Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority, Inc., Founded January 15, 1908

Posted on January 15, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the first Greek-letter organization for African-American women, was founded on January 15, 1908 by nine young female Howard University students. They were led by the vision of Ethel Hedgeman (Lyle); she had spent several months sharing her idea with her friends. During this time, she was dating her future husband, George Lyle, a charter member of the Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.

After choosing a name for their sorority, the nine women wrote a constitution and a motto. Additionally, they chose salmon pink and apple green as the sorority’s colors and ivy as its symbol. A group of seven sophomore women were invited to become members. They did not partake in an initiation ceremony and all 16 women are considered founders. The first “Ivy Week” took place in May 1909 and ivy was planted at Howard University’s Miner Hall. On January 29, 1913, Alpha Kappa Alpha was incorporated.

Alpha Iota Chapter

The Alpha Iota Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, was organized on February 13, 1930. There were seven charter members. One of the early chapter efforts was awarding a scholarship to the young woman who graduated from Lincoln University High School with the highest honors.

Trandailer Jones Brewer

Trandailer “Tran” Jones Brewer  was born in Percy, Mississippi. She went to high school and finished two years of  college at Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi. Two years after transferring to Lincoln University, she earned Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics. She also became a member of the Alpha Iota Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. 

After graduation, she attended Iowa State in Ames to fulfil the requirements for American Dietetic Association certification. She was one of the first Blacks to earn this achievement. According to her obituary, she once said,  “they were shocked when I arrived and they discovered I was black.” 

She completed her dietetic internship at Freedman’s Hospital at Howard University in Washington, D.C. From there she went back to Missouri and began her first real job in the field. She was as a cafeteria manager and nutrition instructor at Lincoln High School in Kansas City. 

In the early 1940s, she returned to Iowa State and completed a Master of Science in Nutrition. After completing the degree she became Head Dietitian at Hubbard Hospital as well as an instructor at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. She also earned additional distinction after completing additional studies at Columbia University.  Her title was now Public Health Nutritionist,

The next four years were spent working in the U.S. Virgin Islands as Director of Nutritional Services for the Department of Health. Fellow of the American Public Health Association status was conferred in 1952.

She moved to Los Angeles to become a staff dietitian for the Los Angeles County General Hospital (now Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center). Marriage to James Leon Brewer took place in 1953. They had a son, James, Jr. Sadly, James, Sr. died a few years after their son was born.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services appointed her Public Health Nutritionist. Brewer spent three decades working for the City of Los Angles and retired in 1983. She was an active member of many professional and civic organizations.

In 1988, Lincoln University honored her with a Distinguished Alumni award. In 2000, a scholarship named for her was established through the Lincoln University Foundation. Brewer died on July 25, 2018 at the age of 103. 

Her obituary presented this wonderful portrait:

Tran pursued and achieved her dreams! She traveled the world and lived a wonderful, full and prosperous life with style, spirit and most of all — dignified grace! Tran was generous with her time, talent and money. More importantly, she was kind, patient, thankful and appreciative to everyone. Tran loved people, and people LOVED Tran! With a quiet touch and strong heart, she taught us ALL how to live life COMPLETELY!

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Mary Frances Everhart, a Member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On January 13, 1913, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University. All 22 founders – Winona Cargile (Alexander), Madree Penn (White), Wertie Blackwell (Weaver), Vashti Turley (Murphy), Ethel Cuff (Black), Frederica Chase (Dodd), Osceola Macarthy (Adams), Pauline Oberdorfer (Minor), Edna Brown (Coleman), Edith Mott (Young), Marguerite Young (Alexander), Naomi Sewell (Richardson), Eliza P. Shippen,  Zephyr Chisom (Carter), Myra Davis (Hemmings), Mamie Reddy (Rose), Bertha Pitts (Campbell), Florence Letcher (Toms), Olive Jones, Jessie McGuire (Dent), Jimmie Bugg (Middleton), and Ethel Carr (Watson) – had been members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded at Howard University on January 16, 1908. When a disagreement about the future of the organization arose between the active chapter and the alumnae, an ultimatum was given, decisions were made, and in the end, the active members left Alpha Kappa Alpha and became Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Myra Davis went from being the president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter to being president of the Delta Sigma Theta chapter. Many of the first meetings took place in Edna Brown’s living room. The 1913 Valedictorian and Class President, she married Frank Coleman, a founder of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Florence Letcher’s hobby of collecting elephant figurines led to the animal becoming the sorority’s symbol.

Nearly two months after its founding, on March 3, 1913, the women took part in the historic suffrage march in Washington, D.C. They were the only African-American women’s group to participate. Honorary member Mary Church Terrell joined them in their march.

 

Mary Frances Everhart, Alpha Theta Chapter Initiate

The Alpha Theta Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. was founded at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, in March 1930. Soror Roena (Rowena) Muckelroy Savage, Director of Music at the university, was the sponsor of the new chapter.

Mary Frances Everhart was born in Red Oak, Iowa on July 18, 1917. While a student at Lincoln University she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. During her senior year, in September of 1937, the chapter hosted a formal tea for the new female students. On the occasion of the sorority’s 25th anniversary, the chapter celebrated with an informal dinner party. The chapter’s sixth annual Jabberwock took place on March 25, 1938. The Student Loan Fund received the proceeds.

Everhart graduated in 1938. She taught in Macon and Kansas City, both in Missouri, and in Quincy, Illinois, before moving to San Francisco, California.  In 1946, Everhart and her mother joined her brother Claude who was already there.

In 1947, Everhart began her career teaching in the Oakland Unified School District.  She retired 32 years later having earned a Master’s in Elementary Education while working. She began a new career, teaching part time in the City College of San Francisco’s English Department. Seventeen years later, in 1979, she retired for the second time.

Delta Sigma Theta Sorority was a part of her life and she belonged to three alumnae chapters – Kansas City, San Francisco and San Francisco-Peninsula. In 2005, she became a member of Lincoln University’s Hall of Fame. Everhart died on July 30, 2017 at the age of 100.

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Happy Founders’ Day, Alpha Omicron Pi!

Posted on January 2, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897, at the home of Helen St. Clair (Mullan). She and three of her Barnard College friends, Stella George Stern (Perry), Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Elizabeth Heywood Wyman had pledged themselves to the organization on December 23, 1896. That first pledging ceremony took place in a small rarely used upstairs room in the old Columbia College Library.

Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founders

Katrina Overall (McDonald) was a member of a local organization, Alpha Alpha, at Vanderbilt University. With the help of Mary D. Houston (Sarratt), a member of the Alpha Omicron Pi chapter at the University of Tennessee, the Alpha Alphas became the Nu Omicron Chapter of Alpha Delta Pi on April 28, 1917. It was the third national sorority at Vanderbilt. Katrina Overall was one of its charter members.

In 1918, she graduated with high honors from Vanderbilt and took a teaching job in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. On October 9, 1919, she married Lieutenant Carl C. McDonald in Nashville, Tennessee. The engagement announcement in the Nashville paper added this information, “Possibly no one in the powder plant rendered greater service during the epidemic of influenza last winter than Miss Overall.” The couple settled in the groom’s hometown of Bay St. Louis.

From 1921-1923, Katrina Overall McDonald served Alpha Omicron Pi as District Superintendent over the Southern chapters. In 1923, she became Grand Treasurer and served in that position for two years. When she the helm as Grand President in 1925, the first two of the couple’s four sons were three and one years old. A highlight of her term must have been when she paid a visit to her chapter during Vanderbilt’s Semi Centennial.

McDonald served as Grand President until 1927. During her term she installed the Kappa Omicron Chapter at Southwestern University (now Rhodes College) in 1925. After her term was over, she installed the Alpha Pi Chapter at Florida State on May 6, 1928. The installation happened a day later than planned due to McDonald being in a train wreck on the way to Tallahassee.

She lived the rest of her life in Bay St. Louis. She was actively involved in community service, serving on school boards and the state wide Parent Teacher’s Association, among other organizations. She died on December 13, 1985, at the age of 88.

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RIP Betty White, Not a Sorority Woman, but She Played One on TV

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Yesterday, when Betty White’s death at nearly 100 years of age was announced, the rumors of her being a sorority woman were surfacing on the Focus on Fraternity History facebook page. The rumors of her being a member of Alpha Gamma Delta keep surfacing. She was not a member of any sorority. In fact, she did not attend college after her graduation from Beverly Hills High School. Her career as an actress is legendary and her comedic genius will live on forever in reruns and on-demand episodes of her body of work.

Betty White

The Golden Girls episodes are some of my favorites. On May, 9, 1992, the final episode of The Golden Girls aired. It ran for seven seasons and in pre-internet days, it was almost impossible to find information about dialogue on a tv-show. This exchange between the characters may have started the rumor that will just not quit. It’s from season 2 of The Golden Girls. 

Dorothy: I never belonged to a sorority. I was blackballed.

Rose: Oh, I think that is so cruel. The Alpha Yams didn’t have blackballing. We believed that any girl who wanted to help her community and foster a feeling of sisterhood should be allowed to join.

Dorothy: That’s very commendable.

Rose: As long as she could castrate a sheep.

As an Aside

Rue McClanahan, was a Kappa Alpha Theta at the University of Tulsa. In one episode, her Golden Girls character Blanche Elizabeth Marie Hollingsworth Devereaux, attended a reunion of her “Alpha Gam” sisters. This may have also added to the confusion about Betty White being an Alpha Gam.

Rue McClanahan

Happy 2022!

I am currently trying to get a handle on the #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2022 posts. In February, I try to spotlight a member from each of the 26 NPC and 4 NPHC sororities. It is a challenge, but one that I find rewarding. I hope you do, too. Thank you for reading my blog. May the coming year be a blessing.

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Rest in Peace, Bob Dole, Loyal Kappa Sigma

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Robert “Bob” J. Dole, an October 4, 1942, initiate of the Kappa Sigma chapter at the University of Kansas, died on December 5, 2021, at the age of 98.  

He was the first Kappa Sigma to be named Kappa Sigma Man of the Year twice, 50 years apart, in 1970 and in 2020.  He was inducted as a member of the Kappa Sigma Hall of Honor in 2009, the 14th Kappa Sig to be given this honor.

Dole during his days as a collegiate member of Kappa Sigma

Dole was a pledge of the fraternity on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He entered the U.S. Army in June 1943 and later attended Officer Candidate School. He went oversees in December 1944 and was seriously wounded in northern Italy April 1945. Dole was awarded two Purple Hearts and Bronze Star for valor. He spent three years convalescing in U.S. hospitals. He married his first wife Phyllis Holden and enrolled at Washburn University. He graduated with a law degree in 1952.

In 1960, Dole was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives serving until he became a U.S. Senator in 1969. He spent 30 years representing Kansas in the Senate and was Republican Leader for the last 11 of those years.

Divorced in 1972, Dole married Elizabeth Hanford, a Delta Delta Delta initiate from Duke University on December 6, 1975. A power couple, she later served in the U.S. Senate representing North Carolina.

He was the running mate of Gerald Ford (a Delta Kappa Epsilon from the University of Michigan) in 1976. In 1987, Dole was the keynote speaker at Kappa Sigma’s 56th Biennial Grand Conclave.

Dole was the nominee in the 1996 presidential election. Kappa Sigma chapter houses were visited along the campaign stops.

The Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, was dedicated on Dole’s 80th birthday, July 22, 2003.Its mission is “to promote political and civic participation as well as civil discourse in a bi-partisan, balanced manner.” The Institute has unique displays relating to Dole’s life. Most of the photos in this post were taken at the Dole Institute.  The Senator’s congressional papers are housed there. The Institute also sponsors programs throughout the year.

In 2010, according to Kappa Sigma, the fraternity and “the Fisher House Foundation dedicated a Fisher House at the VA Hospital in Washington D.C. in honor of Brother Dole. Brother Dole’s wife, Senator Elizabeth Dole participated and spoke at the groundbreaking and cornerstone dedication ceremony. This was made possible through the hard work and efforts of Chapters of Kappa Sigma Fraternity through the Military Heroes Campaign. This achievement was a most historic moment in the history of the Order and recognized a great patriot and leader in the history of the United States.”

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Congratulations, Elle Smith, Alpha Delta Pi, Miss USA 2021!

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Congratulations the former Miss Kentucky USA, Elle Smith, Alpha Delta Pi, University of Kentucky, who is now Miss USA 2021! She’ll be competing in Miss Universe in two weeks!

https://www.whas11.com/article/news/local/elle-smith-miss-usa-kentucky-interview-pageant-whas11/417-10dc85d8-4e2c-45ab-acc8-d75b9b0895f5

 

Hoping to add her name to this list soon!

Sorority Women Who Have Won Miss USA and Miss Universe

Miss Universe, Miss USA 1956, Carol Morris, Kappa Alpha Theta, Miss Iowa USA (second Miss USA to win Miss Universe)

Miss USA 1958, Eurlyne Howell (later Arlene Howell), Zeta Tau Alpha, Miss Louisiana USA

Miss Universe, Miss USA 1967, Sylvia Hitchcock, Chi Omega, Miss Alabama USA

Miss Universe, Miss USA 1980, Shawn Weatherly, Delta Delta Delta, Miss South Carolina USA

Miss USA 1982, Terri Utley [Amos-Britt], Alpha Sigma Tau, Miss Arkansas USA

Miss USA 1983, Julie Hayek, Delta Delta Delta, Miss California USA

Miss USA 1988, Courtney Gibbs, Pi Beta Phi, Miss Texas USA

Miss USA 1991, Kelli McCarty, Gamma Phi Beta, Miss Kansas USA

Miss USA 1994, Frances Louise “Lu” Parker, Alpha Delta Pi, Miss South Carolina USA

Miss USA 1996, Ali Landry, Kappa Delta, Miss Louisiana USA

Miss USA 2003, Susie Castillo, Kappa Delta, Miss Massachusetts USA

Miss USA 2008, Crystle Stewart, Delta Sigma Theta, Miss Texas USA

Miss USA 2015, Olivia Jordan, Alpha Phi, Miss Oklahoma USA

Miss USA 2016, Deshauna Barber, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Miss District of Columbia

Miss USA 2018, Sarah Rose Summers, Zeta  Tau Alpha, Miss Nebraska 2018

 

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Rest in Peace, Stephen Sondheim, Beta Theta Pi

Posted on November 27, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Musical genius Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, at the age of 91. I can watch this clip from Six by Sondheim over and over. Sondheim makes an appearance in the middle of it. The priceless part starts at 2:48, when he plays the role of the producer. “It’s not a tune  you can hum.”

While at Williams College in Williamsport, Massachusetts, Stephen Sondheim became a member of the Zeta Chapter of Beta Theta Pi. The chapter was founded on February 5, 1847. Sondheim is the only Beta Theta Pi member to have been awarded three top entertainment honors –  Oscar, Grammy and Tony. He also has  a Pulitzer Prize, a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, and a Laurence Olivier Award.

Beta Theta Pi chapter house at Williams College with snow dragon guarding the premises, date unknown. (Courtesy of Williams College Archives)

Sondheim was one of 24 pledges in his pledge class. Sophomore year, along with roommate and fellow Beta Josiah T.S. (Joe) Horton, the campus humorist, he wrote a campus musical, Phinney’s Rainbow. It was the first musical presented by Williams’ undergraduate drama society Cap and Bells. The title was a take off on Finian’s Rainbow and it harkened to Williams’ President James Phinney Baxter III. Sondheim wrote 25 musical numbers for the show.

The plot of the satirical look at campus life centered on the efforts of a Swindlehurst Prep School fraternity, Dogma Nu, to replace the compulsory physical education classes with more house parties. Their motto was “strength through sex.” Two of the songs from the show “How Do I Know?” and “Still Got My Heart” were his first published songs.

The book Stephen Sondheim: A Life, offers a glimpse of the play: “A ‘Goat Room’ was where all the rituals of initiation were performed,” Sondheim said, and so he took Beta Theta Pi’s ceremony “with just a slight smidgen of variation and exaggeration and put it on the stage. All the brothers were horrified, but of course everybody else thought it was screamingly funny; it seemed like a work of the imagination. And I told everybody at the house ‘Don’t get into an uproar. If you don’t tell anybody, it’s real, they won’t believe it.’”

Williams College was then an all-male institution, and the women’s roles were played by men (picture a chorus line of football players in a-line skirts and demure crew neck sweaters). The four performances in April and May of 1948 made a profit of $1,500.

The following year, he wrote the music, lyrics and book for the Cap and Bells production of All That Glitters. It was based on the play Beggar on Horseback by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly; Sondheim received permission from Kaufman to perform the musical at Williams’ Adams Memorial Theater.

Sondheim graduated magna cum laude. He was awarded the Hutchinson Prize, a $3,000 cash award, renewable for a second year, for further study of music. The Prize Committee certainly got their money’s worth!

Sondheim turned 80 on September 15, 2010. To celebrate the occasion, the Henry Miller Theatre located in New York City’s theater district at 124 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue, was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.

A celebration was to have taken place for his 90th birthday.  The Take Me to the World concert on Youtube had to suffice during the global pandemic.

Stephen Sondheim
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On Phi Sigma Sigma’s Founders’ Day

Posted on November 26, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.
Phi Sigma Sigma was founded at Hunter College on November 26, 1913. Its ten founders are Lillian Gordon Alpern, Josephine Ellison Breakstone, Fay Chertkoff, Estelle Melnick Cole, Jeanette Lipka Furst, Ethel Gordon Kraus, Shirley Cohen Laufer, Claire Wunder McArdle, Rose Sher Seidman and Gwen Zaliels Snyder. The organization was originally called Phi Sigma Omega, but it was discovered that the name was already in use. Five years transpired before a second chapter was installed. In 1918, the Beta Chapter at Tufts University was chartered. It came about because a friend of one of the founders expressed interest in the organization. A third chapter was founded at New York University. Belle Furman Spillman, a 1923 initiate of the chapter at Adelphi University, was elected Archon (President) of her chapter as a junior and served two terms. In 1926, she was elected Grand Vice-Archon. At the 1927 Convention, where she acted as National Tribune, she was elected Grand Archon. A year later she was reelected Archon and started on an inspection tour of Phi Sig chapters

Belle Furman Quitman

At the 1929 Convention, in Washington, Furman had hoped to take a break from sorority work. When the Phi Sig who was elected National Bursar could not assume the office, Quitman stepped in and took the job. On June 29, 1930, Furman married Sidney L. Quitman. Later that year, she was elected  Grand Archon. In 1931, it Rose J. Lidschin said of her:

No one in Phi Sigma Sigma knows as many other members of the fraternity -from the standpoint of sheer numbers as well as from a shrewd knowledge of first-hand fraternity lore- as she. I believe no one in the fraternity wields the vast influence she does and deservedly. Those chapters whose varied difficulties she ironed out on the tour of inspection-those girls who tea-ed and feted her on that long trail from New York to California, via the Atlantic seaboard, and back again, via the Pacific, not omitting a trek into western Canada in the dead of winter- those parents and deans and patronesses and townswomen and fraternity men and women from fraternities other than our own who met and conferred with her during this tour-know her and recognize her worth. Those of our members who have met her, who have dealt with her in any fashion, who have observed her kindly and impartial conduct of national conventions, have come to love her for her charm revealing smile and friendly handclasp as well as for her pure competence, her matter-of-factness, her straightforwardness, her ability to deal with women’s fraternity problems man-fashion. And to many of us who have the welfare and future of the fraternity poignantly at heart, who have sorrowfully seen too many potential leaders go by the board on achieving the matrimonial state, it is a matter of immense satisfaction to reflect that this illustrious daughter of an illustrious chapter continues to have the same strength of conviction, the same singleness of purpose and the same unadulterated love of Phi Sigma Sigma which dominated her undergraduate and her pre-marital career.

In a report of the 1930 convention, Belle’s husband Sidney Quitman was described as, “that angel of a husband-don’t get us started-entertaining the girls in his and Belle’s room with chocolates, cigarettes and a rare sense of humor.” Belle Furman Quitman served as Grand Archon until December 1933 Convention. She was a mother by then.  The Quitmans had two daughters, Edith and Lynn. They were dedicated members of the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania. Sidney was a member of its first Board of Directors in the 1930s. The library at the Centre is named for the couple; Sidney was the Coordinator of the library and Belle was Chairman of the library committee in the 1950s. In 1961-62, the Quitman Library became the first synagogue library to be accredited by the Jewish Library Association. The couple died in 1997, Sidney on January 29 and Belle on October 12. The couple donated items to the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, a part of the Smithsonian, as well as the Jewish Museum in New York City. 
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Celebrating Tri Delta on Thanksgiving Eve

Posted on November 24, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Delta Delta Delta was founded at Boston University on November 28, 1888, which fell on the day before Thanksgiving that year. Founders’ Day is celebrated on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

In the fall of 1888, four senior women, who had not joined any of the three women’s fraternities then at Boston University discussed their situation. Eleanor Dorcas Pond ([Mann, M.D.) talked to Sarah Ida Shaw (Martin) and they decided to start a society of their own. Pond suggested that they use a triple Greek letter and Shaw chose the Greek letter Delta. Shaw also developed the mottoes and passwords.

All was finished by Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, 1888, but the two met again on Wednesday afternoon, before leaving for the holiday. They met in the Philological Library at the top of the college building. Shaw and Pond embraced and said “Tri Delta is founded.”

Shaw and Pond were intent on getting the other two unaffiliated seniors to join their organization. Florence Stewart quickly agreed, but Isabel Breed took a little more convincing due to her highly religious nature. When she was given the job of chaplain, she relented and joined her friends. The four are considered founders. Soon they were joined by three juniors, five sophomores, and six freshmen. These women were initiated at the Joy Street home of Emily F. Allen on January 15, 1889.

Tri Delta’s Headquarters is in Dallas, Texas and this impressive display greets visitors.

To see an interactive tour of the museum

 

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Happy Founders’ Day, Alpha Sigma Alpha!

Posted on November 15, 2021 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Alpha Sigma Alpha was founded on November 15, 1901 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. Its founders had been asked to join some of the other sororities on campus, but they wanted to stay together. The five, Virginia Lee Boyd (Noell), Juliette Jefferson Hundley (Gilliam), Calva Hamlet Watson (Wootton), Louise Burks Cox (Carper) and Mary Williamson Hundley, started their own sorority; they called it Alpha Sigma Alpha.

In 1921, the 20th anniversary of the founding of the sorority was marked by a convention at the Hotel Muehlebach in Kansas City.

“Probably no other organization in the Hellenic world can boast, as Alpha Sigma Alpha can, of having present at Convention a member of the faculty from each campus where it has a chapter.” I think these are the faculty members pictured below.

The Hotel Muehlebach was praised in The Phoenix article:

The management gave every detail of the arrangements entrusted to them such personal attention that everyone is most enthusiastic over the hospitality of this great hotel. The parlors placed at the disposal of the Sorority for the business meetings and imitation were all that could be desired and the personal attention given by the matire d’hôtel to the Anniversary Banquet created a most favorable comment.

In addition to the business meetings, the convention included a session with the advisors, a model initiation, a banquet with foods in the sorority colors and a stunt show.

As was common during the time, there was a Stunt Show. The Zeta Zetas from the State Teacher’s College at Warrensburg (now the University of Central Missouri) were “Follies.” Giving a nod to the Ziegfeld Follies, the women wore “brilliant red and white” costumes. They sang and danced to original songs about the sorority. One thinks that much time and talent went into this effort and they were called back for an encore. Photographers took “flashlights of several of the stunts for the pictorial sections of the city papers and some of them are very artistic.”

Hazel Platt, the delegate from the Nu Chapter at Shorter College in Georgia wrote:

The convention has brought the Chapters together in a relationship more sisterly than we have felt before. We who were present at the meetings and the banquet now are acquainted with girls in other chapters; it creates a real national feeling. Especially do we of one of the western chapters feel this closer relationship because there is so great a distance in miles between the eastern chapters and us.

A great deal was gained through the meeting of our National Officers, whom we know through the medium of letters but seldom meet.

The informal discussions during the meetings were helpful in that we discovered that other girls, our sisters, are confronted by problems similar to ours.

We of Nu appreciate our chapter house more than ever since we have learned that there are so few chapters that maintain a house.

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