On November 4, 1899, eight young women, Mable Chase, Ruth Dutcher, May Gephart, Harriet Marx, Eva O’Keefe, Adriance Rice, Helene Rice, and Mayene Tracy, formed a sorority at the Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Alpha Sigma Tau was the name they chose. The organization became a national one in October 1925.
In 1926, Alpha Sigma Tau joined the Association of Education Sororities (AES). Alpha Sigma Tau became a full member of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) when the merger of AES and NPC was formalized in 1951.
Maxine Mirus was a charter member of Alpha Sigma Tau’s Pi Chapter at Harris Teachers College (today Harris Stowe State University) in St. Louis. Her sister Lucille became a member of the chapter, too. Maxine graduated from Washington University. She was a member of the Pi Alumnae Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau and the St. Louis Alumnae Club, which may have been one and the same. The May 1936 meeting of the latter took place at the Mirus home on Connecticut Avenue.
Maxine was the St. Louis Alumnae Chapter delegate to the 1934 convention. She served as Alpha Sigma Tau’s first Life Membership chair from 1934-37. In 1937, the sisters traveled to Puerto Rico for vacation.
On November 4, 1939, Maxine married Robert J. Auld in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 20 years her senior. The March 1944 Anchor of Alpha Sigma Tau featured an article she wrote six months after being commissioned as a WAVE:
Although it was to be nearly a year before I even saw a WAVE outside of newsreels and magazines, my admiration and enthusiasm were fired and now, after six months a commissioned officer, both have increased. Since I lived in Puerto Rico, and the Naval District with its headquarters there had no quota for the Women’s Reserves, my application, tests, and all preliminaries had to be carried on through a second headquarters which delayed the action somewhat. However, I was finally on a Pan-American plane flying up to Miami to be sworn in to the U.S. Naval Reserve, then bound for Northampton for officers’ training.
She received her training on the Smith College campus in Northampton, Massachusetts. There:
For two months we marched in company and platoon formations to classes, to mess, to the dispensary, to lectures, to drill, to uniform fittings, to the gymnasium, rain or shine. We learned to fold blankets in the Navy way, to check tops of transoms for dust, to turn square corners in making up our bunks, besides our five hours of classes and two hours of drill or gym a day – and loved it! The day on which we received our commissions, wearing our snappy white uniforms, was a day on which each of us could feel a sense of great satisfaction that we had managed to measure up to the high standards set by the Navy for is. Receiving orders was a thrill, and to my surprise I found myself simultaneously detached and attached to the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School here, assigned as a member of the Instruction Staff.
Auld was assigned to teach a course called Naval Personnel which instructed the women:
how to recognize the different ranks and ratings in the U.S. Navy; how to know other military services, both men’s and women’s; military etiquette and military authority. In fact, military etiquette looms so largely on the list of rocks and shoals visible to the new recruit, that instructors in our course are referred to as the Emily Posts of the station, and for snappy salutes and military precision in navel procedures, the WAVES can hold their own.
She told about the jobs being done by the women with whom she trained and those she taught. She said some sounded almost unbelievable:
encoding and decoding; giving clearances to aircraft for landings and takeoffs; operating synthetic training devices for pilots; acting as members of military courts; almost any kind of non-combat job in continental United States. Regardless of the diversity of jobs, though, we all have one feeling in common, pride in being allowed to live under Navy Regulations and military discipline, and to release our Navy men from shore jobs for combat duty afloat.
Auld also mentioned Alpha Sigma Tau in her article. Perhaps some connections were made after the fact.
A new class goes out of here every month, and underneath the blue serge and brass buttons we feel a sense of loss like any school faculty on graduation, yet very proud of having turned out four hundred more qualified officers who will out that many men behind guns in the Fleet. I’ve had no way of knowing – but I hope some of them have been AST’s.
She died in 1997 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamon. Her grave marker notes that she was a LT JG in the US Navy.
