I attended my first Pi Beta Phi convention in 1987. I was a young mother with three little ones under the age of three, the wife of a graduate student, and a member of the Alumnae Advisory Committee (AAC) for the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Michigan. When it was time to send an AAC member to convention in New Orleans, I volunteered. My husband agreed to play mom for the time I would be away (his mother flew his sister out to help even though I was certain he could handle it).
I had never been to a Pi Phi convention before and I was a bit apprehensive. I’d also never been assigned a roommate before, except for my freshman year in college. Would I, the native New Yawker, be assigned a southern belle from the deep south? (I have since then shared rooms with several southern belles and I consider them wonderful friends, but back then I worried about such things!)
I somehow survived the kisses and tears at the Detroit airport and made it to New Orleans where the first thing I remember was the oppressive heat and humidity mixed with jet fumes outside the airport. When I checked into the Fairmont Hotel and opened the door to the room I was assigned, I was in awe of how beautiful the room was. And then I looked in the closet. My roommate had arrived, but wasn’t in the room. As I hung up my clothes, I couldn’t help but notice how matronly the clothes were. I then played out the scenario where I had been assigned a roommate my mother’s age. What would we talk about? Would she need to get to sleep early?
In hanging up the last of my clothes, I realized that what I was seeing were maternity clothes (1980s maternity clothes bear little resemblance to what pregnant women wear in 2013). Realizing this little fact, I went downstairs to where the Alumnae Advisory Committee pre-convention sessions were taking place and introduced myself to the first pregnant woman I saw. It was my roommate, Lisa. My worries were for naught. We are kindred spirits and our friendship has sustained the years and the miles.
At the 2011 Pi Beta Phi convention in Orlando, Lisa came in for the Sunday session. My daughter had the honor of being a convention initiate. Months earlier, Pi Phi sent out a request for stories about magical convention moments. Without much forethought, I sat down and typed my Lisa story. And without me knowing it, Lisa had sent in her Fran story. We were assigned to read our magical convention moments at the Sunday session. In my telling of the story Lisa is nine and a half months pregnant – well at least that is how she looked, she is tall and reed thin and was very pregnant. She said it was closer to seven months. The daughter who attended her first convention in utero is now a Pi Phi, too. Lisa is not at the convention I’m attending right now, but another Pi Phi daughter will be here soon and I can’t wait to give her a hug!
It’s a fairly good bet our friendship is not an anomaly. I am certain that wonderful friendships have been formed by randomly assigned roommates at sorority conventions spanning the continent and the years. They are those friendships where you pick up where you left off, regardless of the time that has gone by. And how lucky we all are that its a benefit of membership in all of our organizations! Greeting old friends and making new ones is a hallmark of all sorority conventions.
In the early 1990s at a Pi Beta Phi Indiana State Day
In the late 2000s at a Mounmouth Duo alumnae luncheon
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All rights reserved.
