October 15 is Founders’ Day for both Alpha Chi Omega and Zeta Tau Alpha. In 1885, Alpha Chi Omega was founded at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Thirteen years later, in 1898, Zeta Tau Alpha was founded at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia.
Alpha Chi Omega’s seven founders, Anna Allen, Olive Burnett, Bertha Deniston, Amy DuBois, Nellie Gamble, Bessie Grooms and Estelle Leonard, were students in the DePauw School of Music. With the guidance and support of James Hamilton Howe, Dean of the School of Music, they created an organization that at its beginning insisted its members possess some musical culture. The first appearance of Alpha Chi Omega was in Meharry Hall of East College. The seven women wore scarlet and olive ribbon streamers attached to their dresses to display the organization’s colors.
Zeta Tau Alpha‘s founders are Alice Maud Jones Horner, Frances Yancey Smith, Alice Bland Coleman, Ethel Coleman Van Name, Ruby Bland Leigh Orgain, Mary Campbell Jones Batte, Helen May Crafford, Della Lewis Hundley, and Alice Grey Welsh.
Ravinia, in Highland Park, Illinois, north of Chicago, was a hopping place. In August of 1920, it was in its 16th season. The moniker, “summer opera capital of the world” was becoming its claim to fame.
August 3, 1920, Chicago Tribune
Alpha Chi’s Alpha Alpha Alumnae Chapter held a picnic at Ravinia on Thursday, August 5. The women attended the Chicago Symphony orchestra’s afternoon concert. Then they enjoyed a meal on the porch of Ethel Sutherlin Bergey’s home at Ravinia. Her husband Theodore spent the summer coaching grand opera. Some of the women stayed afterwards and attended the Symphony’s evening performance.
Ethel Sutherlin Bergey was a member of the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Chi. An alumna of the De Pauw School of Music, she studied there under Alpha Chi’s patron James H. Howe. In 1891, Alpha Chi’s first convention took place in her home. She studied opera in Europe and was “well known in the music world,” according to a profile in an Alpha Chi publication.
Ethel Sutherlin Bergey
Zeta Tau Alpha’s Eighth Convention took place at the Congress Hotel in Chicago from August 3 until August 9 and there were about 80 women in attendance. Among the convention’s highlights was a talk by National President Dr. May Agness Hopkins about her war work in France. Hopkins also spoke on “The Upbuilding of a Nobler and Purer Womanhood.”
Fern Eaton’s report in The Themis included this tidbit, “I haven’t told you about the theater part Monday night, which we all attended, nor of the highbrows who went to Ravinia to hear the Metropolitan opera singers in Carmen, nor – shall I say it? – the lowbrows who could not resist the big circus over in Grant Park….”
Although the Zetas attended Ravinia on Wednesday and the Alpha Chis were there on Thursday, one can hope that perhaps the Zetas who might have been sporting their badges ran into Ethel Sutherlin Bergey and they exchanged Panhellenic greetings. I also suspect that over the past 100 years, Panhellenic women have been meeting and enjoying performances at Ravinia.
