Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg, better known in the social language of her day as Mrs. Vernon L. Kellogg, was one of the speakers at a 1932 Panhellenic luncheon at Washington D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel. In her response to the “social and economic revolution we are living through, comes the serious questioning of the right of the sorority to exist,” and that because it was thought to be “an outgrowth of privilege and selfishness,” that it belonged to the past, she said:
As I listen to this charge, I am always amused to set against it my own mental picture of a sorority. I remember a sorority as a place where somebody without position, somebody without money, somebody living in a small third floor room, cooking her breakfast there (and often her supper) after an afternoon of teaching science in order to be able to cram university work into the mornings – a place where such a person found a healthily run home, needed books, music – a meeting spot for friends, a place whose influence extended to those marginal flowerings which drew parties into the ‘working-one’s-way-through’ day.
A sudden invitation – widths of white organdy quickly purchased – Lillian – a machine humming from 3 till 7 – Virginia – an American beauty rose – the beau – the dance – enough thrill to carry science teaching for weeks! In other words, the term sorority in my mind connotes those very things – food, shelter, clothing, happiness, which are the goal of present seeking.
In my own mind the sorority is more akin to the Salvation Army than to institutions of selfishness and privilege! I am convinced that it is only along lines suggested by this memory of mine that the sorority will live, in the world now in the making.
Charlotte Hoffman (Kellogg) was born in Nebraska on May 21, 1874. She was an initiate of the Eta Chapter of Gamma Phi Beta at the University of California – Berkeley.
Berkeley Gazette, January 21, 1902
After graduation she taught and served as head of the English Department at the Anna Head School in Berkeley. The January 1908 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta published an announcement of her engagement. It noted that she was traveling in Europe. Her future husband, a native of Kansas, was a Phi Delta Theta from Kansas University and he was on the faculty at Stanford University. The couple married in Florence, Italy in May, 1908.
Topeka Star Journal (KS), May 6, 1908
Oakland Tribune (CA), July 30, 1908
A daughter Jean was born in 1910. The Kelloggs were among the earliest residents of Carmel, California.
The United States had not entered World War I when Charlotte Kellogg started out as the chairman of the Belgium relief committee at Stanford. In 1915, she moved up to the position of organizing secretary of the California State Committee. That year, her husband became director of relief work in occupied France and then Brussels and left for Europe. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson appointed her to the Commission for Belgian Relief and she was the Commission’s only female member. Charlotte and Jean headed to Belgium to join her husband.
Charlotte Kellogg and her daughter Jean
After six months in Belgium, they returned to the U.S, and she published Women of Belgium Turning Tragedy to Triumph. Through her work and the books and magazine articles she wrote, she became known internationally.
A 1918 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta article said this of her:
If you ask Charlotte Kellogg to tell you something of her own achievements, she will answer you in this fashion, ‘It is much more important to get the Gamma Phi Betas started on the milk bottle work than to write an article about me,’ and if the dear lady only realized it, she has revealed in these words the secret of her success. For she has given of herself so wholly, so disinterestedly, so enthusiastically to the cause of Belgium; she has labored so tirelessly for its welfare; she has placed its interests so far above own, that unconsciously she has become the central figure in the movement for its relief.
Because of her encouragement, Gamma Phi Beta began a Milk Bottle Campaign to help raise funds for Belgian relief.
The milk bottles of Gamma Phi Beta’s milk bottle fundraising campaign. This effort took place in theater lobbies where the public could contribute by putting change in the milk bottles.
In 1921, after an American grass roots effort raised the funds to purchase a gram of radium for Marie Currie to use in her research, President Warren G. Harding appointed Kellogg to accompany Curie and her two daughters from Paris to New York. Curie worked on the bio of her husband while on the ship and Kellogg assisted with the translation. Currie and Kellogg corresponded until Curie’s death. Their letters are at the University of Chicago.
Kellogg directed the Paderweski fund for Polish relief for 16 years. The governments of Belgium, France, and Poland honored her for her efforts. She also served as a speaker for the U.S. Food Administration.
A neurological condition affected her husband in 1929. He died on August 8, 1937 at the age of 69. (the second tribute written by journalist William Allen White, a Phi Delta Theta brother, is eloquent). After her husband’s death, she lived in Washington, DC, until 1949 when she moved back to Carmel.
Charlotte Hoffman Kellogg died on May 8, 1960, at the age of 85.
