On March 25, 1917, seven female Cornell University students founded Sigma Delta Tau. Their organization was originally called Sigma Delta Phi, but when they discovered the name belonged to another Greek-letter organization they changed the “Phi” to “Tau.”
Sigma Delta Tau’s founders are Dora Bloom (Turteltaub), Inez Dane Ross, Amy Apfel (Tishman), Regene Freund (Cohane), Marian Gerber (Greenberg), Lenore Blanche Rubinow, and Grace Srenco (Grossman).
Dolores “Dee” Chackes Sherman Golden was born on February 27, 1925 in Saint Louis, Missouri. She grew up about 45 miles south of the city, in DeSoto, Missouri. She attended the University of Illinois where she became a member of Sigma Delta Tau. According to her obituary “she loved being a member” of the sorority.
There, she also met her first husband, Allan Sherman. He was a Sigma Alpha Mu, and he would later find fame with the song Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. She was an accomplished pianist. According to an article in the Winter 2011 issue of Chicago Jewish History:
Allan and Dee planned to marry. Both spent the summer of 1944 on campus. They decided to build a record collection and went to a local music store where they purchased the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1. Dee’s sorority house had the best phonograph they knew of, but the building was closed for the summer. Undaunted, Allan broke a window, the couple gained entry, found the phonograph, and turned on the record. Within minutes, they were joined by the campus police. They were charged with breaking and entering. Sherman was expelled from the university and Dee was suspended.
They married on June 15, 1945, at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago and moved to New York City where her husband could purse writing for radio and later television shows. In 1961, the Sherman family, which now included a son and daughter, moved to Los Angeles. The Shermans divorced in the mid-1960s.
She then became Mrs. William R. Golden. He was the head of publicity at MGM Studios. Attending the Academy Awards became a yearly event for her. Although he died in 1986, she stay in Los Angeles until 2003 when she moved to Park City, Utah, to be closer to her daughter and her family.
She died on July 17, 2012 at the age of 87. Her body was donated to the University of Utah Medical School.
