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 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.
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.
