Happy Founders’ Day, Chi Omega!

Posted on April 5, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Chi Omega was founded on April 5, 1895 at the University of Arkansas. Ina May Boles, Jean Vincenheller, Jobelle Holcombe, and Alice Simonds, with guidance from Fayetteville dentist, Dr. Charles Richardson, a Kappa Sigma, created the organization. Dr. Richardson was known as “Sis Doc” to generations of Psi Chapter members (the founding chapter at Arkansas is known as the Psi Chapter) and he is counted as a founder. He crafted Chi Omega’s first badge out of dental gold.

In trying to find something to write about for Chi Omega’s Founders’ Day, I found this snippet about Emmie Lela Gramling in a 1905 Eleusis, She was:

born in Atlanta, Ga., where she lived until entering Wesleyan College, Macon, Ga., in 1897. In 1900 she entered the Freshman Class of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, where she graduated with an A.B. degree. She took a leading part in college affairs, was president all four years of the Class of 1904, a champion basketball player, and was voted the most beautiful girl in school. She was initiated into Chi Omega by Sigma Chapter in January, 1902, and held offices in the chapter.

When I went looking for more information about her, I found this wonderful post on the Chi Omega website. Turns out that when she was at Wesleyan College, she was a member of the Adelphean Society. Several years after she left Wesleyan, the Adelphean Society took on Greek letters Alpha Delta Pi.

Photo courtesy of Chi Omega

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Uretta Hinkhouse, P.E.O., #WHM2022

Posted on March 31, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Uretta Amis Hinkhouse was an alumna of Hunter College in New York City. After graduation she spent some time working for the Y.W.C.A. in the city but then joined her parents in Egypt. Her father was working for Standard Oil of Egypt at the time. She taught in Cairo at the United Presbyterian Mission’s American College for Girls and the Ezbekish Girls School.

The August 12, 1921, edition of the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette contained the headline “Meet besides pyramids, marry at Hopkinton.” Uretta and Paul Hinkhouse were wed on August 10, 1921, in Iowa. The ceremony was officiated by the groom’s father. The couple met by chance in the shadows of the pyramids. At that time, Paul was a term teacher  in Assiut College. According to the newspaper wedding announcement:

At the end of his term he traveled extensively over India, Siam, China, Korea and Japan. He was on the ill-fated Mongolia that stuck a German mine 25 miles out from Bombay and sank in 18 minutes. On coming home he spent some time in Columbia University specializing in journalism and is connected with the Continent in Chicago writing the world editorials.

The couple lived in New Jersey but were world travelers. She was a member of the Women’s Press Club of New York City, the National Farm and Garden Association as well as past president of the Women’s Presbyterian Society of Morris and Orange. In addition, she was a YWCA trustee in the New Jersey cities of Orange and Maplewood.

Honolulu Star Bulletin, January 23, 1957

An article in the May 22, 1958, edition of the Quad-City Times described her as having had  “a distinguished career in clubwork.” She was a dedicated member of P.E.O. and served as president of New Jersey State Chapter and was chair of the International Peace Scholarship Committee. From 1946-1953, she was a member of P.E.O.’s Peace Participation Committee and  served as an accredited United Nations observer.

As second vice-president she was the official visitor to the 59th convention of the Illinois State Chapter of P.E.O. That convention was held on the campus of Southern Illinois University Carbondale in the Student Center. She was installed as president of the Supreme Chapter of P.E.O. in 1963.

Paul Hinkhouse, president of Hinkhouse Lithography in New York City, died in early November 1963. Uretta died on June 13, 1964 at the age of 70. She never had the opportunity to preside at the 1965 biennial convention of the P.E.O. Sisterhood.

A garden at the P.E.O. Executive Office and Centennial Center in Des Moines is named for her. Built in 1971, the Hinkhouse Center at P.E.O.’s Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri, honors the couple.

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Margot Sherman, Sigma Kappa, #NotableSororityWoman, #WHM2022

Posted on March 30, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Margot Sherman, the professional name of Margaret Sherman Peet, was initiated into the Alpha Mu Chapter of Sigma Kappa at the University of Michigan. She earned a bachelor’s in journalism in 1927 and was the first female to graduate from the journalism department. Sherman was tapped for Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Beta Kappa honor societies. She won Michigan’s Gold Award Medal.

Sherman married Charles D. Peet, the brother of one of her Sigma Kappa sisters, on September 12, 1931. The couple had a son and a daughter. Sherman worked for newspapers including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Detroit News and Detroit Times before entering the advertising field. 

Her career was the true Mad Men experience and the series reflected much about her life in the man’s world of advertising. Sherman started  as a copywriter for Madison Avenue advertising agency McCann-Erickson, Inc. She spent the rest  of her career, 37 years, there. Sherman was the at McCann-Erickson’s first coordinator of consumer affairs.

The American Advertising Federation honored her as the 1958 Advertising Woman of the Year.

Sherman became a senior vice president and assistant to the president of McCann-Erickson in 1964 and was the first woman to serve on the ad agency’s board.

The University of Michigan honored her with an Outstanding Achievement Award. After retirement, she became national president of Women in Communications, Inc. formerly known as Theta Sigma Phi. She also served as a director of the Japanese International Christian University Foundation and as a governor of Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, New York.

She died on August 6, 1997 at the age of 90. One of her five grandchildren is the actress Amanda Peet.

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Jesselyn Benson Zurik, Phi Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWoman, #WHM2022

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Jesselyn Benson Zurik, a New Orleans native, was born on December 26, 1916. She attended Lafayette School and the Arts and Crafts School of New Orleans prior to attending the Isidor Newman School. There she earned an athletic letter and was on the staff of the Newman school magazine, The Pioneer. She served as its art editor.

She became a member of Phi Sigma Sigma’s Psi Chapter at Sophie Newcomb College, Tulane University’s coordinate college for women. As the chapter’s archon (president), she was profiled in the sorority magazine, The Sphinx. “Jetty,” as her sorority sisters called her, was a talented artist. Chapter correspondent Madeline Levy reported that their archon was an art major who started drawing at five years of age. Even at that young age, she knew that she would be an artist when she grew up. Levy said, “Our decorations at all sorority functions are all done by Jetty, as is much of the scenery at different Newcomb functions. She even paints scenery for local ‘Little Theaters’.” Levy added, “Jetty is Psi’s most active member, and lives and dreams sorority, always trying to better our standard.”

And she was multitalented, too. She played basketball, badminton and bowled while at Newcomb and she won awards at the New Orleans Winter Garden Show.

At Newcomb she studied with renowned art educators. Zurik earned a bachelor’s in design in 1938.

Two Newcomb Students, 1938

Before World War II, she worked as an illustrator for New Orleans stores. During the war, she was a naval draftsman at Higgins Industries. Her husband, Samuel Zurik, served in World War II and was an ear, nose and throat specialist. He was 94 years old before he fully retired from practicing medicine.

She later took additional classes at Newcomb and was a prolific artist. She did assemblage pieces, sculpture, charcoal, pen and ink and oil. In the 1970s, as part of experimental art exhibition, she decorated a 1974 Gremlin car with Mardi Gras beads.

Zurik exhibited in more than 250 juried or invitational shows and was the subject of 34 one-woman shows. She was an original member artist of the Glade Gallery in New Orleans.

A photo of Zurik before her 1985 show at Newcomb

Zurik established the Jesselyn Zurik Fund for Research at Tulane in 1997. She died on June 20, 2012 at the age of 95.

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Gwendolyn Sawyer Cherry, Sigma Gamma Rho, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 28, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Born in Miami, Florida, on August 27, 1923, Gwendolyn Sawyer Cherry was the daughter of one of the first Black doctors to practice in the city. Cherry enrolled at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) and graduated in 1946 with a degree in biology and chemistry.

She earned a master’s degree from New York University and married George Barnett. They had two children. She later married James Cherry.

For 20 years, she taught math at Miami Northwestern Senior High School.

Cherry was the first Black female law student to enroll at the University of Miami School of Law, but she completed her law degree at her undergraduate alma mater.

Admitted to the Florida Bar in 1965, she has the distinction of being the first Black woman to pass the exam and practice law in Dade County. She taught law at FAMU and was one of nine lawyers who formed Legal Services of Greater Miami. Cherry was a founder of the National Association of Black Women Attorneys.

In 1970, Cherry was the first Black woman elected to the Florida House of Representatives. She introduced the Equal Rights Amendment and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day state holiday. In 1972, Cherry chaired the Minority Affairs Committee for the Democratic National Convention and the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Cherry chaired Florida’s committee for the 1978 International Women’s Year and she coauthored Portraits in Color: The Lives of Colorful Negro Women, profiling 55 women who overcame racial barriers.

Cherry served in Florida’s House of Representatives until her death in an automobile accident in 1979. Her funeral took place at FAMU. During the service Stella McGriff represented the Alpha Epsilon Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. She spoke about Cherry as two other sorors placed a bouquet with the sorority colors at the foot of the stage. In April of 1980 the Delta Sigma Chapter presented the Gwen Cherry Memorial Award to Edith M. Fresh.

Cherry was posthumously admitted to the State of Florida’s Women’s Hall of Fame in 1986.

The National Bar Association Women Lawyers Division Dade County Chapter changed its name to the Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Association (GSCBWLA) in 2005.

In 2008, the Florida A&M University College of Law named a lecture hall in her memory. The Gwendolyn Sawyer Cherry, Esquire Lecture Hall is classroom and a small moot courtroom. There is also an endowed scholarship in her name. There are Miami-Dade Housing Agency apartments named for her and a park in Miami-Dade County bears her name.

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Vetabelle Phillips Carter, Alpha Xi Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 27, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Vetabelle Philips Carter became a member of the Alpha Xi Delta chapter at the University of Washington. The chapter was founded in 1907. In one of its first chapter reports includes this information:

two pledges have also been added to our number, Vetabel (sic) Phillips and Zelda Connor – two lovely girls, whom we will initiate before we part for the summer.

The next edition of The Quill reported”

On the morning of May 30th an initiation ceremony was held for our two new girls, Vetabel (sic) Phillips and Zelda Connor. Nu feels that she cannot be congratulated enough on her success in winning these two strong local member for dear old Alpha.

Although she had musical ability and wanted to be a dancer or musician, her family was against those careers. Instead, she became a teacher and taught at a Native American reservation in Washington for a few years.

On July 7, 1913, she married an engineer and graduate of Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School, Fred Mortimer Carter, Jr. Their first few years of marriage saw the couple moving and following his career. The Carters were in San Francisco in the early 1920s.

Automobiles were becoming part of American life, and she was becoming concerned about the number of traffic fatalities being reported in the newspaper. In 1927, there was one fatality per 1,000 cars on the road. And as more cars appeared on the road, more accidents and fatalities happened.

She thought of ways to help stop the number of traffic accidents. Using potatoes and a paring knife, she designed prototypes. Her more successful potato creations were redesigned using other mediums – clay, cardboard and finally metal. She created a working traffic signal. In a 1928 newspaper article, she described it:

My first achievement was an illuminated ‘through street sign, bearing on its face the words ‘Stop, through street,’ the lettering of opalescent glass, and lighted from behind by a flashing bulb, which enabled it to function equally well by day and night.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 26, 1928. Vetabelle Phillips Carter posed with her invention.

Five hundred of the signs were installed on San Francisco streets by the California State Automobile Association.

1927 patents

Daughter Paulena was born in 1930. Her mother doted on and nurtured her daughter’s musical ability and Paulena became a concert pianist. Fred Carter died on May 1 1954. Later that year, Vetabelle purchased a 1954 Lincoln Capri. Although Vetabelle died in 1978, the car still lives on.

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Helen Maxine Burke Porter Jackson, Sigma Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 26, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Helen Maxine Burke Porter Jackson was raised in Topeka, Kansas. After graduating from Topeka High School she enrolled at Kansas State Teacher’s College (now Emporia State University). There she became a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma and excelled at dramatics and forensics.

The Emporia (KS) Gazette, May 17, 1946

She won a scholarship to Stanford University to study drama and she earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Kansas.

One of her jobs involved raising the funds needed to build the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene, Kansas. She taught in the Topeka Public Schools until her retirement. She helped establish the student teaching program with collaboration between Washburn, Kansas, and Kansas State Universities.

The first president of the Pi Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, a sorority for teachers, she often served on district curriculum committees. For four years, she sat on the Washburn University Board of Regents. She served on many local, national and international boards. A member of P.E.O. , she was president of Chapter DV/KS.

In 1982, she married Walter Porter and until he died in 2004, they enjoyed travelling the world. On July 15, 2010, Dr. Donald Jackson, M.D. became her husband. She died four years later, on August 11, 2014, at the age of  89.

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Barbara Ann Weintraub Ciongoli, Sigma Delta Tau, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On March 25, 1917, seven young Jewish women founded Sigma Delta Tau at Cornell University. The Beta Chapter was chartered at the University of Pennsylvania on June 20, 1920.

In the mid-1960s, Barbara Ann Weintraub Ciongoli became a member of the Beta Chapter after she enrolled at Penn. She graduated from the prestigious Hunter College High School in New York City. Beginning in seventh grade, she took two subways to get from her home in Forest Hills to school and then reversed the trip to get back home. She was 17 when she graduated from high school.

In 1966, she studied in a Penn sponsored program in Florence, Italy. It was life changing experience for her. She met her future husband and she fell in love with Italy and all it had to offer. She became fluent in Italian, too. In 1967, she graduated from Penn summa cum laude. A year later, she earned a master’s degree in International Relations.

She married A. Kenneth Ciongoli, the young Penn student she met in Italy, when she was 21. In 1969, they moved to Burlington, Vermont, for his medical residency in neurology.

The Ciongolis shortly after their marriage.

While pursing a Ph.D. at the University of Vermont, she taught history. And although they moved 11 times in the first years of their marriage, they ended back in Burlington in 1975. There they raised their two daughters and three sons.

The couple opened an Italian restaurant, La Bottega, and the menus and recipes were her domain. And she worked behind the counter, too. And the Ciongolis were instrumental in starting the Vermont Italian Cultural Association. A 1986 article in the Burlington Free Press described the elegant Carnevale held on Strove Tuesday at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum. The attire was black tie or costume to celebrate the final day before Lent. There was a spread of traditional Italian desserts made by Ciongoli and two friends. It took them a week to prepare the dolci for the 150 attendees.

She was a trustee of John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. Dr. A. Kenneth Ciongoli died in 2008. Barbara Ciongoli spent the last seven years of her life waging a valiant battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – Lou Gerhig’s disease). She died on June 29, 2021.

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Eva B. Dykes, Ph.D., Delta Sigma Theta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 24, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The library at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama, is named for Eva B. Dykes. She was the first African American woman to complete the requirements for a Ph.D. and the third African American to be conferred the degree because of the graduation ceremony dates.

Dykes grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended M Street High School, which was later named Dunbar High School. After graduation, she enrolled at Howard University. While there she became a member of the Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority, Inc. As her class valedictorian, she won the $10 scholarship awarded by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

In 1914, she graduated from Howard University summa cum laude. Dykes enrolled at Radcliffe University, which at that time was the women’s coordinate to the all-male Harvard University. At Radcliffe, she was forced to earn another bachelor’s degree before she could do graduate work. The Radcliffe B..A. was conferred magna cum laude. She earned a master’s and a Ph.D. from Radcliffe, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Dykes was the first African American woman to complete the requirements for the degree although because of Radcliffe’s late graduation, she was not the first to be awarded the degree. She was the third. The first Ph.D. awarded to an African American woman was conferred upon Dyke’s sorority sister, Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander. The University of Pennsylvania where Alexander studied had graduation ceremonies on June 15, 1921. Radcliffe’s graduation was a week later.

Dykes taught at Dunbar High School while working and defending her dissertation. She studied the attitudes and writings of Alexander Pope in her dissertation, Pope and His Influence in America from 1715 to 1815. She had a short stint teaching at the now defunct Walden University and spent 15 years on the faculty of Howard University. While at Howard she coauthored Readings from Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges. In 1942, her book, The Negro in English Romantic Thought: Or a Study in Sympathy for the Oppressed, was published.

She became a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1920. When she joined the faculty of Oakwood University. a Seventh-day Adventist college in 1944, she was the only doctorate holding faculty member. Moreover, the school was unaccredited. As chair of the English Department, she was an integral part of leading the academic accreditation process to a successful outcome. She spent the rest of her career at Oakwood. After retirement in 1968, she remained in Huntsville and continued to teach as the opportunity presented itself. The Oakwood library was named in her honor in 1973 and she was became a Professor Emerita in 1980.

Dykes was also awarded a Citation of Excellence from the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for her contributions to its educational efforts. Dykes was 93 years old when she died on October 29, 1986.

The inscription at the bottom of the gravestone reads “First African American Female to complete studies for PHD Degree in US (1921).”

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Sara C. Yakovac, Alpha Sigma Tau, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Sara C. Yakovac was born when her father’s Army career had him posted at West Point Military Academy. Her childhood was spent in several different places including Germany.

She enrolled at James Madison University where she became a member of Alpha Sigma Tau and served on the chapter’s executive board. It was shortly after spring break her senior year that she was diagnosed with leukemia.

An economics major, Yakovac served as president of the Economics Club and was a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon economics honor society. She graduated magna cum laude in 2000, and was hired by KPMG Consulting. Yakovac began as a consumer loan researcher, but her career was cut short and she took a medical leave.

Yakovac underwent treatment at Ohio State University’s medical center including a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy. While the odds of the procedure being successful were about 20%, she remained positive that she would be one of the lucky ones.

She died April 17, 2001 at the age of 22. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Her parents, Major General and Mrs. Joseph L. Yakovac, endowed a scholarship for a student in the James Madison University economics program. The Psi Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau established a scholarship in her memory which is administered through the Alpha Sigma Tau Foundation.

The Breeze, October 3, 2002

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