On Saturday, the Southern Illinois Alumnae Club of Pi Beta Phi met for a quickly arranged luncheon at a local restaurant. For most of its 24 years, the club has had a dozen dues paying members. That does not sound like much compared to larger clubs, but the club’s percentage of available alumnae to dues paying alumnae is about 30%. Of the less than 40 Pi Phi alumnae in the area, 12 of them paid dues. More than half of those dozen show up to our meetings and it’s always a different mix for each meeting. On Saturday, three of the six collegiate members living in this area joined us for lunch. They were from three chapters (Millikin University, University of Southern Mississippi and University of Richmond); they enjoyed meeting each other, too. Together they had the opportunity to see how wonderful it can be to be part of an alumnae club. We made them promise that they would join an alumnae club wherever they ended up after college. And I think they will!
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Last week, Alpha Kappa Alpha honored two national presidents, B. Beatrix Scott and Ida L. Jackson, with the unveiling of a historical marker in their hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Scott served from 1925-27 and Jackson from 1933-36. Scott was instrumental in the founding of the sorority’s Vocational Guidance Project and Jackson founded the Mississippi Health Project. For seven years, the mobile health clinic traveled throughout the state.
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In this season of forest fires, I was fascinated to learn that Smokey the Bear (“Only you can prevent forest fires”) might just have been a Beta Theta Pi, if only he had enrolled in college. He had Beta connections. Kester Flock, who was a member of the University of Idaho chapter of Beta Theta Pi in the 1920s, was a supervisor for the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico. He rescued “a black bear cub whose paws were blistered from the heat of a charred tree, he flew with the cub to Washington D.C. where it became the original ‘Smokey the Bear,'” according to a post on Beta’s Facebook page.
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On August 3, 1923, a fraternity man and sorority woman who were both initiated while in college became the President and First Lady of the United States. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you should know who they are. (Hint – both were native Vermonters, both were born there and are buried there, although most of their married life was spent in Massachusetts. One is a Phi Gamma Delta and the other a Pi Beta Phi.) To read more about them see http://wp.me/p20I1i-1LW.
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And from the twitterfeed:
2012 Talent of the Year @APatrickThomas (Vanderbilt) recently released some new music: 
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I must note that a certain women’s fraternity founder, the first woman to enroll at Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana, is very active on twitter. Upon hearing the news that a woman will be selected for the $10 bill, friends of said founder wasted no time in mounting a campaign. It would be wonderful if Bettie ends up as the lucky woman!
I would be so honored! #Theta #Theta1870 RT @Erin_MacMillan: Bettie Locke Hamilton for $10 bill
