As I was researching sorority women’s service during World War I, I came across this entry in a post WWI Banta’s Greek Exchange and it sent me down a rabbit hole. Who was Mother Cahill?
Ann, who was sometimes referred to as Anna, Cahill, moved from Massachusetts to Lawrence Kansas in 1892. An item in the society pages of the September 10, 1908 issue of the Daily Gazette, a Lawrence, Kansas, newpaper, read, “Mrs. Ann Cahill is in charge of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house as matron this year.”
In an article in the Phi Gamma Delta entitled My Life Among the Cannibals Being the Reminiscences of One Who Was ‘Mother’ of Fiji Chapter at Kansas for Seventeen Years, she described how she and a friend walked past the Phi Gam house on Louisiana Street one day. Cahill remarked that she would like to “fix the curtains that were hanging at all sorts of angles and lengths at the windows. There was a sort of desolate look about the place that seemed to demand the presence of a woman.”
Her friend, a Phi Gam wife, told her that the chapter was trying to find a woman to live in the house and serve as a hostess or chaperone. They had hired someone, but it was not a good match and she left. Cahill inquired about the job and was hired. According to a 1914 article, she took the job against her doctor’s wishes. However, “the work served as a tonic, by giving her an outlet for her nervous energy, and she immediately got better.”
Phi Gam Field Secretary C.C. Chambers stated that the President of Kansas University praised Cahill by saying, “A house matron like Mrs. Cahill is the most effective refutation of anti-fraternity sentiment that I know of.”
Cahill reflected on her job, “It was not long until the boys found that I was no ogre and that I really wanted to be of assistance to them…. It very gradually grew to be a fashion for first one and then two or three or four at a time to ask permission to come to my room after dinner just to talk. Many and varied were the topics so gravely discussed in the small room I called mine. It was cluttered and crowded with a sewing machine, a day bed, a table on which were odds and ends of everything from party favors which I made with the boys’ help to table linen which needed darning. But there was always room for any of the boys even though they had to clear off a place to sit down. I would not take a prince’s ransom for the memories that cluster about that room.”
She also described how she was given the name “Mother Cahill.” At first she addressed each member as “Mr. So-and-So and in return was addressed as Mrs. Cahill. Some time after the beginning of the new school year I was informed at dinner one night there was to be a meeting in the north room and my presence was desired. I had no idea as to what was coming and decided that the boys had tired of the arrangement and that I was to be released. I felt upset for by this time I had grown very fond of the boys and was accustomed to their ways. I was more than ever interested in their welfare. The meeting was called to order and there was a feeling of general unrest in the air. I was reminded of nothing so much as a,lot of small boys who were in a tight place and did not know how to get out .of it. Finally the president said, ‘Mrs. Cahill, we want to ask you a question.’ ‘I shall be very glad to answer it if I can,’ was my reply. ‘Well, we want to know,’ and he took a long breath, ‘if you will allow us to call you Mother instead of Mrs. Cahill.'”
She added, “For a moment I was stunned and then told them that I thought they had paid me a very high compliment and that I should be glad indeed if they would call me Mother. From that day to this I have been Mother to every Phi Gamma Delta and to very many others who have been, or for that matter who are now, in Kansas University. I have been asked many times if I did not think the boys were unduly familiar in such a mode of address but my answer has been just what I told the boys — that I felt they were showing me signal honor and respect and that I enjoy being called Mother.”
An article in the March 1929 Phi Gamma Delta, noted that although Cahill had not missed a pig dinner for 23 years. Moreover, she had followed the careers of “her boys,” had kissed their brides, made presents for their babies, and rejoiced in their achievements.
She described her experience working with the chapter, “They were wonderful years that I spent with Pi Deuteron and the memories are very precious to me. The most wonderful part of all is to know that I am held in kindly remembrance, for it is seldom that even one week goes by that I do not have a visit or a letter from some of the men who shared the tips and downs of those years. Each year I feel sure that I am a thing of the past but when Mothers’ Day and my birthday and Christmas bring the messages from all quarters of the globe I know I am not forgotten. And I shall be Mother to the end.”
Cahill died on March 24, 1933 and she is buried in Lawrence, Kansas.
