Jeanette Virginia Barrows, a charter member of the Alpha Theta Chapter of Alpha Delta Pi at the University of Washington, was one of the more than 30 ADPi members who enlisted to serve in World War I. The women were not part of the armed forces, as any ADPi could be today, but did ancillary duty as nurses, dietitians, telephone operators and the like. Remember that World War I happened before women could vote in federal elections and when women’s life choices were quite limited. For a woman in Washington State, Europe was indeed on the other side of the world.
A 1918 Adelphean chapter report noted that Barrows was one of the chapters five graduating seniors. The chapter correspondent wrote:
Although proud of our ‘wise seniors,’ our pride was not unmixed with sadness at the thought of parting. Their loss will be keenly felt in this chapter this coming year. We will scarcely know how to get on without them, yet we know they will not forget us, and the big things that are waiting for them to do help us to realize that they, too, must take their places in the life work which lies before them. Adeline and Flora are staying at home this summer helping their mothers, who have been ill. Next winter Adeline will teach history and English in the high school at Lebam. Jeanette is taking the course in reconstruction for disabled soldiers and sailors given at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and hopes soon to be of real service to her country.
Jeanette Barrows
Volume 12 of The Adelphean carried a poem in memory of her.
From the joy, the youth of life,
From the pain, the earthly strife,
Flees a soul so pure, so true,
Into Heaven’s eternal blue,
For life’s golden, sad sunset
Has enveloped our Jeanette.
Barrows died of pneumonia on March 15, 1919 at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Anne Claire Crouley, the chapter’s correspondent, wrote The Adelphean, “Alpha Theta has suffered her first loss and this a great one.”
Barrows attended normal school (a teacher’s college) before entering the University of Washington. She pledged Alpha Delta, the local organization which later that fall became Alpha Delta Pi. After graduation, she “spent the summer studying reconstruction aid work at Reed College. Portland, Oregon. She taught school last fall until the latter part of October when she received her appointment from the government as a reconstruction aid.”
She left for New York immediately upon receiving her appointment. When she left the west coast to make her way to the east coast via train:
Practically all Alpha Theta was at the depot, proud of the sister who was brave enough to leave home and friends for the calling of her country. We had given her an Alpha Delta Pi signet ring, flowers, and candy and she had said, ‘Why, I’m all decorated up like a Christmas tree.’
The signing of the armistice on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month changed the government’s plan for her. She was ordered to Fort Snelling to work with the men who had been injured in France. Crouley wrote this about her chapter sister:
She always had a quaint, quiet sense of humor, never biting, but wonderfully sweet and winsome. She was so unobtrusive that she could be in a room almost unnoticed and still hold an indefinable influence of loyalty and fineness over all. All the ideals of Alpha Delta Pi were lived truly by Jeanette. Alpha Theta loved her and she was a girl who cannot be forgotten. It is impossible to express in words the sorrow Alpha Theta felt when we knew she was called. Out of that sorrow there is one comfort—that we were privileged to be her sisters and friends while she was here.
The Alpha Delta Pi Foundation remembers Barrows’ sacrifice. It awards the Jeanette Virginia Barrows Scholarship to a member of the Alpha Theta Chapter. Preference is given to graduate students.
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