This weekend, there was a gathering in a church hall for a local woman who was celebrating her hundredth birthday. I first met her when I came to town and joined the University Women’s Club. She was one of the organization’s first members; her husband was a long-time faculty member at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She is a Gamma Phi Beta having been initiated into the Sigma Chapter at the University of Kansas in 1933. The chapter was installed in 1915 and it was the eighth National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) group on the University of Kansas campus.
The number of women initiated into any of the NPC organizations in the 1930s grows smaller and smaller each year. It would be my best guess that there are no longer any NPC members who were initiated in the 1910s and perhaps only a handful from the 1920s. The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi arrived in my mailbox over the weekend, and it listed some of the 550 women who became 75-year members this year. They are all at least 90 years old.
As Pi Beta Phi’s Historian and Archivist, I have the privilege of working with and preserving the fraternity’s past to ensure that the future members will be able to get a glimpse of where we’ve been and the women who have worn the arrow throughout the years. Looking at pictures of women initiated in the 1930s is always a treat. They look so mature and so sophisticated (and most of them are brunettes!).
I was intrigued at what the University of Kansas might have been like when my friend was a collegiate member of the Gamma Phi chapter. The women pictured above, members of the Kansas Alpha chapter of Pi Beta Phi, were her classmates. I turned to the closest reference materials at hand, past issues of The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi.
In 1932, the campus “suffered the loss of Dyche Museum of Natural History which was closed by the order from the state board of regents. The building declared unsafe by the state architect, also housed the department of anatomy and the latter was removed to the Commons Building. Recent university visitors were Sir Harry Lauder, Richard Haliburton, Emmy Beckman. and Dr. T Z. Koo. Major Walter O. Woods, former K.U. student, talked on “Uncle Sam’s Money” at a university convocation October 31. Although the University of Kansas achieved no championship during the football season, it is one of two teams to score against Notre Dame. The 1932 Sullivan Prize was awarded to the former Kansas athlete, Jim Bausch, for having done the most during the past year to advance the cause of sportsmanship.” Bausch won the decathlon at the 1932 Olympic games in Los Angeles.
The Depression of the 1930s was starting to have an effect on the campus, “An all activities ticket is being planned by student representatives to cut expenses for the future. This will mean an approximate yearly saving of sixty per cent of activity fees to students. Included in this ticket will be concert course, play and football tickets, the yearbook and upkeep and completion of the Union building.” It was also noted that due to “hard times, Panhellenic voted to dispense with faculty receptions and teas. For the same reason the (Pi Phi) chapter voted against having hour dances this year.”
Pledge Day took place on September 19, 1932 and Pi Phi initiated its pledges on February 25, 1933. I suspect Gamma Phi initiated their pledges at about the same time, too. The state legislature “appropriated $25,000 for the repair of Dyche Museum of Natural History at the university, which was condemned last fall by the state board of regents. The Junior Prom, the outstanding social event of the year, was held March 24 at the Memorial Union Building. Earlier in the same evening Bill Tilden and his troop of professionals played an exhibition tennis match at the auditorium. A concert by Jascha Heifetz. noted violinist, was a feature of the university concert course March 9.”
Panhellenic friendship was fostered “by participating in the Panhellenic exchange dinners sponsored by the university. The chapter also has guest night several times during the semester so that the girls may invite their friends from other fraternities for dinner.”
On December 9, 1933, the Pi Beta Phi alumnae and actives gave a tea at the house at which products from the Settlement School were displayed and sold. The other women’s fraternities and the faculty were invited. That fall, J. G. Brandt, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, died suddenly and “his death was a great loss to the university.” The proceeds from the student activity ticket were used to remodel the Memorial Union Building Ballroom.
When I mentioned to my 100-year-old Gamma Phi friend that I had recently visited the University of Kansas Pi Phi chapter house, she wondered if her chapter was still in the same house. “It was a beautiful house,” she said. And I could guarantee her that even if it wasn’t the same house as she lived in, the Gamma Phi house was indeed quite beautiful.
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
