Today, April 20, two sororities, Tri Sigma and Delta Xi Phi, celebrate anniversaries. Happy Founders’ Day to you both!
On April 20, 1898, at Virginia’s State Female Normal School in Farmville, eight women – Lucy Wright, Margaret Batten, Elizabeth Watkins, Louise Davis, Martha Trent Featherston, Lelia Scott, Isabella Merrick, and Sallie Michie – announced the founding of Sigma Sigma Sigma. The State Female Normal School, the founding home of Alpha Sigma Alpha, Zeta Tau Alpha, Kappa Delta and Sigma Sigma Sigma (the “Farmville Four”), is now known as Longwood University.
Mabel Lee Walton, a charter member of the Gamma Chapter at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, served as the sorority’s third National President. She served for 34 years, from 1913-1947. She also served as the President of the Association of Education Sororities before Sigma Sigma Sigma became a member of the National Panhellenic Conference in 1947.
Her family’s home in Woodstock, Virginia was acquired by the sorority in 1963 and is known as the Mabel Lee Walton National Memorial Headquarters.
Mabel Lee Walton
In a 1913 issue of the sorority magazine, Mabel Lee Walton,greeted the officers, chapters, and alumnae. It read:
A Sigma Sigma Sigma never outgrows her usefulness to her Sorority—has this
occurred to you? While she is in school she is a very influential personage. She is one of a number that forms a unit—which unit makes a chapter—a part of a whole. And if that girl does not play an important part in chapter affairs the fault is largely hers.
After leaving school a Sigma Sigma Sigma becomes an individual member. She acts entirely for herself. If she fails in this obligation which she deliberately took upon herself, the fault is wholly hers.
If every girl who wears the Sigma Sigma Sigma emblem would work earnestly for her Sorority, what a mighty band we would be! What a force we could prove to the sorority world! One member can never take the place of another— YOU have a work no other can perform. If you fail to do your part, the duty falls on other shoulders, willing, perhaps, to do extra work, but the question is, are you willing to stand by and see others doing what you know you should do yourself?
Let this mark a new era for the Sigma Sigma Sigma Sorority. Let each one do her part in the upbuilding of her Sorority. Success, unbounded success, will be our reward! Is not this a priceless prize worth working for?
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Fifteen University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign students founded Delta Xi Phi sorority. While the chartering took place on April 20th, 1994, the story began two years earlier. The story is on the organization’s website, told by Elia Morales, one of the sorority’s founders.
In the spring of 1992, two different groups of women who were seeking to establish a new sorority at UIUC learned of each other’s intentions. The two groups organized a meeting where they discussed their goals and aspirations. They surprisingly overlapped and so these women unanimously decided to work together toward their common goal and the two groups merged. They decided to temporarily call themselves “Women for the Advancement of a Multicultural Society (WAMS). Several sororities on other college campuses were contacted with the intention of establishing a chapter at the UIUC campus . However, none of those had everything that was wanted by the “WAMS”.
Finally, on April 20th, 1993, after almost a year of searching for a sorority and much frustration, the women of WAMS made a decision to stop looking for other sororities and to commence their quest of founding their own. Three women from WAMS were designated pledge educators and helped the other twelve women’s dream of founding a sorority become a reality. They went through a year-long process during which they developed a strong bond of sisterhood.
The foundation of their sorority began with meetings where they discussed and voted upon its letters, colors, mascot, flower, and stone. On April 20, 1994 the members of WAMS were no longer just the women of WAMS, they were to be forever known as the founding mothers of DELTA XI PHI Sorority.
Delta Xi Phi’s motto is “What’s possible has been done. What’s impossible must be done.” Its Sorority Quote is from Eleanor Roosevelt, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Its flower is the yellow rose of Texas.
© 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/
