M. Estelle Angier, Kappa Delta, #notablesororitywomen, #WHM2017

Posted on March 11, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

A profile of M. Estelle Angier was published in Volume 17 of The Angelos of Kappa Delta, the recap of convention edition. At that convention, she was elected National Secretary. Angier was an initiate of the Kappa Delta chapter at Hollins College. She wrote:

I did not go to be the ‘College Queen,’ nor yet did I know anything about sororities. My first thrilling introduction was a formal invitation to Kappa Delta. I didn’t know anything about rushing,—in fact I hadn’t been rushed, and Gamma records show no awful secrets about my past. But just by accident they decided to take me, because, as one member confided to me long after, ‘We decided there must be something good in you because dogs and children liked you.’

The following year she went to the Richmond convention as her chapter’s delegate.  After graduation she gave music lessons and performed as an accompanist. She then began teaching high school in Portsmouth, Virginia. In the fall of 1917, she enrolled in the American College of Physical Education in Chicago. There she earned a Bachelor’s in Physical Education. She funded her studies by accompanying and managing a college orchestra. She worked at one of the South side park playgrounds during the summer term.

After that she:

went into the Army! I was first at Walter Reed Hospital, in Washington. From Washington I was sent to Boston, where I had the privilege of eight weeks’ work in the shadow of the sacred halls of Harvard Medical School. And then I went to Fort Sheridan, where I stayed during the last fifteen months of my service. While here, I was made Head Aide, in charge of a clinical investigation of the recovery from peripheral nerve wounds. Then the office personnel was changed, and the obedient genii swished me into the corrective gymnasium,—and a private office. And then my period of usefulness was over, and my Army career ended.

Angier served as Secretary-Treasurer of the World War Reconstruction Aides Association, (WWRAA), “an organization to perpetuate the friendships and interests formed during the recent period of stress, both for Occupational and Physiotherapy Aides.” She was an officer in the WWRAA from its 1920s inception until it dissolved in 1952.

Angier taught at several colleges, including Cornell College, Marshall University and Oklahoma State University. In 1954, she celebrated her sixty-third birthday by driving the Alaska Highway. The travel conditions on the early Alaska Highway were challenging. There were many flat tires and vehicle repairs along the way. She died in 1977.

    Mary Estelle Angier

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Mary Ann Newcomb Cornwell, Sigma Kappa, #amazingsororitywoman, #WHM2017

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

Mary Ann Newcomb was a member of the George Washington University chapter of Sigma Kappa. For a time she served as Vice-President. The September 1918 Sigma Kappa Triangle reported that she was “preparing to go to France in the fall with the Red Cross. She has been entertaining in the camps for some time.”

During World War I, she served in the Red Cross. She sailed for Europe in October of 1918, leaving from Quebec for London with its American Unit No. 8. After a short stay in London and Frances, she headed to the hospital center in Mesves, France. Located between the villages of Mesves and Bulcy, it was said to be one of the largest hospitals in the world. She established and was in charge of a recreation hut. According to letters she wrote, she installed pianos, planned a library and a tailor’s shop, and started an orchestra. She also spent hours visiting patients and “providing them with cigarettes and delicacies, sweaters, bathrobes, hosiery and toilet articles.” Moreover she slept in the cold barracks and was responsible for doing her own laundry.

The December 1919 Triangle, the “Overseas Number,” included her letter about the Christmas 1918 celebration at the hospital center. Titled “A Real Christmas in France,” the letter described the celebration she and the American Red Cross coordinated:

‘Whoever thought that a real, honest-to-goodness Christmas would be possible in France? This surely is the biggest surprise we ever had in our lives,’ said two Rainbow Division men on the morning of December 25, 1918, in the Red Cross Recreation Hut of Evacuation Hospital #27 at Meaves, France. It was Christmas Eve and it had been raining and snowing for three days. The mud outside was about knee deep and the gloom inside was almost equal to the mud. The soldiers were all gathered around the small tables playing cards or writing letters. The electric lights had gone out and the flickering candle light showed faces with far-away thoughts.

One could just see that these soldier boys were dreaming of home with its usual Christmas Eve bustle and cheerful Christmas spirit. One big Texan said, ‘I’d give a million to walk into my house now. I can just see my mother decorating the house and trimming the tree for my kid brothers and sisters. What a difference!’ and he sadly picked up his cap and strode off to his bunk.

At nine-thirty all the boys left the hut. There was no sign of Christmas anywhere, not a piece of decoration—not even an evergreen. After the windows and doors had been bolted, about fifteen boys, who had been let into the secret, started in to work, and such fun as they had! The whole place was decorated from one end to the other with Christmas decorations and evergreens. One long, slim buck private from Alabama sitting on a rafter running across the room and holding a bunch of evergreens in his hand said, ‘Gee, fellows, this is great! It makes you feel you are playing Santa Claus for the rest of the gang.’ A Christmas tree reaching from the floor to the ceiling was literally covered with tinsel and ornaments. A large table covered with a white sheet was placed in the middle of the floor. On this we put all kinds of toy horns, whistles, drums, pipes, and anything that would make a noise.

One week before, the Red Cross had sent us candy, cakes, figs, nuts, cigarettes, tobacco, matches, chewing-gum, handkerchiefs, socks, red ribbon, and Christmas cards. Our same fifteen boys helped us fill 950 pairs of socks, tying each pair together and attaching a Christmas card. We had enough material to entirely fill both socks of each pair. The socks having been finished previously were placed around the foot of the Christmas tree on the stage. At four-thirty in the morning the place looked like a real Christmas party, so the fifteen boys and two Red Cross workers turned in for the few remaining hours before reveille.

The boys were told to report at the hut at nine o’clock on Christmas morning. Promptly at nine the doors were opened and the long line filed in, passing the stage and receiving from one of the Red Cross workers a pair of socks and a wish for a merry Christmas. For a few minutes the boys were overcome with astonishment, for the Red Cross hut was a fairy-land compared to what it had been the night before when they left it. At first they did nothing but stand around and stare, but soon they discovered the toys on the center table and then the fun began. Such a noise! The men gathered in groups and each tried to make the most noise, as they gave cheer after cheer for the Red Cross. In the middle of the
performance the commanding officer of the whole center came in to see, as he said, what all the fun was about.Almost every man came to the workers and said he had never had such a good time at Christmas before. One Georgia boy said, ‘This seems like a real old-fashioned southern Christmas.’ A California boy said that he had never had such a surprise in his life. One middle westerner remarked. ‘This is more fun than a Christmas at home because it is so unexpected. At home we would have expected a lot, but over here
we expected nothing, and just look what we got.’ And he  held up his socks and looked around.

At twelve-thirty chow call sounded and the boys with mess kits in hand rushed to enjoy the chicken dinner which had been furnished by the American Red Cross. The boys were told to report at the hut again at three o ‘clock and to bring their mess kits and cups. One smiling soldier boy about eighteen years old said, ‘Gee, are we going to have another surprise?’ Another answered, ‘You can bet your life! The Red Cross is just full of pleasant surprises for us.’ Again the long line of khaki filed into the hut and this time one Red Cross worker gave each man a quarter of an apple pie about one and a half inches thick, while the other dipped out a canteen cup of chocolate. The chocolate and the pies had been cooked the night before by a volunteer company of ten cooks and K. Ps.

Once again the boys cheered the Red Cross and all expressed over and over again their appreciation of what had been done for them and their joy in having spent such a pleasant Christmas so far away from home.

Mary Ann Newcomb, Sigma Kappa

In 1927, she became Mrs. Abner Milton Cornwell. The couple lived in Lincolnton, North Carolina where they raised a family. In 1966, she served the Daughters of the American Revolution as State Regent of North Carolina. She died in 1981.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Dr. Placida Gardner Chesley, Kappa Alpha Theta, #notablesororitywomen, #WHM2017

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

As a student at the University of Southern California, Vera Placida Gardner joined a local organization, Alpha Rho. She graduated from USC in 1910 and attended medical school at the University of Michigan. While in Ann Arbor, she became a member of the Alpha Epsilon Iota Medical Fraternity for Women. The organization had a chapter house at 1115 E. Huron.

The Alpha Epsilon Iota Medical Fraternity for Women at the University of Michigan. Bertha Van Hoosen, an Honorary member, was also a Kappa Alpha Theta.

After graduation from medical school, she worked at Stanford University. When Alpha Rho became the reinstalled Omicron Chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta on April 14, 1917, Gardner was one of eight Alpha Rho alumnae initiated with the Alpha Rho collegians.

“Full of unconquerable energy” was the caption on the side of this picture.

A 1918 Stanford publication about the war service of those affiliated with the institution included this information:

In the task which the Stanford women have before them experienced physicians are required; therefore due consideration was given all applicants for these
positions. Dr. Placida Gardner, present head of the bacteriological department of the public health office of Los Angeles, was one of those chosen. In addition to being a public health bacteriologist, Dr. Gardner is an experienced pathologist, physician, and surgeon. She was an instructor in clinical microscopy and physiological chemistry in the University of Southern California.

Volume 33 of the Kappa Alpha Theta (1918-19) reported, “Dr. Placida Gardner, in France as bacteriologist with the Stanford Women’s unit for civilian relief.” The next volume added this information about her:

Stanford women’s unit of Red Cross. Left New York July 13, 1918, expected to return in October 1919. Dr. Gardner, a trained bacteriologist, with headquarters at Paris, was in the Public health department. She made a sanitary survey of canteens from Bordeaux to Paris. She was then acting head of the unit’s Red Cross work at the Embarkation camp at St. Nazaire. Returning to Paris she helped equip laboratories for the Red Cross commission to Poland, and in April 1919, went to Poland as head of the Red Cross laboratories with headquarters at Bialystok.

The magazine also included her first-hand account of some of the journey:

Eleven day trip in special car attached to a fifty-car train of Red Cross supplies, through northern France, Belgium, and Germany, passing through Berlin and being held up near the Polish border by the Germans, who held a soviet meeting of soldiers and civilians (officers having no influence) to decide the fate of the train; after a search of the train and nearly three days of doubt, it was sent back towards Berlin, but managed to get through to Poland by another route.

A book, Europe’s Morning After, by Kenneth L. Roberts, taken from accounts of the war, included this about the young doctor: 

Dr. Placida Gardner, a comely young American woman, is making vaccines in Warsaw for the American Red Cross. She toyed carelessly with a glass tube containing cholera bacilli which she had reared herself, and spoke of some of the towns she had visited. She went down to Kovel to work on a cholera epidemic.

As far as I can tell, while in Poland, Gardner met Dr. Albert Justus Chesley, a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School. He served first as a private and left the service as a colonel in the Spanish-American War prior to attending medical school. To old to enlist in the war, but wanting to be of service, he went to France on May 1918 as a public health adviser to the American Red Cross. He was summoned to Poland where he served as chief of the Red Cross Medical staff and then commissioner of the program. The Chesleys were married on February 13, 1920 and returned to the United States in October. She moved to Minneapolis where the male Dr. Chesley resumed his career with the State Board of Health. 

The Doctors Chesley (courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Placida attended the Kappa Alpha Theta Founders’ Day banquet on January 29, 1921 at its University of Minnesota chapter. She she spoke as part of the program. A daughter, Louise, was born in 1924. Albert died in October 17, 1955; Placida died in 1966.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Two Alpha Gamma Delta Yeomanettes, #notablesororitywomen, #WHM2017

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

During World War I, due to the wording of the U.S. Naval Reserve Act of 1916, 11,274 women were permitted to serve as Yeoman (F). The women were more familiarly known as “Yeomanettes.” Two of those Yeomanettes were Alpha Gamma Deltas from the University of Washington.

Alice Gerry is on this composite.

According to a report in Volume 10 of The Alpha Gamma Delta Quarterly, “The United States Navy called Hortense McClellan, ’18, and Alice Gerry, ’19, from their studies. They are among the veteran yeomanettes at the university naval training station.”

In the same volume, in a column called, “News from the Navy,” McClellan wrote:

Alice Gerry and I were the pioneer yeomanettes at the training camp, all alone among 10,000 or more men. Just imagine how wonderful it was to see ‘Irish’ Wiley dancing around when he got orders to go to sea shortly after I took over his work in the office. This thrill will always repay me for any personal dissatisfaction: the torment of a conspicuous uniform, unkind comment and treatment from an uninformed public, mud, rain, catching early boats, poor living conditions. All is forgotten when I remember that my service in the U. S. Navy has been the means of releasing a man for active duty… I would not give back my experience for anything in the world. It has meant new friends, a broader outlook upon life, self-confidence, and ambition. Lastly, let me add, fraternity teachings prepared and led me to seek the greatest war service that I was capable of fulfilling, and they have truly been a help in overcoming many difficulties.

Yeomanettes

Although the Yeomanettes wore uniforms and performed drills, they did not attend boot camp. Most of them did clerical work, including operating telephones and radios. They also assisted in recruiting stations. When the war ended the Yeomanettes were placed on inactive duty. In 1925, the Yeoman (F) loophole was closed and women could no longer serve in that capacity.

A poster for the Yeomanettes done by Howard Chandler Christy.

McClellan taught school in Carnation, Washington, and died in 1974. Gerry  died in 1991, two weeks before her 95th birthday. Her obituary in the Seattle Times, where she is identified as Mary Alice Gerry Bramble included this information about her service,  “It was shortly after enrolling in college that she joined the Navy. She served as a yeoman from 1918 to 1919, performing clerical work at the Puget Sound Training Camp in Bremerton. Although there were few women in the Navy, Mrs. Bramble felt women were treated with great respect…Every time the female sailors walked into a room, the men jumped up and saluted, treating them like petty officers.”

 © Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
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Mary Master Needham, Alpha Chi Omega, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2017

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Mary Master became a member of Alpha Chi Omega at its Beta Chapter at Albion College, in Albion, Michigan. She later married Henry Beach Needham. The couple were writers, working as correspondents and doing freelance work. A 1913 Lyre reported, “In the Saturday Evening Post for February 15, appeared ‘A Minister’s Daughter’ by Mary Master Needham, Beta. In the Post for November 30, appeared the highly interesting article ‘Going to School with the Movies,’ based on an interview with Mr. Edison. Mrs. Needham contributes to the Outlook and other magazines.”

The Needhams travelled to Europe. While there as a war correspondent for The Independent, Henry Beach Needham was killed in a plane crash on June 17, 1915. He had asked the storied young British aviator Sub-Lieutenant Reginald ‘Rex’ Warneford to take him for a ride. While on the joy ride, the plane crashed. It was reported that his wife was pregnant at the time and later delivered a still-born baby.

Instead of returning home, Mary Master Needham stayed in Europe. She served as a nurse in the early days of the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly. Her experiences were detailed in an article, “What a War Nurse Saw,” she wrote for the August 23, 1915 Independent.

The chapter report of the Theta Chapter at the University of Michigan in Volume 21 (1918) of The Lyre reported, “The university has been extremely fortunate in its lectures this semester. Mary Master-Needham, B, gave a most interesting talk on the reconstruction work in France. Several of the girls from Theta met her after the lecture and enjoyed visiting with her for a few moments.”

The following volume of The Lyre included an article, “Our Agricultural Workers and the Army Garden Service.” Needham was identified as a “Special Correspondent in France for the American Committee for Devastated France.”

She kept writing and publishing articles. In 1929, she earned a graduate degree at the University of Michigan.

In 1936, she published a book, Tomorrow to Fresh Fields: The Story of An Attitude, which chronicles her efforts and her husband’s efforts during “The Great War.” In the epilogue she noted:

I didn’t comprehend how I could live on. And, in truth, for ten years I didn’t live. At least that decade comprises what I must always call ‘my lost years’ — years that the locusts have eaten. During them I feigned and falsified both emotions and thoughts in an effort to come into some port on a beach no matter how barren. Not then would I accept the voyage on the open sea where only one can search for beauty and for truth.

In 1929 I went to the University of Michigan for some graduate work. I thought of this venture as a kind of last gesture to retrieve something — anything — that had the breath of life. It proved to be an experience which I would recommend to others suffering from the disease of my generation could I be sure they would fall under just the combination of truth-giving instruction and guidance I found there.

At this University I met, too, a group of youth — post-war youth. To my surprise I found they had much to say to me and I something to say to them. I found, in short, that we could and did talk the same language. In the war I had seen the birth of many of their problems. I had been one of those who had helped to smash the trammels of many conventions out of which they now walked unfettered — often to the horror of their elders! I understood the necessity in their efforts to construct — usually by trial and error methods — a new scale of values, for had I not helped to throw overboard the old! I came even to comprehend what they themselves did not wholly realize — the reason for their restlessness. They wanted life. They wanted it more abundantly. They were not getting it. Surrounded on all sides by us who had passed judgment on life — its futility, its vanity — how could they hope to escape from that judgment?

Mary Master Needham died on January 17, 1955 at the age of 71.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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#BadgeDay17 – @NPCWomen International Badge Day Turns 20

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

But isn’t the badge a pin? And isn’t what you call a women’s fraternity really a sorority? And really, isn’t that just for when you are in college? Why in the world do you still volunteer for an organization you joined as a freshman in college, when Gerald Ford was President?

Yes. Sort of, well, yes, without having to tell you about Frank Smalley, a Latin professor at Syracuse University. No, it shouldn’t be. I volunteer because I believe in the organization. It is my way of honoring those who came before me and those who will come after me.

Bottom line – I believe in the Creed of the National Panhellenic Conference:

We, as undergraduate members of women’s fraternities, stand for good scholarship, for guarding of good health, for maintenance of fine standards, and for serving, to the best of our ability, our college community. Cooperation for furthering fraternity life, in harmony with its best possibilities, is the ideal that shall guide our fraternity activities.

We, as fraternity women, stand for service through the development of character inspired by the close contact and deep friendship of individual fraternity and Panhellenic life. The opportunity for wide and wise human service, through mutual respect and helpfulness, is the tenet by which we strive to live.

Today, the first Monday in March is NPC International Badge Day, a day for members to wear their respective NPC badges. If  “pin attire” is not worn, then it is perfectly acceptable to wear letters, those articles of clothing sporting the Greek letters.

NPC consists of 26 women’s organizations, and over the years, other Greek-letter organizations have joined in the fun. The more the merrier!

The National Panhellenic Conference’s International Badge Day began in 1997.  In the spring of 1996, after she wore her Alpha Sigma Alpha pin to work one day, Nora M. Ten Broeck wrote an article about her experience. It appeared her sorority’s magazine, The Phoenix, and was titled “A Simple Solution – Wear Your Membership Badge Today.” Her NPC collegues loved the idea and endorsed the project. The month of March was chosen because it is also National Women’s History Month.

 

In my own little world, I celebrate NPC flower weeks. I have always loved carnations, and when I was handed a wine carnation, Pi Phi’s flower, it just sealed the deal. Since I am big on Panhellenic spirit, I will tell you that currently sitting on my table are pink carnations, Gamma Phi Beta’s flower. Last week it was Alpha Chi Omega’s red carnations. I noticed the violets are blooming in the back yard and soon I will celebrate Tri Sigma and Sigma Kappa. Any week now, Kroger will have iris and I will celebrate Delta Phi Epsilon and Kappa Kappa Gamma. I love this chart of NPC flowers, so I offer it you again. Feel free to play along.

P.S. Be sure to read about the #amazingsororitywomen who have worn badges and in their own ways have performed wise and wide human service. There are links on the right hand side of the page.

The graphic that Delta Gamma posted on a past May 24, the date NPC was founded.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Gertrude Falkenhagen (Bonde), Alpha Omicron Pi, #notablesororitywomen, #WHM2017

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alpha Omicron Pi’s Tau Chapter at the University of Minnesota was founded on October 29, 1912. Gertrude Falkenhagen was one of its early members. Falkenhagen graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1917 with a B.S. in Home Economics. That year, the American Dietetics Association (today it is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) was founded “by women dedicated to helping the government conserve food and improve the public’s health and nutrition during World War I.”

Serving as a dietitian during World War I was indeed paving new ground. Travelling from Minnesota to France was no easy task. But Falkenhagen took the challenge. And while she was on the other side of the ocean doing her patriotic duty, the alumnae of her chapter gave this report in To Dragma of Alpha Omicron Pi:

Bonds, stamps, Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., Belgian babies, War Chest, etc.—how we have learned to count our support of these a privilege in the world’s great cause….Red Cross has received most of our active service. Every girl has averaged six hours a week making surgical dressings or sewing, most of them doing the work after a full day of activity in the business world, in schools, and homes. I cannot make an estimate of the number of knitted things sent to soldiers or the number of garments made at home for refugees, for most of us have lost count. Belgian babies and French orphans are our next objects of interest and we have all contributed toward these little people overseas in the past few years and are continuing to give through our ‘War Chest’ which includes all the war funds in this particular section for work at home and abroad.

Gertrude Falkenhagen has been in France for some time with Base Hospital No. 126. She is our only representative in France and we are wonderfully proud of ‘Trudie,’ glad she can be there with her wholesome good spirits and capable service.


Gertrude Falkenhagen, dietitian for Base Hospital No. 65 while stationed in France. She is pictured sitting on a large rock along a shoreline. (Photo from State Archives of North Carolina)

After the war, she returned and continued her career. The Minnesota Alumnae Chapter report in the May 1918 To Dragma included this question, “Do you all know that Gertrude Falkenhagen is a dietitian in Niagara Memorial Hospital at Niagara Falls, N . Y.?” In 1920, she took a job as a dietitian at a hospital in Kent, Ohio.

The May 1923 To Dragma, announced her engagement to Roy W. Bonde. It was noted Bonde was a businessman from Montevideo, about 140 miles west of Minneapolis, the town listed as Falkenhagen’s hometown in University of Minnesota catalogs. The customary five pound box of chocolates was shared with the alumnae chapter.

The couple was married in Montevideo on Tuesday, August 21, 1923 at the home of the bride’s aunt, Mrs. Johannes Hanson. The maid of honor was Marion Mann, an AOPi sister. The Bondes took a honeymoon boat trip to Belle Isle, Isle Royale, Michigan, and then made their home in Montevideo.

She died in 1971 and her husband died a year later. They are buried in Alexandria, Minnesota.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Grace Lumpkin, Phi Mu, #notablesororitywomen #WHM2017

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Phi Mu was founded on January 4, 1852 at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Originally known as the Philomathean Society, it was founded by Mary DuPont (Lines), Mary Myrick (Daniel) and Martha Hardaway (Redding). The founding was publicly announced on March 4, 1852, the day that is celebrated as Founders’ Day. On August 1, 1904, the group received a charter from the state of Georgia and was established as Phi Mu Fraternity. The second chapter was founded at Hollins College in 1904. Phi Mu joined the National Panhellenic Conference in 1911.

During World War I, Phi Mu voted to send an official war worker to France. Grace Lumpkin, from the Mu Chapter at Brenau College, the Fraternity’s Philanthropic Board Chair, sailed for France along with other war workers from the Y.W.C.A.

Grace Lumpkin

The November 1919 Aglaia included “An Opportunity for Service.” It offered Phi Mus a chance “to help along the work being done by American women in France, and incidentally to live the ideals of love and service that Phi Mu upholds. Remember the words of our Creed: ‘to minister to the needy and unfortunate.’ These French girls are needy,— in their lack of interests and pleasure as well as in their absence of funds. How many Phi Mus will respond to this appeal?”

Lumpkin, coincidentally the author of the Phi Mu Creed, was asking Phi Mus to “adopt” a French young woman and exchange letters and photos. She though “it would bring into the lives of some of the girls to have that interest.” She added, “I have had dozens of chances of doing that this summer, and as I’ll continue in French Work there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be other chances. If the girls would send in through you, or straight
to me, their names and addresses, I could connect them with a girl here.” A follow-up explanation noted that the “French girls are most in need of is an added interest in life, something new and apart from their small world, which is now so sadly suggestive of sorrow and loss. There is no better way to meet this need than correspondence with
wide-a-wake, intelligent American girls, for the French are vitally interested in America, whose boys made the supreme sacrifice to help their cause.”

A letter in the January 1920 Aglaia, Lumpkin wrote from Chateau Thierry, “It seems almost impossible that for over a month I have been living in a part of devastated France.” She added:

Although I will probably not be here long, it has been a very wonderful experience, and it worries me that it isn’t possible to share it with you all. We have charge right now of the two cemeteries, Belleau Woods and Fere en Tardennois. Belleau has three thousand straight white crosses and Fere four thousand. At each cemetery is a small house which will have a bed, a cozy sitting-room, and facilities for serving tea to the American relatives who are already coming over to find the particular cross which marks the part of French soil that is their special, terrible sacrifice for the liberty of the world. The house at Belleau will serve luncheons also, to those who wish to stay longer, and there will even be facilities for people staying overnight, if necessary. Busses furnished by the Red Cross meet the trains and carry those who are looking up graves out to the different cemeteries. Both the houses will have the plans of the cemeteries in their living-rooms so that the graves can be looked up under shelter. One doesn’t realize the need of shelter unless he has spent a winter in France. Already we have had a good many relatives, and so we realize what the house may mean to them. And it means much to us, too, to be able to help make the burden of those who have sacrificed so much for us a little lighter.

When she returned from France, she worked for the Y.W.C.A. in Georgia for a time, before turning to writing as an occupation. She wrote for magazines and four of her books were published: To Make My Bread (1932); A Sign for Cain (1935); The Wedding (1939); and Full Circle (1962).

In the late 1920s, she became involved in the Communist Party, although she stated she was never a member of the Party. Her last book was a renouncement of communism. She died in 1980 at the age of 89.

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Eva Orrick Bandel Wilson, Alpha Phi, #notablesororitywomen #WHM2017

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

In 1897, Evalina “Eva” Orrick Bandel graduated from the Woman’s College of Baltimore before it changed its name to Goucher College. During her years there, she joined the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi. After graduation, her plans were to study at Oxford during the summer and she traveled through England and Scotland.


On November 17, 1897, she married John Glover Wilson, a Princeton University alumnus, who graduated at the top of his class. According to an account in The Alpha Phi Quarterly, it “was distinctively an Alpha Phi wedding; front seats at the church were reserved for the
chapter, the maid of honor and three of the bridesmaids were Alpha Phis, while the bride carried lilies of the valley.” Alumnae Ruth Adams, Jane Anderson, Grace Heisler, Katharine Baker, and Edith Wilson, attended the wedding and delighted the chapter by staying for initiation. In the summer of 1899, she gave birth to John, Jr. but the baby died six months later.

Sorores in Urbe were area alumnae.

John Glover Wilson was a lawyer. According to an account in a Princeton alumni publication, “he was a man of tireless industry and great capacity for details, with a logical and well-trained mind.” He spent most of his career as a railroad lawyer, representing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. The Wilsons were included in The Street Directory of Baltimore Society Visiting List, also known as The Blue Book. He died on April 7, 1908, from “cerebral spinal meningitis which attacked him a few days previously and which was attributed indirectly to over work.”

The Wilsons were friendly with another Wilson, namely Woodrow, a Phi Kappa Psi, who was President of Princeton University before he was President of the United States. While Eva was a student, Woodrow Wilson presented a series of 25 lecture histories at Johns Hopkins University, and from the chapter account in The Alpha Phi Quarterly and a scholarship establsihed at JHU, it sounds quite possible that she attended these lectures.

As a widow of means without children, Eva Bandel Wilson had more freedom than most women to chart her own course. She spent two years working as a newspaper correspondent in France, during and after World War I. She attended the Peace Conference as an accredited correspondent, a very big deal for a woman in 1919. Perhaps her acquaintance with President Wilson, helped in this regard.

An article written by her, “A Post-War Work Worthy of Alpha Phi’s Best” appeared in the January 1920 Alpha Phi Quarterly.

From my experience as correspondent accredited to the Peace Conference and since my return to America, I am convinced that a great duty lies before the women of this country in educating public opinion in foreign affairs.

We are facing new international responsibilities which our delay in ratifying the Versailles treaty only postpones. It cannot prevent our taking part in world affairs, for in this age there are no hermit nations and no nation liveth to itself.

So we must prepare to take an intelligent part. And to do this, women must shoulder the greater share of the burden. Men are largely occupied with business and what affects it most closely. Women must begin their political life with wider views. As guardians of the garbage cans in their respective communities they will doubtless justify the bestowal of the ballot upon them, but educated women must do far more they must study world conditions, they must form intelligent, enlightened opinions about America’s responsibilities toward the rest of the world, and they must exert their utmost influence to supply one of the greatest needs in our political life a trained body of people to carry on our contracts with other nations and a trained public opinion to judge them justly.

As means to this end, I suggest that Alpha Phis in every place they live see to it that: 

Foreign affairs are given more space in their local papers, and are more widely studied in the schools, public and private, and in women’s clubs.

Eva Orrick Bandell Wilson

When she died in 1966, her will provided for the establishment of several scholarships and awards.  The Eva Orrick Bandel Wilson 1897 Scholarship is given by Goucher College. The Wilson Memorial Scholarship was established at Johns Hopkins University, where she once attended classes in the Evening College.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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Jeanette Barrows, Alpha Delta Pi, #notablesororitywomen #WHM2017

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

Jeanette Virginia Barrows, a charter member of the Alpha Theta Chapter of Alpha Delta Pi at the University of Washington, was one of the more than 30 ADPi members who enlisted to serve in World War I. The women were not part of the armed forces, as any ADPi could be today, but did ancillary duty as nurses, dietitians, telephone operators and the like. Remember that World War I happened before women could vote in federal elections and when women’s life choices were quite limited. For a woman in Washington State, Europe was indeed on the other side of the world. 

A 1918 Adelphean chapter report noted that Barrows was one of the chapters five graduating seniors. The chapter correspondent wrote:

Although proud of our ‘wise seniors,’ our pride was not unmixed with sadness at the thought of parting. Their loss will be keenly felt in this chapter this coming year. We will scarcely know how to get on without them, yet we know they will not forget us, and the big things that are waiting for them to do help us to realize that they, too, must take their places in the life work which lies before them. Adeline and Flora are staying at home this summer helping their mothers, who have been ill. Next winter Adeline will teach history and English in the high school at Lebam. Jeanette is taking the course in reconstruction for disabled soldiers and sailors given at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and hopes soon to be of real service to her country.

Jeanette Barrows

Volume 12 of The Adelphean carried a poem in memory of her.

From the joy, the youth of life,
From the pain, the earthly strife,
Flees a soul so pure, so true,
Into Heaven’s eternal blue,
For life’s golden, sad sunset
Has enveloped our Jeanette.

Barrows died of pneumonia on March 15, 1919 at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Anne Claire Crouley, the chapter’s correspondent, wrote The Adelphean, “Alpha Theta has suffered her first loss and this a great one.”

Barrows attended normal school (a teacher’s college) before entering the University of Washington. She pledged Alpha Delta, the local organization which later that fall became Alpha Delta Pi.  After graduation, she “spent the summer studying reconstruction aid work at Reed College. Portland, Oregon. She taught school last fall until the latter part of October when she received her appointment from the government as a reconstruction aid.”

She left for New York immediately upon receiving her appointment. When she left the west coast to make her way to the east coast via train:

Practically all Alpha Theta was at the depot, proud of the sister who was brave enough to leave home and friends for the calling of her country. We had given her an Alpha Delta Pi signet ring, flowers, and candy and she had said, ‘Why, I’m all decorated up like a Christmas tree.’

The signing of the armistice on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month changed the government’s plan for her.  She was ordered to Fort Snelling to work with the men who had been injured in France. Crouley wrote this about her chapter sister:

She always had a quaint, quiet sense of humor, never biting, but wonderfully sweet and winsome. She was so unobtrusive that she could be in a room almost unnoticed and still hold an indefinable influence of loyalty and fineness over all. All the ideals of Alpha Delta Pi were lived truly by Jeanette. Alpha Theta loved her and she was a girl who cannot be forgotten. It is impossible to express in words the sorrow Alpha Theta felt when we knew she was called. Out of that sorrow there is one comfort—that we were privileged to be her sisters and friends while she was here.

The Alpha Delta Pi Foundation remembers Barrows’ sacrifice. It awards the Jeanette Virginia Barrows Scholarship to a member of the Alpha Theta Chapter.  Preference is given to graduate students.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2017. All Rights Reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates through the comments section below. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/

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