Fraternity History & More

Delta Delta Delta was founded at Boston University on November 28, 1888. It fell on the day before Thanksgiving that year, just as it does in 2019. Founders’ Day is celebrated on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Its founders are Sarah Ida Shaw (Martin), Eleanor Dorcas Pond (Mann, M.D.), Florence Stewart and Isabel Breed.

In the fall of 1888, the four women seniors who had not joined any of the women’s fraternities then at Boston University (Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Phi, and Gamma Phi Beta) discussed their situation. Pond talked to Shaw and they decided to start a society of their own. Pond suggested that they use a triple Greek letter and Shaw chose the Greek letter Delta. Shaw and Pond threw themselves into the details associated with the founding, with Shaw masterminding most of it. All was finished by Tuesday of Thanksgiving week but the two met again on Wednesday afternoon. In the Philological Library at the top of the college building. Shaw and Pond embraced and said “Tri Delta is founded.”

Shaw and Pond were intent and ultimately successful in  getting the other two unaffiliated seniors, Florence Stewart and Isabel Breed, to join their organization. All four are considered founders.

The second Tri Delta chapter came about through the efforts of Etta May Budd who was in Boston studying art. She boarded at the Young Women’s Christian Association and there met Josephine Centre, an early initiate of the Alpha Chapter. Budd, who then became a member of the Alpha Chapter, belonged to two local organizations, one at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and another at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

The organization Budd belonged to at Simpson College was called L.F.V. It stood for “Lovers of Fun And Victory,” but the college men called them “Light Footed Virgins.” L.F.V. was founded in 1871 and by 1889, it had 95 members. On April 25, 1889, nine L.F.V. members signed pledges to become members of Delta Delta Delta. A charter was secured and L.F.V. became the Delta Deuteron Chapter of Delta Delta Delta. An initiation followed on May 10, 1889. In 1897, it became known as the Delta chapter when the first national convention changed the system of naming chapters.

As she had done with the local organization to which she had belonged at Simpson College, Budd attempted to bring the local organization she had founded at Iowa State University, U.D.T. into the Delta Delta Delta fold. In May 1889, she returned to Iowa State with a charter for the local organization. There was much anti-fraternity sentiment on campus and U.D.T. had been forced to disband. Budd organized another group to have the Delta Delta Delta charter and was successful in 1890. However due to the continuing anti-fraternity sentiment, that charter was surrendered two years later. Fourteen members were initiated and two pledged before the charter was returned. Ultimately, the chapter was reestablished on September 21, 1912.

In 1889, the Epsilon chapter of Delta Delta Delta became the second women’s fraternity at Knox College. Kappa Beta Theta was a local organization founded in 1888 by sisters Patsie and Ola Ingersoll. It was formed with the intention of securing a charter from a national women’s fraternity.  Beta Theta Pi had a chapter at Knox College and a Knox Beta told his brother, who was a member of the Beta Theta Pi chapter at Boston University. The Boston University Beta gave the information to his friend, Delta Delta Delta founder Sarah Ida Shaw. 

Correspondence between Shaw and the Knox College women resulted in a Tri Delta charter being granted on July 9, 1889.  A member of the Simpson College chapter, Hattie Berry, initiated the chapter in August 1889, at the home of one of the charter members, Alta March. A reception was held at the Phi Gamma Delta Hall at Knox College. Shaw later noted that the “Galesburg girls refused to have Gamma (as a chapter name) because they considered the letter hideous in form and sound, so it was given to the second in the province, Adrian (College), which came in only six months later.”

Tri Delta was represented at the 1891 meeting of seven organizations in Boston at the invitation of Kappa Kappa Gamma. When the seven groups met again in 1902 in Chicago at the invitation of Alpha Phi, Tri Delta became a founding member of the National Panhellenic Conference.

Phi Sigma Sigma’s was founded at Hunter College on November 26, 1913. Its ten founders are Lillian Gordon Alpern, Josephine Ellison Breakstone, Fay Chertkoff, Estelle Melnick Cole, Jeanette Lipka Furst, Ethel Gordon Kraus, Shirley Cohen Laufer, Claire Wunder McArdle, Rose Sher Seidman and Gwen Zaliels Snyder.

The organization was originally called Phi Sigma Omega, but it was discovered that the name was already in use. Five years transpired before a second chapter was installed. In 1918, the Beta Chapter at Tufts University was chartered. It came about because a friend of one of the founders expressed interest in the organization. A third chapter was founded at New York University.

Phi Sigma Sigma’s Theta Chapter was chartered in 1923 at the University of Illinois. It has among its alumnae Irna Phillips, considered the “mother of modern soap opera” and Tatyana McFadden, Paralympic Gold Medalist. Among the soap operas Phillips created are Guiding Light, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives and Another World.

Kappa Kappa Gamma will turn 150 on October 13, 2020. On this Founders’ Day, the @MinnieStewartVan left from Monmouth to spend the year visiting Kappa Kappa Gammas across North America. I was lucky enough to visit the when it made a stop in the Saint Louis area.

What a treat it was to hear Kylie Smith’s voice on the virtual reality glasses narration and see her speaking in a video that played in the van. She is Kappa’s Archivist and a Past State President of Ohio State Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. Her vision to educate members about Kappa’s history came to life in such an outstanding manner. Kudos, Kylie and company!

Follow the van’s adventure’s on @MinnieStewartVan on Instagram and @KappaKappaGamma on Facebook.

Alpha Sigma Alpha was founded on November 15, 1901 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. Its founders had been asked to join some of the other sororities on campus, but they wanted to stay together. The five, Virginia Lee Boyd (Noell), Juliette Jefferson Hundley (Gilliam), Calva Hamlet Watson (Wootton), Louise Burks Cox (Carper) and Mary Williamson Hundley, started their own sorority; they called it Alpha Sigma Alpha.

Just as the March 1945 Phoenix went to press, news was received of the release of Beth Harkness from the Santo Tomas prisoner camp. Harkness was an alumna of the Tau Tau chapter, at Fort Hays Kansas State College.

Harkness earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University. She went to Shanghai as an Episcopalian missionary. In January 1941, she was transferred the Phillipine Island of Luzon and was assigned to the mountain province of Sagade. She was 29 years old when she was taken captive by the Japanese in 1942.

For three years she and was confined to Camp Holmes near Baguio. The 500 prisoners lived in barracks designed for 85. The room she shared with three other women was crowded and privacy was nil. During her captivity she served as a schoolteacher for the 80 children who were there.

In October 1944, as American forces advanced towards the Philippines the prisoners were transferred to a camp near Manila. Late in January 1945, the prisoners saw low flying American planes. That night there were battles in the streets. Although the Japanese guards had left their posts, the prisoners remained in the camp until their American liberators found them the next day.

At the camp Harkness met John A. Renning, who had grown up in South Dakota. He spent four years as a mining engineer on Luzon and was taken prisoner in December, 1941. While captive, Harkness and Redding grew fond of one another. Once they were free to live life away from the camp, the couple knew they wanted to spend their lives together. They married on May 10, 1945, at the Church of the Incarnation in Santa Rosa, California, shortly after each returned to the United States separately.

The November 1945 Phoenix included this quote from Beth Harkness Renning:

Looking back, one has time to do so in a Prison Camp, I am so glad for happy Alpha Sigma Alpha memories and realize those experiences were the kind which help tide one over in difficult times.

In 1977, the Rennings had retired to Auburn, California. They spoke to the local newspaper about their experiences in the early 1940s. They planned to attend a reunion of camp survivors. Later that year, they spoke to a community group about their time in the prison camp. Beth Renning died in 2000 and her husband in 2002.

Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. was founded on November 12, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana by seven young African American school teachers. Sigma Gamma Rho’s founders are Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson, Mary Lou Allison Little, Vivian White Marbury, Bessie M. Downey Martin, Cubena McClure, Hattie Mae Dulin Redford, and Dorothy Hanley Whiteside. On December 30, 1929, a charter was granted to the Alpha chapter at Butler University making the organization  a national college sorority.

Edna Mae Douglas was a charter member of Sigma Gamma Rho’s Theta Sigma chapter in Little Rock, Arkansas. She served as Second Grand Anti-Basileus from 1948-52 and First Grand Anti-Basileus from 1952-54. She was the organization’s eighth Grand Basileus and her tenure spanned from 1954 until 1959.

Douglas graduated from Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. Her Master’s was earned at Atlanta University. She taught and was chairman of the science department at Paul Dunbar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

During the 1952-53 year she was the winner of the first Ford Foundation Fellowship offered by the Little Rock Public Schools. She spent a year in travel as part of the fellowship. In 1953 Sigma Gamma Rho named her the winner of the Blanche Edwards Award, its highest personal honor.

Douglas was on the Board of Directors of her Alma Mater, the only African American woman to serve in this way. A residence hall at the university is named in her honor.

She was active in the Little Rock community and served on the Board of Directors of the Greater Little Rock YWCA. Douglas also served as President of the National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc. from 1960-62.

The Theta Sigma chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho hosts a Edna M. Douglas Scholarship Luncheon each year.

The first social event Frances Haven (Moss) attended after enrolling in Syracuse University in 1874 was a church oyster supper. Her father, Dr. Erastus Otis Haven, was recently elected Chancellor of the university. At that supper, she met the man who would become her husband, Charles Melville Moss. She also met two members of Alpha Phi, a women’s fraternity founded at Syracuse in October of 1872. Instead of accepting the invitation to join Alpha Phi which had been offered to her, she joined with three other women – Mary A. Bingham (Willoughby), E. Adeline Curtis, and Helen M. Dodge (Ferguson) –  and they found an organization of their own. The date was November 11, 1874. The organization is Gamma Phi Beta, the first of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations to use the term “sorority;” Syracuse Latin professor Frank Smalley suggested the word to the young women.

The years surrounding World War I and sorority women’s response to the crisis is an interest of mine. In preparation for this post, I went searching a hundred-year-old Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta. I found this entry from its Phi Chapter at Washington University in St. Louis:

We returned for classes September 26, and found everything in a state of chaos, for somehow the work of the Student Army Training Corps would not fit in with the regular work of the college. Finally, when we were used to the unearthly hours for classes, and the courses which we had to take, not because we wanted them, but because they were the only ones offered, the influenza ban stopped all activities. After the first week of expectant waiting for the ban to be lifted and three weeks more of the disturbing boredom, numbers of the girls of the university decided to help in relieving the economic situation and took positions.

The correspondent who wrote that was Frances Barbour. The chapter’s report noted that she was “recently made a member of the Missouri Folk Lore Society for her work done in Ozark ballads.”

Barbour graduated with a Bachelors in 1919 and was awarded a fellowship for graduate study. In January 1920, the chapter reported:

Frances Barbour, our most recent Phi Beta Kappa, holds a fellowship for graduate work. Incidentally, Frances discovered, actually discovered, some ballads last summer in the Ozarks and was asked to talk about them at the Artists’ Guild!

Her name sounded very familiar so I did some more research. An article in the March 1932 Crescent was titled The Vanishing Folk Lore of the Ozarks. Barbour’s passion was the study of folk lore and she contributed to several folk ballad anthologies. The introduction to the article mentioned the she was a “modest person and is loath to tell of her achievements, but her interesting article betrays not only her ability to write but her deep knowledge of her subject.”

More research found that after earning her M.A. she taught at Carbondale Community High School in Illinois, the high school my offspring attended. She then joined the English faculty of Southern Illinois Normal University, as Southern Illinois University Carbondale was then known. She spent her career in Carbondale and retired in 1963.

Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases of Illinois was published two years after her retirement. Copies of the book turn up every now and then at the Friends of Carbondale Public Library Book Sale, which I help coordinate, and when they do, I place in the local interest section. The book contains more than 4,000 regional sayings collected from her students and local residents from 1944 to 1950. Barbour arranged them alphabetically by the first noun. She also referenced them to parallel sayings in more than 100 other collections. Her research was an important reference for those interested in American folklore.

Her name sounded familiar for another reason. It hit me just as I fell off to sleep one night. In 1964, she was a charter member of my P.E.O. chapter. Her name has appeared in every yearbook published since I joined the chapter in 1991. Barbour died in 1979 at the age of 84.

On November 9, 1874, Sigma Kappa was founded by five young women, the only females enrolled at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. They received a letter from the faculty approving the organization’s petition, which included a constitution and bylaws.

The five founders of Sigma Kappa are Mary Low Carver, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Fuller Pierce, Louise Helen Coburn and Frances Mann Hall. In Sigma Kappa’s first constitution, chapter membership was limited to 25 women. The original chapter is known as the Alpha chapter. After Alpha chapter’s membership reached 25, a Beta chapter was formed. A Gamma chapter soon followed. Although there were some early joint meetings, the members did not think it feasible to continue that way. In 1893, a vote was taken to limit Alpha chapter to 25 members and to allow no more initiations into Beta and Gamma chapters. In due time, Beta and Gamma were no more.

The Espilon chapter at Syracuse University was founded in 1905. In 1911, Frances Willard Lyons and her older sister Mabel became members of the chapter. Frances was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as chapter president. She spent another two years at Syracuse and earned a master’s degree in 1917.

Frances began teaching high school history in Middletown, Connecticut and she advised the first Girl Scout troop in the city. Her fiance asked her to join him in post-war France. The parents of Frances and Mabel had died in 1897 and 1917, respectively. Mabel married and set sail for China with her husband where he would teach in a school for missionary children until they and the four children born to them there escaped during the Chinese revolution. There was nothing tying Frances to Connecticut save a job. She had volunteered to index the Triangle and was hard at work, “when Captain Howard Spencer MacKirdy sent that cable message to Frances which made her drop everything at home and take that long voyage across the Atlantic to join Captain MacKirdy in France.”

On September 3, 1919, she married Howard Spencer MacKirdy. What was unusual was the location of the wedding and the 3,000 miles she traveled to become a bride. Frances wrote a personal letter to Emma Kinne, editor of The Triangle which was printed in the December 1919 edition. I am printing it in its entirety because it offers a fascinating look at post-World War I France. (The German prisoners of war were held until the spring of 1920 in case anyone is wondering.)

I want to tell you about a very wonderful event that has taken place, and about which an announcement has been sent to you. I think I wrote you that I was going to France. Well, I arrived just three weeks ago, and they have been the happiest weeks of my life, especially in the last few years. On Wednesday, September 3, Mac and I were married at Gievres, which is a U.S. Army base of supply, of which Mac is adjutant. We had a very beautiful wedding, so I feel as if I had stepped off into a world of story-book romance. Coming 3,000 miles to marry one’s soldier lover is unique in itself, but an army wedding is also unique. And besides there are many other little ideas which stand out as peculiarly beautiful, and, yes, even pathetic.

After a civil marriage in accordance with the laws of France, we had the religious ceremony at six o’clock in the evening. I must tell you a bit about the civil ceremony which was odd, to say the least. Going to a quaint little town, into a quaint stone house, whose stone floor was badly broken in spots, where a long bare table and several straight, forward tipping chairs were the only furniture, it seemed an unusual ceremony. Behind the table stood the mayor and his secretary. The mayor wore a sash of red, white, and blue, with gold tassels. Mac and I with four witnesses were seated in the chairs. Then in French the secretary asked Mac and me to rise, and in rapid French he read a long dissertation which proved to be the story of our birth, lives, parents, residence, occupation, etc. This over, he read a question in French to Mac who answered “Oui,” then a question to me, and I gave the same answer. Then followed our signatures and those of cur witnesses. Mac had promised to “cherish” me and I had promised ”to obey him and follow him wherever he went” and previously we had decided not to promise to obey. It did not seem quite right for people to call me Mrs. MacKirdy after just those two words, but so it was.

However, at six o’clock we had a beautiful ceremony. It was celebrated in the barracks of the army chaplain there, who by the way performed the ceremony. It was the Presbyterian ritual. The other ladies at Gievres had had the place decorated and it was wonderful. German prisoners of war did all the decorating under supervision. A long narrow aisle of white canvas stretched along the floor led to an improvised altar, with two white pillars with candle on them. All behind the pillar was evergreen mistletoe, heather, and roses. The Lohengrin wedding march was played by an orchestra composed of German prisoners. The wedding procession came up the aisle in couple led by Lieutenant-Colonel Warner and Major Wheeler then Lieutenant Israel (French) and Lieutenant-Colonel McCleary, then Mrs. Warner, wife of Lieutenant Colonel Warner as matron of honor (in tan georgette with yellow roses which were edged in deepest pink). Then came Colonel Davids, the commanding officer of the post at Gievres, with me. I wore a white crepe de chine dress, with white suede slippers, and a wedding veil tied with orange· blossoms, both of the latter being bought in Bourges, France. I carried a bouquet of white roses and mistletoe. We had a double ring ceremony and our rings were narrow green-gold bands with a wreath of ivy leaves embossed on them. They were bought in Paris and are very beautiful.

There were many guests at the wedding-three high French officers, Colonel Leger (Sous-Intendant), Colonel de Place, Major de Rochars. These, by the way, gave Mac a silverhandled ivory paper knife. Uniforms, of course, were everywhere present. Captain Reid, C.A.C., was Mac’s best man. After the ceremony, the wedding group was taken by a French photographer, then a picture of the decorations, and then a picture of the wedding group and all the guests taken in the yard of the chateau which is the officers’ barracks.

After this we had a wedding dinner in regular army style ‘with all the fixin’s,’ even to a huge wedding cake which had to be cut by the bride. One of the interesting features of the dinner was that it was cooked and served by German prisoners. Some other very unique points of our wedding were gifts received. Lieutenant S- gave us a little oval-shaped box which he had made from the propeller blades of German airplanes captured at Verdun. One German prisoner carved a picture frame with two ovals. On the card accompanying it was written ‘Devotion from a prisoner of war’ (Mac is a much beloved man). Headquarters’ Mess (C.O., etc.) gave us a dozen solid silver teaspoons and a solid silver service spoon and fork. They were bought in Blois, France, and are very odd. The German cooks also made us a German wedding cake with ‘Many Happy Days Together’ in German on the icing.

After a very delicious banquet of consomme, roast duck and chicken, sweet potatoes, etc., frappe, and coffee, the party .adjourned to the chaplain’s barracks and there we had a dance and reception to which were invited many who had not been present before. Of course it was up to the bride and groom t0 lead off. (Yes, I dance.) After about an hour of dancing, Captain Reid took me to my little house, and there I changed my dress to my suit, and soon Mac came. We had a Cadillac limousine which took us to Blois, thirty miles away. Mac had been stationed there at Blois in February as captain of a casual company. He had lived with a very lovely lady and her daughter who had a beautiful home, and he had made arrangements for us to go there. Mme. Gagnot said that it was his French home. She was very lovely to us. We did considerable sight-seeing in Blois. It is a quaint old town, typically French, and I just enjoyed it, I can tell you. Then we came to Paris, where we have been eight days, and what a very wonderful time we have had, too. Every minute has been ideal. We have a very nice room in a lovely hotel, where the Tuilleries are at our “back door,” the Place de la Concorde but a few minutes walk, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, The Invalides, Napoleon’s Tomb, The Seine, Notre Dame, Palais de ,Justice – all are no longer mere names, but beautiful realities.

One day we spent at Versailles, where its glory of yesterday and today just filled our hearts with the romance of it all. One felt as if one stood on a mighty brink where happened and where would linger the thoughts and hopes of the world for ages.

One evening we spent at the Grand Opera, where we saw Thais, and were filled again with wonder. A single day at the Louvre gave us a taste of its marvels. We went there with the idea that it would take six months to see it, and the little that we did, we did carefully. The paintings and everything about which we know so much kept our attention all the time.

Yesterday we hunted up an American church and went there to worship, and to think how happy we were, and to thank God for the beauty of life. ·with my best love to you, dear Emma,

The couple returned to the United States on Thanksgiving Day 1920 after chaperoning 19 French and German war brides across the ocean. Once back in the states, she took on the role of Army wife, following her husband to whatever post he was assigned. The December 1923 Triangle focused on homemakers and Frances MacKirdy was one of the Sigma Kappas featured. By then the MacKirdys had three boys. Randolph (Burt) was born in August 1920, Wayne in October 1921 and Robert in February 1923:

Their first station was Fort Hancock, with a few months at Fort Wadsworth. A year at Fortress Monroe was ended by orders taking them to Fort Adams, R. I., where proximity to Delta, Phi, Boston and Rhode Island Alumnae Chapters gives these groups an opportunity to become acquainted and love at sight one of the finest of our Sigma sisters. To Sigma, Frances is a devoted slave. The TRIANGLE index from 1915-21 is from her hands, performed under difficult conditions; as the capable chairman of the Scholarship Trophy Committee she has evolved and given much time and energy to a plan which will result in the presentation this year of a scholarship cup to the chapter maintaining the highest average. No appeal for assistance is in vain if Sigma needs her. The old cry ‘Ask Frances’ still avails. But deep as is her love for Sigma, unmeasured her loyalty and readiness to serve, these are dwarfed by her devotion to her home, her husband, and her three adorable baby boys, Burt, Wayne and Robert. Whether it is a dinner party for the Commanding Officer of the Post and other guests, or a wardrobe for one of the babies, or sage discussion on the current events and literature, Frances is equally efficient and well prepared to make a success of the undertaking.

Howard MacKirdy died in 1943 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Frances passed away in 1964 at the age of 69 and is with him at Arlington.

On November 4, 1899, eight young women, Mable Chase, Ruth Dutcher, May Gephart, Harriet Marx, Eva O’Keefe, Adriance Rice, Helene Rice, and Mayene Tracy, formed a sorority at the Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Alpha Sigma Tau was the name they chose. The organization became a national one in October 1925. 

In 1926, Alpha Sigma Tau joined the Association of Education Sororities (AES). Alpha Sigma Tau became a full member of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) when the merger of AES and NPC was formalized in 1951.

Maxine Mirus was a charter member of Alpha Sigma Tau’s Pi Chapter at Harris Teachers College (today Harris Stowe State University) in St. Louis. Her sister Lucille became a member of the chapter, too. Maxine graduated from Washington University. She was a member of the Pi Alumnae Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau and the St. Louis Alumnae Club, which may have been one and the same. The May 1936 meeting of the latter took place at the Mirus home on Connecticut Avenue.

Maxine was the St. Louis Alumnae Chapter delegate to the 1934 convention. She served as Alpha Sigma Tau’s first Life Membership chair from 1934-37. In 1937, the sisters traveled to Puerto Rico for vacation.

On November 4, 1939, Maxine married Robert J. Auld in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 20 years her senior. The March 1944 Anchor of Alpha Sigma Tau featured an article she wrote six months after being commissioned as a WAVE:

Although it was to be nearly a year before I even saw a WAVE outside of newsreels and magazines, my admiration and enthusiasm were fired and now, after six months a commissioned officer, both have increased. Since I lived in Puerto Rico, and the Naval District with its headquarters there had no quota for the Women’s Reserves, my application, tests, and all preliminaries had to be carried on through a second headquarters which delayed the action somewhat. However, I was finally on a Pan-American plane flying up to Miami to be sworn in to the U.S. Naval Reserve, then bound for Northampton for officers’ training.

She received her training on the Smith College campus in Northampton, Massachusetts. There:

For two months we marched in company and platoon formations to classes, to mess, to the dispensary, to lectures, to drill, to uniform fittings, to the gymnasium, rain or shine. We learned to fold blankets in the Navy way, to check tops of transoms for dust, to turn square corners in making up our bunks, besides our five hours of classes and two hours of drill or gym a day – and loved it! The day on which we received our commissions, wearing our snappy white uniforms, was a day on which each of us could feel a sense of great satisfaction that we had managed to measure up to the high standards set by the Navy for is. Receiving orders was a thrill, and to my surprise I found myself simultaneously detached and attached to the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School here, assigned as a member of the Instruction Staff.

Auld was assigned to teach a course called Naval Personnel which instructed the women:

how to recognize the different ranks and ratings in the U.S. Navy; how to know other military services, both men’s and women’s; military etiquette and military authority. In fact, military etiquette looms so largely on the list of rocks and shoals visible to the new recruit, that instructors in our course are referred to as the Emily Posts of the station, and for snappy salutes and military precision in navel procedures, the WAVES can hold their own.

She told about the jobs being done by the women with whom she trained and those she taught. She said some sounded almost unbelievable:

encoding and decoding; giving clearances to aircraft for landings and takeoffs; operating synthetic training devices for pilots; acting as members of military courts; almost any kind of non-combat job in continental United States. Regardless of the diversity of jobs, though, we all have one feeling in common, pride in being allowed to live under Navy Regulations and military discipline, and to release our Navy men from shore jobs for combat duty afloat.

Auld also mentioned Alpha Sigma Tau in her article. Perhaps some connections were made after the fact.

A new class goes out of here every month, and underneath the blue serge and brass buttons we feel a sense of loss like any school faculty on graduation, yet very proud of having turned out four hundred more qualified officers who will out that many men behind guns in the Fleet. I’ve had no way of knowing – but I hope some of them have been AST’s.

She died in 1997 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamon. Her grave marker notes that she was a LT JG in the US Navy.

Delta Zeta and Alpha Epsilon Phi, both members of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), were founded on October 24. In 1902, Delta Zeta made its debut at Miami University in Ohio; Alpha Epsilon Phi was founded in 1909 at Barnard College in New York City.

Delta Zeta’s founders are Alfa Lloyd, Mary Collins, Anna Keen, Julia Bishop, Mabelle Minton, and Ann Simmons. Delta Zeta’s history includes the heritage of several other NPC organizations. Between 1941 and 1962, the members of four other NPC groups became members of Delta Zeta. Delta Zeta absorbed or merged with Beta Phi Alpha, Theta Upsilon, Phi Omega Pi, and Delta Sigma Epsilon. Some of these had themselves merged with other groups prior to joining with Delta Zeta.

Alpha Epsilon Phi was founded in Helen Phillips’ room. She had the inspiration for the group as a way to stay in closer contact with her friends. The other founders are Ida Beck, Rose Gerstein, Augustina “Tina” Hess, Lee Reiss, Stella Strauss and Rose Salmowitz. The seven shared their Jewish heritage. A second chapter was quickly founded two months later at nearby Hunter College. The founding chapter at Barnard was closed when the college banned Greek-letter organizations in 1913.

Actress Barbara Barrie is a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi. She was initiated into the University of Texas chapter as Barbara Ann Berman. While at Texas, she was awarded the Kappa Kappa Gamma Donna Dellinger annual scholarship. (It was established in 1952 in memory of Donna Dellinger, Kappa who was killed in an automobile accident. Those eligible for the award were seniors or graduate students who showed “definite drama interest and ability.”)

Barrie has performed on Broadway, in movies and on television. She spent nearly two years in Company, one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim shows. She received a Tony Award nomination for her performance. Barrie also played the mother in Breaking Away, the 1979 film about Indiana University’s Little 500 race. She was nominated for an Academy Award for that performance. She has appeared in many television shows, including a 1975-78 stint as Elizabeth Miller, fictional detective Barney Miller’s wife. Most recently, she played Brooke Shield’s grandmother in Suddenly Susan.

Barbara Barrie, Alpha Epsilon Phi

Florence Henderson, who began her career on Broadway, has a place in 1970s sitcom history for her role as Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch. She was an alumna initiate of Delta Zeta. Henderson died on November 24, 2016. This question and answer which was on her website addressed that:

Are you really a member of the Delta Zeta Sorority?
I am an honorary member of Delta Zeta. They do a lot of work for the House Ear institute and the hearing impaired and so do I, so it was a good match. I was never an officer or an active member of the sorority.

Happy Founders’ Day, Delta Zeta and Alpha Epsilon Phi!

Kappa Delta was founded on October 23, 1897 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. Its founders are Lenora Ashmore Blackiston, Julia Gardiner Tyler Wilson, Sara Turner White and Mary Sommerville Sparks Hendrick. Kappa Delta, along with Zeta Tau Alpha, Sigma Sigma Sigma and Alpha Sigma Alpha, was founded at the same institution and comprise the “Farmville Four.” (Two of them joined the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) and the other two became members of the Association of Education Sororities (AES) – before AES members became a part of NPC but that is a story for another day.)

I once had the opportunity to tour Kappa Delta’s Headquarters with KD’s Archivist Shirley Gee. One thing I did not expect to see was a green chair from a baseball stadium. Shirley told me the reason why it’s there.

Janet Marie Smith, an initiate of the Delta Omega Chapter at Mississippi State, is a an architect and urban planner. She is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ senior vice president of planning and development. Smith was instrumental in upgrades to Dodger Stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Fenway Park, and Turner Field. In 2013, she was the commencement speaker at her Alma Mater. That year, she was also a speaker at Kappa Delta’s 60^th Biennial Convention Boston. The convention body then took in a baseball game at Fenway Park, seeing Smith’s work up close and personal.

In a feature in The Angelos, Smith said that she in the late 1970s, she was one of a handful of women studying architecture and that Kappa Delta gave her a refuge from the pressure of studying architecture”

It was freeing to be with women. It was freeing to know we were ‘sisters,’ and the judgmental nature of humans was set aside for a moment as we shared the bond of being together…Mostly, from KD, I think I learned to dream…And as my confidence in myself grew, I realized I could do more than meet expectations. I could make dreams come true.