Calvin Coolidge is my favorite Phi Gamma Delta, hands down. It is my feeling the press did not understand the Vermont zeitgeist of the 30th President, but that is neither here nor there because it is Fiji’s Founders’ Day.
On May 1, 1848, Phi Gamma Delta was founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. The founders, the Immortal Six, are John Templeton McCarty, Samuel Beatty Wilson, James Elliott, Daniel Webster Crofts, Ellis Bailey Gregg and Naaman Fletcher. The Beta Chapter was established the same year at Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania. The chapters became one when the colleges merged to form Washington and Jefferson College in 1865.
This full size portrait of President Coolidge was painted by Ercole Cartotto. Although it is now at the Phi Gamma Delta’s Headquarters, it was originally commissioned. by the Xi Graduate Chapter originally commissioned this for the Phi Gamma Delta Club in New York City. Ercole Cartotto’s painting was dedicated on February 20, 1929, in the Club library. It is “life size.”
And although this is Fiji Founders’ Day, this post is really about the President and his lovely wife. In the summer of 1920, an Amherst Fiji won the Vice Presidential spot on the Republican ticket. At the time of the nomination, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge was at Amherst attending his 25th college reunion and the 99th anniversary of the college. A reception at the chapter house was arranged with his wife Grace Goodhue Coolidge, a Pi Beta Phi alumna, helping the chapter quickly plan the event. More than 1,500 people attended the hastily planned reception.
Grace Coolidge in her official First Lady portrait given to the Nation in 1924 by Pi Beta Phi. Her golden arrow is worn over her heart.
Calvin Coolidge became President after the death of Warren G. Harding on August 2, 1923. The Coolidges were planning to attend Phi Gamma Delta’s 75th anniversary celebration in Pittsburgh in September 1923. Unfortunately, they had to cancel those plans. Later, the fraternity presented a founder’s badge to the President. On that occasion, President Coolidge said, “I am very glad to have this badge. My wife wears mine most of the time.”
On November 17, 1924, the Coolidges’ son, John, a student at Amherst College, became a member of his father’s chapter. On the following Founders’ Day, May 1, 1925, Fiji Sires and Sons was organized. Its purpose is to “impress upon all fathers and sons, who are members of the fraternity, and in time upon their sons, a realization of the noble trinity of principles of the fraternity, with the hope that they may outrun the fervor of youth.”
The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation highlighted the 30th President in this video.
Theta Phi Alpha was founded on August 30, 1912, at the University of Michigan. However, it celebrates Founders’ Day on April 30, the Feast Day of St. Catherine of Siena.* St. Catherine is the sorority’s patroness and her motto, “Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring, ” is its motto.
In the early 1900s, Catholics were not always welcome in the other fraternal organizations. Today, just as other organizations have accepted Catholic women, Theta Phi Alpha is open to women of all religions. When the organization was founded, the Catholic hierarchy believed that Catholic women should attend Catholic institutions. Giving these women the opportunity to join a Catholic sorority could keep them close to their religious roots at a secular institution.
In 1909, Father Edward D. Kelly, a priest and the pastor of the Michigan’s student chapel organized Omega Upsilon. He believed that the Catholic women at the university should have the opportunity to belong to an organization that “resembled the Catholic homes from which they came.”
After Father Kelly left campus and became the Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, Omega Upsilon was struggling. There were no alumnae to guide the organization. Bishop Kelly’s vision that the Catholic women at Michigan should have a place to call their own was still alive even though he was not on campus. He enlisted the assistance of Amelia McSweeney, a 1898 University of Michigan alumna. Together with seven Omega Upsilon alumnae, plans were made to establish a new organization, Theta Phi Alpha.
In 1919, the Beta Chapter was established at the University of Illinois quickly followed by chapters at Ohio State University, Ohio University and the University of Cincinnati.
Theta Phi Alpha’s oldest active chapter is Epsilon at the University of Cincinnati. The chapter celebrated its centennial this year. It began as the Newman Club in April 1917. The nine young women who founded the Club “worked with great constancy and with fervent zeal for the advancement of their organization, and had to overcome many obstacles which presented themselves on all sides.” In the spring of 1919, the Alpha Chapter at the University of Michigan invited the club to become a Theta Phi Alpha chapter. That April, they sent two members to meet with the club. It was a successful visit and on June 12, 1919, Helen Beaumont and Beatrice Rademacker installed the chapter.
Early members of Epsilon Chapter
That fall, their recruitment activities included three theater parties. All nine bids were accepted and the women were initiated in February 1920. That summer the chapter rented a cottage for three weeks. It was on Buckeye Lake, then the largest artificial lake. It was located near Columbus, Ohio, and there they swam, canoed, and enjoyed their sisterhood.
* Saint Catherine was canonized in 1461. From 1597 until 1628, the feast of Saint Catherine of Siena was celebrated on April 29, the date she died. In 1628, due to a conflict with the feast of Saint Peter of Verona, hers was moved to April 30. In 1969, the Catholic Church reinstated her feast date as April 29.
A few days ago I was in the room where it happened. I held on to the banister as I walked up the stairs to the second floor southwest bedroom Ada Bruen and Libbie Brook rented the room from “Major” Jacob Holt. There 10 of Pi Beta Phi’s 12 founders met on Sunday, April 28, 1867. Holt House on First Avenue in Monmouth, Illinois, was acquired by Pi Phi and restored in the early 1940s.
I always try to envision those 10 young women dressed in the school-girl fashions of the day arriving at the Holt’s home, being ushered in and then climbing the stairs to the second floor. I suspect they spoke in hushed tones, excited and serious at the same time. The name they chose was I.C. Sorosis. Their secret motto was Pi Beta Phi. Thus the first women’s organization based on the men’s fraternity model was born.
I call myself an accidental Pi Phi because I was totally clueless about the sorority experience. I went through recruitment at Syracuse University because I wanted to see the inside of the sorority houses lining Walnut Park and I had no intention of ever becoming a sorority woman. Instead of dropping out after house tours, I accepted Pi Phi’s invitation. My life would be very different had I dropped out. That decision changed the course of my life in many ways.
My Director’s badge
This week I spent about 22 hours with the Pi Phi who was my randomly selected roommate in 1987 at the first convention I attended. We’ve tried over the decades to get together whenever we can. When my daughter was initiated at the 2011 convention, she planned a family trip to visit her daughter in Florida so that she could spend that day at convention.
The Pi Phis I’ve met over the years have touched my life in a myriad of ways. Yesterday, my little alumnae club had lunch together. We have 10 members which is 30% of the Pi Phis in the area. Although a few more had said they were coming, illness and yucky weather took their toll and it ended up being three of us. One is a Golden Arrow who graduated from the University of Illinois in the 1950s. She spent four years living in the chapter house and considers the women she met during those years as close friends. She was excited because a friend’s daughter made her decision to attend the University of Illinois and she plans on writing her a recommendation. The other lunch attendee is an alumna initiate who became a member when she was working with SIUC’s fraternities and sororities. Through job changes and retirement she has remained a loyal alumnae club member, paying dues and attending events.
Lifelong commitment has little meaning to a new initiate. And yet, chapter experience is and should be a stepping stone and not a final destination. I fell in love with the history of my chapter by reading the chapter reports in the bound Arrows in the chapter archives. Those old magazines fascinated me. The roots of this blog are in those moments I spent curled up on a love seat in the second floor smoker reading those bound volumes. I still love reading them. My repertoire expanded to reading the magazines of other NPC groups as I was researching my dissertation and has expanded to men’s fraternity magazines.
Happy Founders’ Day, Pi Phi sisters! Ring Ching!
Evelyn Peters Kyle, a former Grand Council member and Pi Phi’s only Poet Laureate, gave me this collection of Madonnas and they are now joined by the beautiful interpretation of her poem.
On my birthday in 2017, I realized that my father’s memory was failing. For 26 months, I lost him in little pieces, mentally and physically, and watching him slide downhill was heartbreaking. He passed away in early March in our home. Parenting a parent was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I was determined to do my traditional Women’s History Month #NotableSororityWomen posts and I am proud to say that I succeeded in that quest. The writing was therapeutic.
During my father’s decline, I turned down opportunities, postponed others. In a few rare instances made exceptions and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After having initially turned down the opportunity to speak at the West Virginia University Pi Phi chapter’s Centennial, I was asked to reconsider and in a moment of weakness I said yes. I am glad I did. It was a bright spot in an otherwise subdued fall. I also managed to make it to Pi Phi’s College Weekend in January, although I gave my husband every opportunity to say “stay home.” He, our sons, and our daughter-in-law pitched in and made my time away a reality. An added bonus was spending time with our daughter at College Weekend since she is an advisor to a Kansas chapter. The time with her and my other Pi Phi sisters was what my soul needed.
I joke that because so many things were put on the back burner during the last year, that burner has its own zip code. Putting one foot in front of the other, I keep plodding along and I offer my heartfelt thanks for the thoughts, prayers and kindnesses shown to me.
When we chose the date for the meeting, I did not know if I would be able to attend. The five hour drive from southern to western Illinois is a familiar one.
It was like Old Home Day when I stopped at his rest area outside of Galesburg.
Before making it to Holt House, I stopped at Monmouth College for a few minutes. The Stockdale Center honors Navy Vice Admiral James Stockdale. He began his college career at Monmouth College, but finished it at the United States Naval Academy. Stockdale spent seven years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He became an Alpha Tau Omega when the Epsilon Nu Chapter was rechartered in 1989.
The Kappa Bridge marker is near the Stockdale Center parking lot.
I always sign and browse through the guestbook at Holt House. Kylie Smith is Kappa’s Archivist. Dr. Oz is Mary Osborne, the Museum Specialist at Kappa’s Stewart House. Kylie Smith is currently the President of Ohio State Chapter of P.E.O.
The Holt House guestbook. Just wish Kylie and Mary would have visited the house at the same time we did.
On the way home I stopped at Knox College to snap a few pictures of the newly restored Beta Theta Pi house. My sons are initiates of the chapter.
This morning’s google alerts had this article from The Lafayette. It was another reminder that life is uncertain and we need to live it fully and to the best of our abilities. My heart goes out to Maddie Smart’s family, friends and Pi Phi sisters. College should not be a time to deal with death and dying.
Alpha Kappa Lambda was founded at the University of California, Berkeley on April 22, 1914. It was the first fraternity to be founded west of the Rockies.
Alpha Kappa Lambda’s roots go back about eight years before that. Four men who helped with the cleanup after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake talked about forming a house club. This desire was expressed during a YMCA conference when friends discussed the need Christian men had for an affordable place to live and study. House clubs were common in the days before colleges and universities provided college or university housing and meal plans. In 1907, they came together as “Los Amigos” house club.
1915 AKL publication
One of the Founders, Reverend Gail Cleland, later said, “When we organized Los Amigos as a house club…house clubs and fraternities were dime a dozen. They came, they lived for a few months or a few years, then they went out of existence again. But Los Amigos did not go out of existence.” Seven years later, spurred on by a suggestion from the University’s President, the men became a fraternity of one chapter. In 1920, another chapter was founded at nearby Stanford University.
Sigma Sigma Sigma was founded on April 20, 1898, at the State Female Normal School in Farmville, Virginia (now Longwood University). It was a member of the Association of Education Sororities (AES) until the AES groups joined the National Panhellenic Conference after World War II.
Tri Sigma’s Women of Distinction honor began at the 1998 Convention celebrating its centennial. Among the first recipients of the honor was Bess Brower Willis. An initiate of the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College chapter. After graduation, she taught mathematics at Southern Seminary, in Buena Vista, Virginia. She taught grade school and was principal of a Manassas grade school.
The reason she gets the highlight is that she is a woman after my own heart. In 1917, she wrote the first history of Tri Sigma, compiling all the pertinent information in one place so that it could be a foundation for future histories. It is about 30 pages featuring biographies of the founders, brief information about chapters and a synopsis of the conventions.
Bess Bower Willis
On Wednesday, June 18, 1913, Bess Brower married Russell Holman Willis in St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal church in Haymarket, Virginia. He was a lawyer who would go on to serve in the Virginia Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates.
The wedding took place at 8 o’clock in the evening. She was “exquisitely gowned in white charmeuse, trimmed in rhinestones, and carried a shower bouquet of sweet peas and lilies-of-the-valley, her tulle veil being finished with a coronet of the same delicate flowers.” An informal reception followed the ceremony. They were driven in a “touring car” from Haymarket to Manassas. There they boarded a train for a trip south and they returned home about a month later.
This snippet appeared in a 1913 Triangle of Sigma Sigma Sigma. I love that she is excited about ice-tea spoons and that she is adamant about extension. Although she wasn’t a Tri Sigma founder, she certainly was one of its builders.
Alpha Xi Delta was founded at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois on April 17, 1893. In 1902, it became a national organization when it established its Beta Chapter at Iowa Wesleyan University. The history of the Beta Chapter eclipses the history of the Alpha Chapter by two decades. It begins on January 21, 1869 when it was the first chapter of P.E.O., a story I’ve told many times.
On Friday, January 6, 1905, the Theta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta came into being. Zeta Gamma, a local society, petitioned Alpha Xi and Axie Lute of Beta Chapter spent two weeks in Madison inspecting the organization. Installation took place at the home of two of the Theta Chapter’s charter members, Alma and Lulu Runge. Fifteen women were initiated and:
the patronesses appeared upon the scene and afterwards an adjournment was made to the dining room. A five course dinner was served. followed by impromptu toasts….One of the pleasant features of the dinner was the greeting from the other Greeks of the University. Delta Delta Delta sent beautiful red carnations and ferns tied with the double blue and gold with a fraternal greeting. Chi Omega also remembered Theta with white carnations and ferns. Greetings were received from Phi Kappa Sigma and Sigma Nu. These kind words and deeds make Theta feel that she has a place in the fraternity world of the university. The college paper, The Cardinal, gave Alpha Xi Delta in general and Theta Chapter in particular a comprehensive and pleasing write up the evening before Theta’s installation.
After graduating from Wisconsin, Lulu Runge taught school for several years. After earning a Masters in Mathematics, she left Madison for Lincoln, Nebraska. There she became an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, beginning her career there in 1910. She was an Alpha Xi national officer, too.
In a 1923 Quill of Alpha Xi Delta, the Rho Chapter bemoaned Lulu Runge’s membership in Theta Chapter:
We are loath to admit that any other chapter has a claim upon her. Miss Runge is assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Nebraska and lives at Rho chapter house. She is really the mother of Alpha Xi Delta in Nebraska because she founded the local which became Rho Chapter and has guided and directed many of our policies since our first days. Miss Runge is National Treasurer for her second term and we all know that our finances are in most capable hands. As a member of the National Council her ideas are always stable and practicable and she has done much to further the best policies of the fraternity. By no means a small contribution from her has been the installation of eight chapters all of whom have great confidence in her for the guidance she so freely gave when they begun their national life. A warm loyal friend. A true Alpha Xi Delta.
While at Nebraska teaching, she entered the Ph.D. program, but she did not complete the degree due to the death of her director, Dean Ellery Clark. When he died during the 1917-18 academic year, she withdrew from candidacy for the degree. However, she was on the faculty for four decades until she retired in 1950.
Margaret Bixler, a 1941 initiate of Rho Chapter, wrote about her memories of Runge:
Our Alpha Xi Delta sponsor was Miss Lulu Runge who was a math professor and also well known in the chapter. At meals, she would sit at the end of the dining table stirring her tea. None of us could eat until she started eating, and it seemed as if she’d never stop stirring that tea. One night I sneaked out of the house with a friend to return a fraternity pin to her boyfriend. When we sneaked back in the basement window, Miss Runge was waiting there and caught us. She didn’t penalize us – being scared about getting caught was penalty enough.
Runge died in Madison on April 24, 1979, at the age of 94. In addition to her membership in professional organizations and Alpha Xi Delta, she belonged to P.E.O. and Zonta.
There are three fraternities in the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) that do not use Greek-letters. They are Acacia, FarmHouse and Triangle. Interestingly, the latter two celebrate Founders’ Day on the same day, April 15th. Both organizations began for students in specific majors. In FarmHouse’s case it was agriculture. For Triangle it was engineering. In the ensuing years, both organizations expanded membership eligibility criteria.
FarmHouse began on April 15, 1905 at the University of Missouri. D. Howard Doane, one of the seven founders, conceived the idea for the fraternity. The other founders are Melvin E. Sherwin, Robert F. Howard, Claude B. Hutchinson, Henry H. Krusekopf, Earl W. Rusk, and Henry P. Rusk. The young men were attending a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Bible study in the spring of 1905. They talked about organizing a club and renting a house so that they could live together. It was Doane who envisioned a “farmers club,” and developed a plan. A second chapter followed at the University of Nebraska in 1911 and a third chapter at the University of Illinois in 1914.
At the 1978 Conclave, the fraternity revised its membership criteria to include students whose subjects of study “can be applied toward a degree in agriculture or related fields, or he has a rural background, or he shares an agricultural interest; or he demonstrates qualities of character, scholarship and professional excellence to which FarmHouse men aspire.”
The Illinois Chapter of FarmHouse was the fraternity’s third chapter. It was founded in 1914.
Triangle Fraternity
In the fall of 1906, Triangle Fraternity was founded at the University of Illinois. Founders’ Day is April 15, the date in 1907 on which the Incorporation papers were granted by the state of Illinois. Sixteen civil engineering students conceived the idea to foster fellowship while in college and later as working professionals. Triangle’s founders are Edwin B. Adams, Wilbur G. Burroughs, Stanley G. Cutler, Ruby O. Harder, Theron R. Howser, Robert Emmett Keough, Thomas E. Lowry, Milton H. McCoy, Meryl S. Morgan, Ernest B. Nettleton, Raymond C. Pierce, Franklin N. Ropp, Arthur Schwerin, Charles M. Slaymaker, Charles E. Waterhouse, and Emil A. Weber.
Triangle became a national organization when similar groups at Purdue University and Ohio State were installed as Triangle Fraternity chapters in 1909 and 1911, respectively. At first, membership was limited exclusively to civil engineering students, but in 1920, architecture and all engineering majors were added by a national referendum. In 1961, science students in chemistry, mathematics, and physics became eligible for membership, and computer science was added to the list in 1981.
Triangle Fraternity Headquarters, Plainfield, Indiana. The building is a former Carnegie Library.
On April 11, 1924, one of the most unique events took place at the White House. It did not involve the President, a Phi Gamma Delta from Amherst College, and he was not a part of the festivities. It was the First Lady’s day to shine. The President did visit with some of their Massachusetts friends in the White House private quarters that day. They had socialized at Pi Beta Phi alumnae events when the couple lived in Massachusetts.
The day honored the First Lady, a charter member of the Vermont Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi at the University of Vermont. She had been an active member of the organization from her first days wearing the arrow. One of the women who met with the President that day was Anna Robinson Nickerson, Pi Phi’s Grand Vice President. She and the First Lady had met when they were chapter delegates at the 1901 Syracuse Convention.
The President and First Lady were the pair who were initiated into Greek-letter organizations while enrolled in college. Grace and Calvin Coolidge were both proud of their affiliations with Phi Gamma Delta and Pi Beta Phi, respectively. When his fraternity gave him a new badge, he quipped that it was fortuitous because his wife was always wearing his.
This summer’s Pi Phi Convention will be held in the same city where 95 years ago, more 1,300 Pi Phis were arriving to be a part of the Eastern Conference. The portrait of the First Lady painted by Howard Chandler Christy was paid for by her sorority sisters and was being presented to the United States. In the portrait she is wearing her Pi Beta Phi arrow.
She became First Lady on August 3, 1923 when President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in California. The Coolidges were at the family’s homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and the news made it to them four hours after Harding’s death. President Coolidge was sworn in by the light of a kerosene lamp in the sitting room of his father’s home; his father, a notary, administered the oath of office.
The excitement that the Fraternity members felt in having a dedicated, life-long member of Pi Beta Phi as the First Lady must have been incredible. News of the event appeared in the March 1924 Arrow. Every Pi Phi was invited to attend. The Fraternity made plans to purchase a portrait of the First Lady that was being painted by Howard Chandler Christy. Funds were sought from the membership and the financial goal was met quickly.
Mrs. Nickerson played an integral role in planning the event and acted as Toastmistress at the Banquet. She wrote to her friend asking her for permission to hold the event. The First Lady responded that she “would be deeply touched and greatly pleased to receive such a mark of affection and recognition” from Pi Beta Phi. With the help of May Brodhead Wallace, Iowa Gamma, wife of Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, plans were made to entertain the Pi Phis at the White House.
The Eastern Conference was the largest gathering of fraternity women up until that time. The Willard Hotel did not have enough room to serve all the attendees at the Saturday evening banquet. A second banquet at the Raleigh Hotel, with an identical menu and program, was arranged. After the meal, the Raleigh Hotel group adjourned to the Willard Hotel group for the speeches and ceremonies.
The Willard Hotel’s Red Room was the registration and reunion center; concerts were given there each afternoon. A tenth-floor ballroom served as the conference hall. At the ballroom’s south end, there was an exhibit of Pi Beta Phi Settlement School products. Black and white replicas of the Grace Coolidge portraits were sold for the benefit of the School’s library.
On Friday morning, the group met for a business session, but the business was mainly fun. Former Grand President Emma Harper Turner called the meeting to order. The group sang the Anthem. The Chicago Alumnae Club and Illinois Epsilon presented a special radio program featuring Kathryn Browne, Illinois Zeta. A Grand Opera star, she received special permission so that she could sing fraternity songs from a radio station in Chicago. Along with eight Illinois Epsilons as the chorus, she sang Speed Thee, My Arrow and Anthem. The banquet took place on Saturday evening. It culminated with a speech by another of the organization’s most prominent members, Carrie Chapman Catt, Iowa Gamma.
Between Friday morning’s fun session and Saturday’s trip to Mount Vernon and evening banquet was the capstone of the gathering, the presentation of the portrait. A group of Pi Phi notables processed from the Willard Hotel to the White House. An Arrow correspondent described the events:
The guests assembled in the historic East Room, forming a semi-circle about the panel on the west wall, where hung the curtains, in wine red velvet, with cords of silver blue, which covered the portrait. The presentation party was assembled in the Green Room. Promptly at four-thirty a section of the Marine Band began to play, announcing the opening the opening of the simple ceremony. The presentation group, led by Miss Onken and Mrs. Nickerson, came first from the Green Room, taking their places on the inner side of the circle, facing the portrait. On either side of the portrait stood the two active girls who were to draw the curtains.
Through the double doorway appeared the Army, Naval, and Marine Aides to the president. With the Senior Aides as escort, came Grace Coolidge, First Lady of the Land. She wore a soft grey georgette crepe afternoon dress trimmed with crystal, and, as jewels, a diamond eagle on her shoulder, a chain with a crystal pendant, a gold bracelet, her wedding ring, and the diamond studded arrow, which had been presented the day before by a group of personal friends in Pi Beta Phi. Wonderfully slim and straight, with arms at her side, she stood very still through the entire ceremony, except for a constant play of understanding appreciation, which lighted her expressive face.
The representatives of Vermont Beta and Michigan Beta drew the silver blue cords, the heavy wine-red curtains parted, and the portrait was revealed. Then, as Mrs. Nickerson put it, “to express a little of what was in their hearts,” the Anthem was sung, with Mrs. Coolidge joining in. After the portrait was presented, they moved to the Blue Room. There the guests were presented by name to the First Lady, and being her gracious self, she greeted each member.
The lower floors of the White House were open, so that the attendees had an opportunity to see the staterooms. At the conclusion of the reception, the group headed to the gardens, where a panoramic photo was taken. As the First Lady left the grounds after the picture, she spoke to the nearby Pi Phis, “This is the loveliest thing I have seen here. I should like to keep you here always, to make beautiful the White House lawn.”
The day the Pi Phis visited Mrs. Coolidge at the White House was a happy and memorable one. Three month later the Coolidge’s world was shattered. Their youngest son, Calvin Junior, died on July 7, 1924, from blood poisoning stemming from a blister that formed on his foot following a tennis game he played without socks. The day the Pi Phis visited one of its most loyal members remained one of the highlights of Grace Goodhue Coolidge’s life.
A portion of the picture taken on the White House lawn when the Pi Phis presented the official portrait of the First Lady. The only man in the picture is the artist, Howard Chandler Christy. Two of the Founders, who by then were in their 70s attended as well as Carrie Chapman Catt who was the keynote speaker at the event. The First Lady’s husband, Calvin Coolidge was a Phi Gamma Delta.Grace Coolidge signed her letter to Pi Beta Phi Grand President “From one of its most loyal members.”
Today is the day upon which Chi Omega was founded at the University of Arkansas in 1895. Ina May Boles, Jean Vincenheller, Jobelle Holcombe, and Alice Simonds, with guidance from Dr. Charles Richardson a Fayetteville dentist and a Kappa Sigma alumnus, created the organization. Dr. Richardson, with the sobriquet “Sis Doc,” was beloved by Psi Chapter members. He, too, is a founder. The Psi Chapter is the founding chapter at Arkansas.
One of my favorite ways to waste time is to peruse century old GLO magazines. I came across this in the second volume of The Eleusis of Chi Omega.
The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was the home of Chi Omega’s Rho Chapter. Josephine Louise Newcomb established the college in 1886 as a memorial to her daughter who died in 1870 at the age of 15. It was the women’s coordinate of Tulane University. The entry for Gertrude Kerr (above) illustrates this distinction.
The second entry for Willey Denis piqued by curiosity. What an unusual name! And what a long journey for a young woman to travel from New Orleans to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles from Philadelphia. (In case you were wondering, “bryn mawr” means “large hill” in Welsh.)
In 1893, Pi Beta Phi chartered a chapter at Newcomb College. Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter debuted there on September 8, 1897. That year a local society, P.K.E.C. was formed and in 1898 it became Sigma Delta. This organization:
flourished ‘like a green bay tree,’ and finally on Friday, March 30, 1900, the members formally announced to the College that they had joined the national fraternity of Chi Omega and would be known as the Rho Chapter.
After I realized that Willey Glover Denis, Ph.D., was another among a plethora of #NotableSororityWomen, I contacted Lyn Harris, Chi Omega’s Archivist. She confirmed Denis was indeed a member in good standing.
Willey Denis is listed as a member of Sigma Delta, which would become Chi Omega’s Rho Chapter soon after this yearbook was published.
Willey Glover Denis was a native of New Orleans from an old and respected family. There was no need for her have a career. Women of her social standing typically strove to “marry well.” In 1902, she was Queen of the New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe Proteus. The third oldest parade krewe in New Orleans, the theme that year was “Flora’s Feast.” While that might have been the pinnacle of life for some of her contemporaries, it appears she merely tolerated the experience.
Denis was a pioneer among biochemists, at a time when it was difficult and rare for a woman to do so. It appears her interest in science did not begin until she arrived at Bryn Mawr. In addition to the degrees from Newcomb and Bryn Mawr, she earned a Master’s from Tulane University in 1902. Denis took additional classes at Tulane until 1905 when she entered the University of Chicago, the new institution funded by Rockefeller money. She graduated from Chicago in 1907 with a Ph.D., cum laude.
The Eleusis of Chi Omega, 1905
Denis’ dissertation was titled On the Behavior of Various Aldehydes, Ketones and Alcohols Toward Oxidizing Agents. From there she taught for a short time at Grinnell College. At the end of 1907, she joined the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry where she spent almost two years. For the next decade she was a prolific researcher, collaborating with others and publishing many studies. She toiled at Tulane, Chicago, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 1920, Denis returned to New Orleans. That June, she joined the Tulane Medical School faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology. She continued a heavy research agenda. In 1925, the Chemistry Department became the Biochemistry Department. She was the department chair and likely the first woman to chair a major department in a major medical school.
Metastatic breast cancer cut short her life and Denis died in 1929 at the age of 49. Her sister, Aimee C. Denis, died in 1943. Aimee left a bequest of $30,000 to establish the Willey Glover Denis Fellowships in Biological Chemistry at the Tulane University School of Medicine.
There are many posts on this blog. Use the search button to find the posts about your organization.
Welcome!
Welcome! Chances are good you found this blog by searching for something about fraternities or sororities.
I was the last person anyone would have suspected of joining a sorority in college. I am sure I would have agreed with them, too.
When I made my way to Syracuse University, I saw the houses with the Greek letters that edged Walnut Park, and wished I could tour them. My roommate suggested I sign up for rush (as it was then called, today it’s known as recruitment) and go through the house tour round and then drop out of rush. It sounded like a plan. I didn’t realize that I would end up feeling at home at one of the chapters. And that I would become a member.
In this blog I will share the history of GLOs and other topics. I wrote a dissertation on “Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902.″ It chronicles the growth of the system and the birth of the National Panhellenic Conference.
My Master’s thesis details the history of the fraternity system at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1948-1960. The dates are significant ones and the thesis is available on the top menu.
I have done research at the Student Life Archives and have written several histories of University of Illinois fraternity chapters for the Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing.
