As a student at Miami University, Julia Bishop (Coleman) was a founder of Delta Zeta. She graduated in 1904 and was her class vice president and poet. According to the Delta Zeta website, she kept a diary her entire life, and “she provided many of the stories about Delta Zeta’s first year that have been handed down for a century.”
She had friends and family who lived in Iowa, the birthplace of P.E.O., and they were P.E.O.s. With their help, she was given permission to select 10 women to be charter members of the first P.E.O. chapter in Ohio, Chapter A in Loveland. It was organized in her home in June of 1911 and the 11 members were initiated by Edith Prouty (Prichard), Organizer of P.E.O.’s Supreme Chapter. It would take another seven years for a second Ohio chapter to be organized.
After the P.E.O. chapter was founded in 1911, she married Dr. John McFerren Coleman. They had two daughters, Mary Permelia and Joan.
The Coleman Family. Mary Permelia was born in 1913 and Jean was born in 1916. Both daughters were Delta Zetas and both were initiated at Delta Zeta conventions. Jean was a P.E.O., too.
Coleman served on Delta Zeta’s National Council from 1920-26. Her first position was Historian. She then served as Vice President and finally as National President from 1924-26. She traveled to installations, conventions, state days, and other Delta Zeta events. In 1922, she installed the chapter at the University of Alabama. In 1923, she visited the Delta Zeta chapter at Kansas State University, and she was at the installation of the chapter at the University of Kentucky among other Delta Zeta celebrations.
In January of 1927, she was in attendance when a sundial was presented to Miami University to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Delta Zeta’s founding. She visited the chapter at the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee and the Delta Zeta chapter there entertained in her honor.
It took about 15 years for Ohio to form the requisite number of P.E.O. chapters to charter a state chapter. In June of 1927, representatives from the nine P.E.O. chapters in Ohio discussed the formation of the Ohio State Chapter. On September 5, 1927, about 40 P.E.O. delegates and visitors met at Coleman’s home before heading to the home of Bessie Lee, President of Chapter A, Ohio, where the convocation was taking place. Julia Bishop Coleman was elected President of the Ohio State Chapter. She was reelected and served two terms in that position.
In 1946, she was in attendance when the Akron and Cleveland Alumnae Chapters of Delta Zeta held a dinner at the Lakeshore Hotel to celebrate the sorority’s 44th anniversary. A candlelight service paid tribute to the sorority’s founders. She was also the guest of honor at the monthly meeting of the Cincinnati Delta Zeta Alumnae Club. It was held at the University of Cincinnati’s Delta Zeta chapter house at 2811 Swiss Chalet Road. My guess is that she was a treasured guest at many Delta Zeta and P.E.O. celebrations and I suspect that these are but a small sampling of the events she attended.
Coleman died in 1959 at the age of 77. When a carillon was given to Miami University by Delta Zeta in October 1959, Dr. John Coleman, her widower, attended.
At Delta Zeta’s 1985 convention, a reproduction of Bishop’s diary was a favor given to the attendees. The hall on the second floor at the top of the main staircase at the Delta Zeta headquarters in Miami, Ohio, is the Julia Bishop Hall. A mirror, art, and other items belonging to Coleman are displayed in the hall.
Julia Bishop Coleman, Delta Zeta Founder and P.E.O.
Fran’s note – I cannot write this post without giving a shout out to my Kappa Kappa Gamma friend Kylie Smith, who will be following in Julia Bishop Coleman’s footsteps when she begins her term as President of the Ohio State Chapter of P.E.O. at the conclusion of the Convention of Ohio State Chapter in early June 2018.
