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.
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.
