of Charles II is not warranted.”

She again boarded a ship and traveled to England where she worked on her thesis. The article was published during her stay in London. It caught the eye of William A. Shaw the author of A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth. Shaw was impressed with Brown’s work that he enlisted her assistance in helping to complete some work he had undertaken. Emily Hickman, a member of Brown’s Alpha Phi chapter wrote, “The last letters from England tell of a trip to Oxford and a continuance of her work there and plans for its probable further continuance next year on the Continent. We congratulate not alone Sister Louise but the fraternity as well.”

Brown graduated with her Ph.D. in 1909 and moved to Massachusetts, where she taught history at Wellesley College. In 1911, The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England During the Interregnum was published. It won the American Historical Association’s Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for the best monograph of the year in modern European history.

In 1915, she took a job as professor of history and Dean of Women at the University of Nevada. When World War I broke out she became a Marine Corps sergeant. She served in Washington, D.C., where she did research. She wrote a booklet, The Freedom of the Seas. It was sent to Paris to be used at the Peace Conference. Her obituary noted that “To the delight of her colleagues on the Vassar bridle path, the sergeant’s uniform became the historian’s riding habit.”

After she left DC in 1919, she began her tenure at Vassar College. One of the courses she taught was The History of Tolerance. Brown published two books during this period, The First Earl of Shaftesbury (1933), and Apostle of Democracy: The Life of Lucy Maynard Salmon (1943). She retired in 1944. Men and Centuries of European Civilization, coauthored with George B. Carson, was published in 1948. Brown was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

In 1930, she and Louise Ropes Loomis of Wells College founded the Lakeville History Group which became the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. The organization’s website offers this history:

Although women had been members of the AHA since the nineteenth century, history departments, even at women’s colleges, were dominated by men. In addition, much of the business and conviviality of the historical profession in its early years occurred at hotel ‘smokers,’ private men’s clubs, and an annual retreat held by J. Franklin Jameson in New London, CT. Women were barred from these events, social occasions when graduate students were introduced to prominent colleagues by their mentors. Other forms of exclusion – specifically, women of color who were active in teaching, preservation, and other forms of what we would now call public history – were, unfortunately, not addressed by the founders as they worked to create a place for themselves in the profession.

Brown died on May 1, 1955. The obituary published by Vassar College stated that she was a “lively and spirited member of the college community. She was always a champion of the underdog, and a rugged fighter for the causes in which she believed. At one point she even entered Dutchess County politics and ran for County Court Clerk.”

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Ruth Freeman Solomon, Alpha Epsilon Phi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

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

Ruth Freeman (Solomon) was born in 1908. When she was three years old, she and her family left the Ukrainian city of Kiev, which was part of czarist Russia. It was a long voyage to America. In the 1980s, she aided in raising funds for the restoration of Ellis Island and the Statue of Library, the lady with the torch in the harbor that she first saw when sailing to America, the “promised land,” as her grandmother called it.

She grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, until her family moved to Freeport, New York. At Syracuse University she became a member of the Iota chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi. The 1929 yearbook notes that she was also a member of Delta Sigma Rho, Y.W.C.A., Debate Team, Women’s Congress, Convocation Publicity Committee, Outing Club, Political Science Forum, and the German Club. She won the Delima-Fisher oratorical contest twice. She was also a charter member of the Syracuse chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, a national honor society for students in the social science. According to her obituary, she was the first female captain of the Debate Team, made Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude.

On March 3, 1930, she married Dr. Joseph Solomon, who had just completed his medical residency. The couple moved to Europe where they continued their studies in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. She earned a graduate degree in humanities at the University of Vienna.

The Solomons moved to San Francisco in 1939. She spent her time raising two sons, George and Daniel. A member of Congregation Emanu-El, she was active in community affairs.

Her foray into novel writing came along quite by accident. Described as a natural storyteller, she was on vacation in Big Sur. The gentleman she was telling a story to happened to be a publisher. Enthralled by the way she told the story, he asked if she could write the same way and asked for a writing sample. He evidently was impressed with her efforts and the result was her first book, The Candlesticks and The Cross. She was 63 years old when it made its debut. It is historical fiction set in Russia and it draws on her Jewish experience. The Eagle and the Dove and Two Lives, Two Lands completed the trilogy. The Ultimate Triumph is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1974.

She continued to write articles. According to an obituary, “When she wasn’t writing, she filled her days with friends and acquaintances – among them Golda Meir, Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and Abba Eban.”

Ruth Freeman Solomon died of complications from cancer on August 12, 1996 at the age of 88.

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Irma Sompayrac Willard, Alpha Omicron Pi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on March 1, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Irma Sompayrac Willard was born in 1897 in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. In 1916, she graduated from the Louisiana State Normal School in Natchitoches. She then enrolled at Newcomb College in New Orleans where she became a member of Alpha Omicron Pi. Her sophomore year was spent in New York City where she took special work. She graduated with a Bachelor degree in design from Newcomb in 1920.

Irma Sompayrac, circa 1924

In 1921, she and a Newcomb Kappa Kappa Gamma member, Gladys Breazeale, founded the Natchitoches Art Colony. Newcomb professors Ellsworth Woodward and Will Henry Stevens taught classes. The Natchitoches Art Colony is the South’s first art colony. The colony produced southern indigenous art. It started as an en plein landscape painting school. During the Depression it included arts and crafts.

September 1921 To Dragma

She spent some time working in New York City as artist for an advertising agency. Her passport application, filed in anticipation of a trip to Europe in 1924, describes her as 27 years of age and 5’3”. She had a dark complexion a medium face, dark brown eyes, a straight nose, a medium forehead and a regular mouth. Her hair was black. She planned to sail out of New York in July on the Cleveland. She stated she would visit France, Italy and England where she hoped to study art.

On Monday, June 14, 1926, she married David Milne Willard, Jr. in her parents’ home. After a summer spent in Louisiana, the couple back to New York, where they were going to live on Long Island. Her husband was a writer and real estate developer, according to the published wedding announcement. She returned to her family home in Louisiana as often as possible. A son, Daniel David Milne Willard was born in April 1927.

A 1931 To Dragma reported that Alice Moise, a 1928 Newcomb graduate and member of the Alpha Omicron Pi chapter, attended the Natchitoches Art Colony and was the guest of her cousin, Irma Sompayrac Willard. Irma was invited to teach on Munich, according to another report in a 1935 To Dragma.

She earned a Masters degree at Columbia University in 1954. At some point she returned from the east coast to Louisiana and designed a house which today is a bed and breakfast (see below). From 1950 to 1965, she was  supervisor of art for the State Department of Education of Louisiana. After her return to Natchitoches, she became involved in several historical and cultural organizations. A newspaper article described her as a “residential historian for colonial Louisiana and author, artist and art critic.” Irma Sompayrac Willard died in 1991.

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Brig. Gen. Margaret A. Brewer, Zeta Tau Alpha, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2020

Posted on February 29, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Margaret Brewer attended the University of Michigan where she became a member of Zeta Tau Alpha. In 1952, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geography. Military service wasn’t a usual path for women in 1952. However, she broke tradition and she was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps.

Brewer first served as a Communications Watch Officer at the Air Station in El Toro, California. A year later, she became an Inspector-Instructor of a Women Marine Reserve unit in Brooklyn, New York. She rose in the ranks and was stationed in several places including: Norfolk, Virginia; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Quantico, Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; and Camp Pendleton, California.

In 1961, she became a Major. She crossed the country and returned to Quantico in 1963. There she was Executive Officer, and then Commanding Officer of the Woman Officer School. In 1966, as a Lieutenant Colonel, she was stationed in Atlanta, Georgia, where she served as the Public Affairs Officer for the 6th Marine Corps. District.

From 1968 through 1971, she was Deputy Director of Women Marines. In the middle of that assignment she became a Colonel. This was followed by a stint as Special Assistant to the Director and then as Chief of the Support Department at the Marine Corps Education Center. She became the seventh Director of Women Marines and served from 1973 through 1977.

She received the Legion of Merit for meritorious service on June 30, 1977. The following day she became Deputy Director of the Division of Information. During the Carter administration, a separate brand for women disbanded and women became a part of the Marine Corps.

Brewer was nominated to the post of Director of the Division of Information, a position which required a one to hold the rank of General. However, women were not allowed to be Generals. A special nomination to the grade of Brigadier General was made by President Carter and it was approved by both house of Congress.

She became Director of Information on May 11, 1978, making her the first female general officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Among her first tasks was to reorganize the Division of Information. It became the Division of Public Affairs and she became the Director of Public Affairs.

Brigadier General Brewer retired in 1980. She served on the board of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and aided in the effort to create the National Museum of the Marine Corps and the Women’s Memorial. A Catholic, she was a parishioner at the Saint Thomas More Cathedral, and served on the board of Catholic Charities of Arlington County and the Catholic High School of Baltimore. In 1984, Zeta Tau Alpha named her an Outstanding Alumna. She died on January 2, 2013.

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Introducing the Almanac of Fraternities and Sororities

Posted on February 26, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

I collect Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities. I use them for research and to just randomly open a page and read. William Raimond Baird published the first edition in 1879. After Baird’s death, others took on the job of editing Baird’s Manual. The twentieth and last edition, edited by Jack Anson, Phi Kappa Tau, and Robert F. Marchesani, Jr., Phi Kappa Psi, was published in 1991. It’s a very large book (8.5 x 11 x 2.5) and if another edition were to be published, it would likely have to be twice the size, what with the changes that have taken place in ensuing three decades. Moreover, it would be outdated before it was even published.

Carroll Lurding, Delta Upsilon, made his hobby the study of fraternities and sororities. For decades, he painstakingly researched the local groups which became national organizations. He kept track of the changes that have happened in the fraternity and sorority world since the last edition of Baird’s was published in 1991. Lurding combed fraternities and sororities publications including histories, pledge manuals, magazines, and websites as well as available yearbooks. He also consulted the publications available at the University of Illinois Library’s Student Life & Culture Archives,  Indiana University’s Lurding Collection of Fraternity Material at the Lilly Library and the New York Public Library’s Baird Collection. He expanded on information offered, including the names of local organizations which became chapters of fraternities and sororities.

The Almanac of Fraternities and Sororities picks up where that 20th Edition of Baird’s Manual ended. And it includes much more! I hope you will take a look at it and use it regularly.

I offer my gratitude to Ellen Swain and the Student Life & Culture Archives at the University of Illinois Library for finding a way to house the Almanac and to the Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing for providing a grant to keep the information updated.

Please help me publicize this important resource.

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