The trip to Iowa was fun. To walk in the footsteps of the founders of both Pi Beta Phi and P.E.O. was thrilling. In the late 1860s, Mount Pleasant was called the Athens of Iowa. It was a bustling place and Iowa Wesleyan University had a role in that. The Union Building, where Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to name just two, spoke, is still there. The building had fallen into disrepair, but it was saved by a group of dedicated citizens and now serves as offices and an event venue.
Iowa Wesleyan University, where Pi Beta Phi founder Libbie Brook enrolled in the fall of 1868, has a few more buildings today, but standing in front of Old Main, with Pioneer Hall to the left of it, one can get a sense of what it was like to be a student in back then. P.E.O. was founded about a month after the second chapter of Pi Beta Phi (then known as I.C. Sorosis, Pi Beta Phi had been the organization’s Greek motto) made its debut. The location of the home in which Libbie boarded has been lost to history, but several of the homes of the P.E.O. founders are still standing. The Mount Pleasant Female Seminary, where another Pi Phi founder, Nancy Black, formed its third chapter and where P.E.O.’s second chapter was founded is no longer standing, but I was shown where the seminary was located.
The P.E.O. Memorial Library, built in 1927 as a memorial to the organization’s founders, now houses an art gallery and administrative offices. Until the 1960s, the P.E.O. central office and supply department was located in the library building. The P.E.O. headquarters is now located in Des Moines, Iowa.
A visit to Mount Pleasant would not have been complete without the opportunity to share a little time with a double sister, Elizabeth Davenport Garrels; she is both a Pi Phi and P.E.O. She served Pi Phi as its Foundation President and she served P.E.O. as International President. She is also a font of knowledge about P.E.O.’s history, as well as the history of her chapter, Iowa Alpha of Pi Beta Phi. She shared her knowledge as she played tour guide.
Driving home from Mount Pleasant, I became lost in an audio book and had no idea where I was other than I was following directions put forth by “the lady” who navigates for us. I was suddenly startled by a sign telling me that the tidying of this stretch of the four lane highway was done by Alpha Tau Omega. Where was I and what college could that chapter call home? I figured out the answer about 10 seconds before I saw the sign for Culver-Stockton College. And in the way my mind works, I remembered that Culver-Stockton played a role in how my sons ended up at Knox College via a football coach, a Culver-Stockton alumnus whose wife was a Chi Omega sister of a friend of mine.
And then I thought of the link my Chi Omega friend, Lyn Harris, sent me and how I needed to get it into a blog post. Lyn is Chi Omega’s Archivist and is always finding nifty things. It’s a 1940 radio recording of Benny Goodman (was he an honorary member of Tau Epsilon Phi?) playing sorority songs. After I posted this on my facebook page, a friend said it was a bit weird hearing men sing the Tri Delta Emblem Song.
This morning my facebook page had a picture of my friend, Mindy Jones. She was just named House Director of the Year at the University of Oklahoma. Congratulations, Mindy!
Mindy Jones, House Director at the University of Oklahoma Pi Phi chapter, with a Pi Phi. The chapter, Oklahoma Alpha, is her chapter of initiation.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
