Leland F. Leland on the Founding Day of TKE

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) was founded on January 10, 1899 at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. In a meeting at 504 East Locust Street, Charles Roy Atkinson, Clarence Arthur Mayer, James Carson McNutt, Joseph Lorenzo Settles, and Owen Ison Truitt formulated plans for a fraternity they first called the Knights of Classic Lore. The name was changed to Tau Kappa Epsilon when, in 1902, the men rented the Wilder Mansion, a home which formerly belonged to the College’s president. It was the first men’s fraternity house on the campus.

Leland F. Leland

Some of its most famous members include an initiate of the Eureka College chapter the 40th President of the United States – Ronald Reagan, Charles R. Walgreen, Jr., and Elvis Aaron Presley, an honorary initiate of the Arkansas State University chapter.

Banta’s Greek Exchange and Fraternity Month are some of my favorite magazines to read. Both ended publication in the early 1970s. Tau Kappa Epsilon Leland F. Leland, along with his then wife Wilma Smith Leland, Alpha Omicron Pi, began the Fraternity Press and published Fraternity Month from 1933 until 1971.

Leland F. Leland was the 72nd initiate of TKE’s Theta Chapter at the University of Minnesota. He spent several years employed by the George Banta Company before striking out on his own. 

The October 1933 edition of Fraternity Month included this introduction:

Fraternity Month and its staff greet you. To tell you what kind of a magazine it is would be to be trite, for you may see for yourselves. We hope you find it all that you may expect of a new, interfraternity publication. Many of you have asked for one which will be read by undergraduates as well as by more mature members. This is the type of magazine we want to produce. Coming with regular frequency, our news will be current and vital. Our articles will be by persons prominent in their field. We will follow a policy of liberalism. Our articles will not reflect our own opinion for this is your magazine and each of you may direct the thought of it so long as you may direct the thought of it so long as  you keep within the bounds of good tatse. We welcome your contributions, your suggestions and, about all, your criticisms.

It will be our earnest endeavor to publish all the worthwhile news of all fraternities and all sororities all the time. You may help us by calling our attention to items which you wish to emphasize.

We want timely news, but we are alert to the splendid history and background that Greek-letter organizations have a right to claim. So there will be articles concerning the heritage of fraternities.

We expect our magazine to be read by prominent people who do not wear a badge, and we will feel it a privilege as well as an obligation to interpret the fraternity system to the outside world in a manner fair and honest.

Controversial articles will present both sides of the question. We do not strive to be smart, but to be intelligent with enough levity to be appealing to a public whose tastes are varied. Our magazine is, first of all, a fraternal and educational journal and we expect to keep it so. It is published without profit by the Fraternity Press in a desire to be of real service to the fraternity system.

Small convention favor for the 1936 Pi Beta Phi Convention. The cover of this small (3×5) notebook mimicked the covers of the larger magazine. The graphic may have even been used as the cover of an edition of the magazine.

He was elected his fraternity’s Grand Histor in 1924 and spent 25 years, 1924-49, as editor and manager of THE TEKE magazine. Leland edited a 50-year TEKE history. He was named Grand Histor Emeritus. In addition, he served the fraternity as Grand Prytanis (President) from 1949-51. He died in 1972 at the age of 73.


 

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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January 9 and a Look Back to January 8

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Yesterday, January 8, was spent in a car driving from Florida to Illinois. I sat in the back seat between our two dogs. For one day, they had my undivided presence and attention. Yesterday was also my birthday. It’s a day I share with honorary Tau Kappa Epsilon Elvis Presley, Kappa Sigma Dr. Charles Richardson, who is also a Chi Omega founder, and Kappa Sigma founder Frank Courtney Nicodemus.

Dr. Charles Richardson, Kappa Sigma, and a founder of Chi Omega

Today, January 9, is Phi Beta Sigma’s Founders’ Day and Pi Beta Phi’s Chapter Loyalty Day.

 On January 9, 1914, A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, students at at Howard University in Washington, D.C, founded Phi Beta Sigma. In 2009, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, became an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma.

The fraternity also sponsors the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. was founded January 16, 1920, at Howard University, Washington, D.C. and it is constitutionally linked to Phi Beta Sigma. The Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union is open to members of both organizations, their families, and chapters. 

Why would Pi Beta Phi choose January 9 for Chapter Loyalty Day when many chapters are not yet back in school? It’s to honor one of its most influential members, Carrie Lane Chapman Catt, an initiate of the chapter at Iowa State University. She was born on January 9, 1859. To read more about her, search for “Carrie Chapman Catt” in the search book at the top right of this page. 

Pi Beta Phi’s 1890 convention took place in Galesburg, Illinois. Among the attendees was Carrie Chapman Catt, in the black shirt and bow tieto the left of the center.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

 

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Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt, a Phi Gam and DEKE, January Deaths

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

I realized this morning that the two U.S. Presidents whose homes I visited died on January 5 and January 6, in different years. The Calvin Coolidge homestead is in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. It is the boyhood home of the 30th President, an initiate of the Phi Gamma Delta chapter at Amherst College.

On the morning of January 5, 1933, 60-year-old President Coolidge left for his office at 25 Main Street in Northampton. The chauffeur brought the President and his secretary, Harry Ross, back to the house a short time later. The January 6, 1933 New York Times gave details of the President’s death. In the article,  Ross recounted the morning’s events:

We drove out to The Beeches, and went into his study on the ground floor. Mrs. Coolidge was getting ready to go downtown for her regular morning shopping. She came into the study and chatted with us awhile. As she got up to go out the door without calling the car, Mr. Coolidge said: ‘Don’t you want the car?’ 

‘No,’ she replied, ‘It’s such a nice day, I’d rather walk than ride.’ These were their last words together.

When the First Lady returned from her trip to town, she went upstairs to call her husband to lunch. That is when she found him dead on the floor.

 

The funeral services took place at the Edwards Congregational Church on Main Street, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where the Coolidges were faithful members. The President was buried in the family plot in the small cemetery in Plymouth, Vermont. 

cal cool grave

 

As a child growing up on Long Island, I often visited Sagamore Hill, the summer White House during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. A Harvard alumnus, he was an initiate of the Alpha Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon. The 26th President died in his sleep on January 6, 1919. He died at age 60 of a coronary embolism.

 

Sagamore Hill is in Oyster Bay on Long Island’s north shore overlooking the Long Island Sound. As I toured Sagamore Hill during my childhood and later when I took my own children there, it was easy to envision President Roosevelt walking the property or carrying on business in the house.

After a simple church service at Christ Church in Oyster Bay on January 8, the President was laid to rest at Youngs Memorial Cemetery, near Sagamore Hill. According to the Youngs Memorial Cemetery’s website, “Family members and dignitaries made their way up the steep snow-dusted hill, and a bugler blew taps. When the ceremony ended, one mourner stayed behind. Former President William Howard Taft—by turns a political ally and a foe—stood by the grave weeping. As he later wrote to Edith Roosevelt, ‘I loved him always and cherish his memory.’ America felt the same.”

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Happy 120th Alpha Omicron Pi!

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897 at the home of Helen St. Clair (Mullan). She and three of her Barnard College friends, Stella George Stern (Perry), Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Elizabeth Heywood Wyman had pledged themselves to the organization on December 23, 1896. That first pledging ceremony took place in a small rarely used upstairs room in the old Columbia College Library.

Alpha Omicron Pi's Founders

Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founders

Celebrating a Founders’ Day on the second day of the new year proved to be a challenge for the organization, so Alpha Omicron Pi now celebrates Founders’ Day on December 8, Stella’s birthday through January 2 and beyond.

Florence Lucas Sanville, Wyman’s classmate at Bloomfield High School in New Jersey, became an early member of the Alpha Chapter. Before enrolling at Barnard in 1899, she attended  the Ethical Culture School of Felix Adler in New York. She took a two-year course in kindergarten teaching. 

One of the first issues of To Dragma noted that she “spent the summer at a philosophical camp in the Adirondacks.” She also served as sponsor for Alpha Omicron Pi’s Omicron Chapter at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville when it as installed on April 14, 1902.

screenshot-178

In another issue of To Dragma, there was an announcement that since August, 1903, she had been “studying housing conditions in New York. As the result of a competitive examination, she was appointed one of the Tenement House Inspectors of the New York Tenement House Department.” She served in that capacity for two years.

Sanville relocated to Philadelphia where she served as Secretary of the Consumers’ League of Eastern Pennsylvania. There, along with a colleague, she began a research project, living among and working with the women who toiled in the silk mills of Pennsylvania’s coal mining towns. She used her experiences to write magazine articles which were also published as pamphlets. 

Florence

The first page of the article that appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine

In 1916 the Bryn Mawr College alumnae of the Classes of 1889-92, helped fund a study of fire prevention in industrial plants employing women in Pennsylvania. The gift to the State Department of Labor and Industry was unusual as it may have been  the first time that college women “contributed a fund to a governmental agency for the purpose of protecting women against fire in industrial plants. The field work in this fire prevention study was performed by Miss Fannie Travis Cochran of the class of 1902, Bryn Mawr, and Miss Florence Lucas Sanville, Barnard College class of 1901. Their work under the direction of Commissioner John Price Jackson of the Department of Labor and Industry and the results of their study which extended through several months is published herewith as prepared by the Bryn Mawr committee.”

Sanville was involved in the suffrage movement and she served on a number of social action committees. According to a bio on the Chester County Historical Society’s website, she “served on the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee, Women’s Trade Union League of Philadelphia, and Friends’ Social Order and Race Relations.  She was also Chairman of the Committee on Labor for the Conservation and Welfare of Workers, secretary of the Pennsylvania Committee on Penal Affairs, and member of the board of the Prison Society of Pennsylvania.  She served on the board of directors at Mancy Prison for Women.”

As an unmarried woman, she adopted a daughter, in a time and place when that was not a commonplace occurrence. At the age of 91, she published a memoir, The Opening Door. Sanville died in 1971 at the age of 95.

Last night after deciding that Sanville was an intriguing subject for an #amazingsororitywomen hashtag, I discovered that she was recently profiled in a To Dragma article and I encourage you to read it, too. It’s at http://anyflip.com/qzpj/zrck page 22.

screenshot-179

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Sigma Nu, First Founders’ Day of 2017, and “Chic” Sale

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Sigma Nu official Founders’ Day is January 1 for it was on that date in 1869 that the fraternity was publicly announced at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. In October 1868, three VMI cadets who were opposed to the physical abuse and hazing of  VMI underclassmen discussed the situation.  James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles, and James McIlvaine Riley formed the “Legion of Honor.” When the new society was announced on that New Year’s Day, it was known as Sigma Nu. 

A sweatshirt design from Sigma Nu’s Mu Kappa Chapter at SEMO for Winter social 1994, courtesy of WSIL news anchor Kevin Hunsperger, a charter member of the chapter st Southeastern Missouri University.

The Gamma Mu Chapter was founded at the University of Illinois in 1902. Charles “Chic” Sale grew up in Champaign, Illinois. As a high school student, he hung out with his friends, some of whom were Sigma Nus, at the chapter house on the University of Illinois campus. In those early days of the 1900s, fraternities sometimes pledged men before they enrolled at the institution. Sale was pledged to the Gamma Mu chapter in 1906. The Sigma Nus gave him the nickname “Chic” when he entertained them at the chapter house. He had a way of making the chapter members laugh while entertaining them, and they encouraged to make his way as a performer. He left Champaign and tried his hand at vaudeville. He became one of America’s best-loved character actors and comedian on both stage and screen. During his travels, he frequently visited Sigma Nu chapter houses or attended alumni association meetings. One of his close friends was University of Wisconsin Sigma Nu alumnus Nick Grinde, who became his publicity man and later a renowned movie director.

Sale was an instant success in the film The Star Witness and his popularity grew with the publication of his humorous book, The Specialist. The book was published in 1929 and was a best seller (and this was before books of this type were published – vaudeville was rife with plagarism). It was a play about an outhouse builder. Sale, at a luncheon of the Sigma Nu Alumni Association, dined with a few lawyers who encouraged him to copyright and publish as a book the tale that he told them, the funny story about Lem Putt and his outhouses. He did just that. 

Chic

Sale was initiated into the Gamma Mu chapter in 1927 by an act of the Sigma Nu High Council. He was named to the Sigma Nu Hall of Fame in 1986. Sale died in 1936 at age 51. Milton Supman, better known as Soupy Sales, is said to have chosen his stage name as a nod to Sale.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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On the Last Day of the Year, I Give Gratitude

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

As the year winds down, I would be remiss if I didn’t give gratitude to those of you who read this blog, who tell others about it, who send me ideas and items, who message or email me when I make an error, and who generally keep me writing more posts. Thank you so very much.

I also thank the founders of the Greek-Letter Organizations who founded societies of their own. I thank the founders of GLOs that are no longer in existence. Some merged or were absorbed by other groups. Some simply ceased to exist. Those founders are all but forgotten, yet their efforts were important.

I thank the men and women who became members of the organizations. Looking at chapter pictures, one sees eager, hopeful, young faces. We cannot tell what the future holds for them or their chapter.

The charter members of a chapter that closed a little more than 100 years after it was founded. 

 

Will those who are entrusted with the care of the chapters, those young faced college students, know the seriousness of the oath they took upon becoming a member? Will they work for the betterment of their GLO or will they contribute to its demise? Will they make their membership life-long or will they consider it a childish decision?

How are organizations who seem to be in competition with each other, in intramural games, in those pesky “firsts,” in fundraising competitions and in number of chapters, members, and houses, going to be able to work together for the betterment of GLOs as a whole? Can we expect our collegiate members to understand that when a goodly number of alumni/ae members haven’t a clue?

I write these posts because I think it is important to know the history of GLOs not our own. It goes without saying that it is imperative that members know their own GLO’s history, but time constraints and programming requirements, both GLO and college mandated, chip away at the time devoted to history. I am preaching to the choir. And dear choir, thank you for providing the music to these stories I tell. May you all have a wonderful 2017!

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Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

2016 is almost at an end.  The year end “celebrities we have lost” compilations have hit social media and the loss of Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds have given heed to the notion that one can die of a broken heart.

Each year since 1988, we received a Christmas card from one of the subjects in my husband’s research project. “Fritz,” like most of the other participants in the study, was a retired University of Michigan professor. The question had something to do with the effects of exercise on men 65+ years of age. Fritz and his wife visited us once on the way to somewhere else. He sent a note in the middle of the year when his wife died. A few Christmases later he told us of his marriage to one of his former grad students. His notes were always fun to read. This year, there was no card from Fritz.  In August, Charles “Fritz” F. Lehmann, Ph.D. died at the age of 93. The Ann Arbor community has lost a bright light. (See http://bit.ly/2hTVMb5 to read about his service as a member of the 10th Mountain Infantry during WWII.)

When an email I sent to the Southern Illinois Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club members bounced back, I realized that a charter member of the club had passed away. Although Janice “Jan” Lyon Yates moved to Columbia, Missouri, to be near her daughter, she was still on the email list. She was a member of the chapter at the University of Missouri and she told us how much fun it was to attend events at the chapter house and tell the most recent initiates of the chapter what life was like in the very same house in the late 194-s and early 1950s when she lived there. She was on “door duty” when an older gentleman and a younger one stopped by to pick up a visiting Pi Phi. The Pi Phi in question was Margaret Truman. Her father and a Secret Service agent came by to collect Margaret and her suitcases. Jan was the one who had to announce “Man on floor” as the suitcases were picked up. Jan loved to tell that story. I am sorry the newest crop of Missouri Alphas will not hear her tell it.

A 1990s 50th reunion of Jan Yates’ pledge class. Jan is pictured third from left in the front row.

A friend who reads this blog alerted me to the death of T. Glen Cary, a past International President of Phi Delta Theta. His love and passion for his fraternity were evidenced in more and a half century’s service to Phi Delt. In 1990, he received Phi Delta Theta Fraternity’s Legion of Honor Award in 1990. The T. Glen Cary Award recognizes the outstanding Phi Delta Theta Colony.  Prior to his Phi Delta Theta initiation, he served in Korea as a member of the U.S. Army. He spent time as a P.O.W., and suffered the effects of agonizing cold at the Chosin Reservoir. He was decorated for valor and meritorious service.  He and his wife, Shirley, a Pi Phi, were married for 59 years.

T. Glen Cary

There are GLO collegiate members whose lives have been lost this week as evidenced by social media posts. I offer my condolences to the friends and families of all of those who lives taken been too soon. Life is precious. Love one another deeply and cherish every moment.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2016. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Mourning Leonard Cohen on Zeta Beta Tau’s Founders’ Day

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Leonard Cohen, singer, songwriter, poet and novelist,  died on November 7, 2016,  at the aged of 82.  Cohen was a member of Zeta Beta Tau’s Upsilon Chapter at McGill University.

 

Cohen’s song Suzanne was a big hit for Judy Collins. Cohen released Hallelujah in 1984 and nearly 200 artists have recorded it. Everybody Knows is a favorite of mine and I’ve recently become obsessed with Madeleine Peyroux’s rendition of Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love. 

Cohen was awarded the Companion of the Order of Canada in 2003. In 2008, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They are but two of his many awards. His career as a singer and songwriter is well documented and one can spend a day lost in the internet listening to songs and reading about Cohen’s career. McGill University established a memorial fund to honor Cohen.

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

Although Zeta Beta Tau began as a Jewish fraternity, in 1954, sectarianism was eliminated as a membership qualification. Five other national Jewish fraternities became a part of Zeta Beta Tau. Phi Alpha merged into Phi Sigma Delta in 1959. The combined fraternity. known as Phi Sigma Delta, had approximately 17,000 members and 47 active chapters.Two years later, Kappa Nu merged into Phi Epsilon Pi. Phi Sigma Delta and Phi Epsilon Pi merged into Zeta Beta Tau in 1969-70. The histories of these groups are documented on the ZBT website and it is interesting to read about them.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2016. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

 

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Holiday Break Was Once a Busy Time for GLOs

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

It’s hard for today’s collegians to contemplate spending December 24 through January 2, part of the Holiday Break, on campus. Most higher education institutions and Greek-Letter Organizations (GLO) HQs shut down for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. However, that week has been a significant one in the history of GLOs.

An antique anchor ornament owned by a Delta Gamma (For more GLO decorating, see http://wp.me/P20I1i-1gm)

Delta Gamma was founded over the Christmas holiday in 1873 when three young women were stranded at the Lewis School in Oxford, Mississippi, due to inclement weather. Alpha Omicron Pi began on January 2, 1897.

Stella Perry, Alpha Omicron Pi Founder

 

Both celebrate Founders’ Day at other times. Alpha Omicron Pi celebrates on or around December 8, founder Stella George Stern Perry’s birthday. Delta Gamma celebrates Founders’ Day on March 15, the date of Eta Chapter’s founding at Akron University. It is Delta Gamma’s oldest continuous chapter. George Banta, a Phi Delta Theta, brought Delta Gamma to the north and was the only man to be an initiate of Delta Gamma. His fraternity, of which he also served as Historian, celebrates Founders’ Day on March 15, too.

George Banta, Phi Delta Theta and Delta Gamma

Chi Phi traces its history to the Chi Phi Society established on December 24, 1824 by Robert Baird at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University).

Phi Delta Theta, one of the Miami Triad was founded on December 26, 1848. Its Founders’ Day is celebrated on March 15, the birth date of founder Robert Morrison.

Phi Iota Alpha, the oldest Latino fraternity still in existence was founded in Troy, New York on December 26, 1931. Zeta Beta Tau was created on December 29, 1898 when a group of young men attending several New York universities met at the Jewish Theological Seminary and formed an organization called ZBT.

Sigma Nu became a Greek-letter organization on January 1, 1869. It was founded at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia by three young men who were opposed to the hazing that was a part of a cadet’s life at VMI. Delta Tau Delta celebrates its 155th anniversary on January 1. It was founded at Bethany College in 1858.

 

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2016. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

 

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Congrats to December GLO Grads!

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Graduating in the middle of an academic year can be bittersweet. To be done with an academic degree, whether a little early or a few semesters beyond four years, is joyous. To leave close friends knowing they will have a shared history come next semester, which may or may not include you, is a little sad. Social media has brought staying in touch to a new level, so feeling connected with old friends is much easier than it was 100 and even 20 years ago.

Fraternity and sorority graduates, please know that this is not the end of the membership journey. It is the beginning of your life as an alumna or alumnus. Seize the opportunity to be a part of the alum life of your organization. If there is an alum club/chapter where you’ll be heading, join it.

Give to your organization’s foundation. You’re probably strapped for cash and don’t have much,, but try to give at least $15 to your organization’s foundation.this year, $20 next year. Get in the habit of giving and upping the gift a bit each year.

Work for your organization. It can be as simple as being on the lookout for potential new members. Speak of the good things your organization does. Keep current – read the magazine, visit the web-site, sign up for e-mails and tweets. Volunteer to work with a chapter, or put your name in the hat for committee work. Every national/international officer once was in the same place you find yourself today.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy life ahead. Remember when you speak of your membership in a fraternity or sorority, say  “I am an ABC” not “I was an ABC.”

From my collection of cords.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2016. All Rights Reserved. Follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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