Bertha Rembaugh on Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founders’ Day

Posted on December 8, 2020 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.

Commemorating a Founders’ Day on the second day of the new year proved to be a challenge for the organization, so founder Stella George Stern Perry’s birthday, December 8, was designated for the start of a celebration. However, this year it was announced that henceforth Founders’ Day would be celebrated on the actual founding date. I apologize to my AOPi friends for having missed the message. In any event, I hope you enjoy some info about Bertha Rembaugh, the first woman to run for judge in New York City.

Stella George Stern

Bertha Rembaugh was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College. After graduation she enrolled at the New York University School of Law where she became a member of the Nu Chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi.

To Dragma, 1911

She was admitted to the bar and became first assistant in the West Side branch of the Legal Aid Society. She started graduate work at NYU in hopes of obtaining a J.D.  She also was a part of at least two legal firms. Currier, Knowles and Rembaugh, of which she was the only woman lawyer, and Noel Rembaugh and Barber.

She also served a term as Grand Treasurer of Alpha Omicron Pi.

To Dradma, 1913-14

To Dragma, 1915-16

 
 

El Paso Herald, March 15, 1921

Bertha Rembaugh died on January 31, 1950 at the age of 73.

New York Daily News, February 1, 1950

 
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NIC First Met in 1909

Posted on November 27, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), an association for men’s fraternities was founded as the Interfraternity Conference on November 27, 1909 at the University Club in New York City.

Brown University President W. H. P. Faunce, a member of Delta Upsilon, invited representatives from the men’s fraternities. The 26 men’s fraternities who attended the meeting and are considered founding members are Acacia, Alpha Chi Rho, Alpha Delta Phi, Alpha Tau Omega,  Beta Theta Pi, Chi Phi, Chi Psi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Delta Phi, Delta Tau Delta, Delta Upsilon, Kappa Alpha Order, Kappa Alpha Society, Kappa Sigma, Phi Delta Theta, Phi Gamma Delta, Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa Sigma, Phi Sigma Kappa, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, Sigma Phi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Theta Delta Chi, and Zeta Psi. Alpha Sigma Phi is also considered a charter member. Hamilton Wright Mabie, Alpha Delta Phi, was NIC’s first chairman. Beta Theta Pi Francis W. Shepardson was its first secretary.

NIC’s constitution was adopted in 1910. Meetings were set for the Saturday following Thanksgiving in New York. Each member organization was to make a $25 contribution each year to cover postage and printing. At the 11th meeting held on November 29, 1919, there were a number of men who had attended all meeting from the very first one in 1909. These men were: Carl R. Ganter (Alpha Delta Phi); Wayne Montgomery Musgrave (Alpha Sigma Phi); Willis D. Robb (Beta Theta Pi); Albert S. Bard (Chi Psi); L. Barton Case (Delta Chi); James Anderson Hawes (Delta Kappa Epsilon); James Duane Livingston (Delta Phi); Frank Rogers (Delta Tau Delta); James B. Curtis (Delta Tau Delta); Jeremiah S. Ferguson (Kappa Sigma); O.H. Cheney (Phi Gamma Delta); Henry H. McCorkle (Phi Kappa Psi); and William L. Phillips (Sigma Phi Epsilon).

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A National Patroness on Phi Sigma Sigma’s Founders’ Day

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Phi Sigma Sigma was founded at Hunter College on November 26, 1913 by ten young women. 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 soon founded at New York University.

On Sunday, June 26, 1960, Jennie Grossinger was installed as Phi Sigma Sigma’s first National Patroness at an event at the new chapter house of the University of Maryland chapter. She was well known personality and mastermind in the running of the Grossinger’s resort complex in the Catskills Mountains of upstate New York. (Think of Kellerman’s in Dirty Dancing or the one Madge Maisel stayed at with her family in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.) An immigrant who came to America as a child and started working full time when she was just a young teen, Grossinger was a well-known fixture in the hospitality industry.

Grand Archon Veachey R. Bloom, introduced Grossinger by saying, “She is a national figure, who is loved and respected by men and women of all races and religions. She has been honored by many organizations.” 

In 1958, she became a Fellow of Brandeis University and a year later was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wilberforce University.

In an obituary in The New York Times, it was said, “For more than half a century, Mrs, Grossinger and her family worked to bring the little farm her father bought in 1914 to the rank of flagship of the fleet of landlocked luxury liners anchored in the Catskills 100 miles northwest of New York City, and she ruled, with regal dignity, a 1,300‐acre domain larger than Princess Grace’s Monaco.”

Grossinger’s in the 1950s

Jennie Grossinger died in 1972 at the age of 80. Grossinger’s was closed and sold in 1986. 

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Happy Founders’ Day, Tri Delta!

Posted on November 25, 2020 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. However, 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.

On June 1, 1895, the Upsilon Chapter was installed at Northwestern University. Among its early members was Marian McSherry Doren (Tomlinson). She was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1877. An Oberlin College catalog has her enrolled there during the 1895-96 academic year. On the Tri Delta page on the 1898 Northwestern Syllabus yearbook, she is identified as a sophomore.

She married George Horace Tomlinson, an alumnus of the Delta Upsilon chapter at Northwestern in 1900. It appears they spent their married life in the Chicago suburbs. A 1950 Rotarian magazine congratulated the couple on 50 years of marriage. She was a part of her local suffrage movement. She is identified in this article which appeared in the Willamette, Illinois Lake Shore News, on May 23, 1918.

The February 1921 Trident included a note from Tomlinson about the 1920 Armistice Day celebration in Paris. She and her two children were touring Europe. Tomlinson wrote:

I feel nearer the heart of the French people and nearer to their past after seeing the pageant of armistice day.

Thursday and Friday I could hardly wait to tell you of the wonderful sights of armistice day; today, I must recall the thrillers. Probably the home papers have had repeated references to the double celebration which here has been heralded for weeks and for which grand preparations have been making in every town of France, and in Paris of course the very grandest. For here on the steps of the Pantheon fifty years ago Gambetta declared the third republic and back to the Pantheon does his heart for, this nation giving honor. At the same time do they honor all soldiers who died nameless, yet gave their all to the cause of France and of humanity, by depositing the remains of the poilu inconnu in the Arc de Triomphe, with all honors also.

As the endless ranks of the blue passed but it was east to think back to the days when they must have been the usual sight. The soldiers were ahorse and afoot; they wore helmets, caps, tams, tricorns and feathers, medals, stripes, bars and insignia which told a story that I could not read except enough to know that they represented service and honor. They carried bright banners and war scarred flags, some dating back to 1870, their sabers and bayonets did not glisten as those might which had never seen service.

And always there was the martial music of the hands of the buglers who delighted in giving their horns somersaults in the air without interfering or losing any notes. I can not tell where the in the procession of infantry, cuirassiers, Alpine blue devils, artillery wagons, marines, colonials, came the gold box holding the heart of Gambetta at the peak of a drag, canopied in gilt brocade, and the coffin borne by a tonneau draped with the tricolor – but they came and the crowd was very quiet.

Then followed the men of today great in France. On the front line Millerand in simple black but of bearing marvelously distinguished. Marshal Foch, Petain, Joffre, and others whom I did not recognize. They walked, as did venerable senators and deputies, in top hats. Was this a tribute to democracy or to the honored dead? Just as at all funerals the mourners walk. The crowds were very quiet, occasional catching the tune that the band was playing, and singing, occasionally recognizing a hero, last giving to the veterans with their scarred flaps the most spontaneous recognition.

According to her obituary, Marian Doren Tomlinson was a founder of the Evanston School of Foreign Affairs. Between the World Wars, the organization sponsored speakers and discussions in conjunction with Northwestern University and other community organizations. Its purpose was to clarify international issues.

In the 1940s, Tomlinson served on the Evanston Public Library Board. The American Library Association awarded her a Citation of Merit in 1943. She died in 1966.

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A Green Bean Casserole for Alpha Sigma Alpha’s Founders’ Day

Posted on November 15, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Today is Alpha Sigma Alpha’s Founders’ Day. It was founded on November 15, 1901 at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia. It is the youngest of the Farmville Four, the four National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations founded on that campus. The other three organizations are Kappa Delta, Sigma Sigma Sigma, and Zeta Tau Alpha. The Alpha Sigma Alpha founders had been invited 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, created Alpha Sigma Alpha.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s a fitting time to highlight one of Alpha Sigma Alpha’s notable members. Dorcas Bates Reilly, a member of Drexel University’s Alpha Sigma Alpha chapter, is known as the “Grandmother of the Green Bean Casserole” and the “Mother of Comfort Food.”

With a B.S. in Home Economics, Reilly worked in the Campbell Soup Company’s Home Economics Department developing recipes. In 1955, she led the team that created the recipe. Reilly said the name was originally Green Bean Bake and somewhere along the way, the name was changed to Green Bean Casserole. Some of the other recipes she helped develop include tomato soup meatloaf, a tuna noodle casserole, and “souperburgers.”

She retired from the Campbell Soup Company in 1988. Reilly presented the original yellowed recipe card to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio in 2002. In 2008, Alpha Sigma Alpha honored her with a Recognition of Eminence Award. Reilly was also honored by Drexel University. She died in 2018 at the age of 92. 

Dorcas Bates Reilly

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Alice Dunnigan on Sigma Gamma Rho’s Founders’ Day

Posted on November 12, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Seven young African American women who were educators founded Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. on November 12, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. On December 30, 1929, a charter was granted to the Alpha chapter at Butler University making the organization  a national college sorority.

The sorority’s founders are Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson, Mary Lou Allison Little, Vivian White Marbury, Bessie M. Downey Martin, Cubena McClure, Hattie Mae Dulin Redford, and Dorothy Hanley Whiteside.

A statute of Alice Allison Dunnigan, a member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., was permanently installed at the Seek Museum in her hometown of Russellville, Kentucky. It had been unveiled on September 21, 2018 at the Newseum in Washington, DC. The statue then went on a tour and was displayed at the Truman Presidential Library, Dunnigan’s alma mater Kentucky State University, and the University of Kentucky. Her sorority sisters celebrated these events.

In 1906, Alice Allison Dunnigan was born in Russellville, Kentucky. She was reading before she entered first grade and she began writing for the local newspaper when she was 13. It was the start of her career as a journalist.

She taught in Kentucky schools from 1924 to 1942. Dunnigan found that her students were unaware of the contributions made by African Americans. She began writing fact sheets to help her students learn about them. These fact sheets were compiled in 1939. They were later published as The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians: Their Heritage and Tradition in 1982.

In 1942, Dunnigan went to Washington, D.C., and worked for the U.S. Department of Labor from 1942 to 1946. She took night courses at Howard University and was a Washington correspondent for The Chicago Defender, a Black owned weekly newspaper.

Dunnigan then joined the Associated Negro Press service. At first, she was denied press credentials to cover Congress and the Senate because she wrote for a weekly, not a daily paper. When she was finally granted press clearance six months later, she became the first Black woman to be so accredited. Named Associated Negro Press bureau chief in 1947, she held that position for 14 years.

She paid her own way in 1948 to follow President Truman’s western campaign. Dunnigan became the first African American female correspondent in the White House. She was also the first Black woman elected to the Women’s National Press Club.

Dunnigan took a full-time job with Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign in 1960 and later worked for him when he was vice president. She also later worked in his Presidential administration.

In the 1962 book Portraits in Color: The Loves of Colorful Negro Women, Dunnigan is  listed as an “Education Consultant, President’s Council on Equal Employment Opportunity.” Of Dunnigan’s career in journalism it was said:

Many honors were collected by Alice as a newspaper woman. She holds at least twenty-five citations from national organizations for outstanding work in journalism and in Federal service. Included among them is the ‘Award of Merit’ from the Haitian Government for ‘honest and unbiased reporting’ on conditions in that country. She was the first woman to receive the ‘Newsman’s Newsman’ trophy from the Capital Press Club as the most outstanding member of that organization.

Dunnigan retired in 1970 and her autobiography,  A Black Woman’s Experience: From Schoolhouse to White House, was published in 1974. She died on May 6, 1983, at the age of 77.

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On Gamma Phi Beta’s Founding Day

Posted on November 11, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The first social event Frances Haven (Moss) attended after enrolling in Syracuse University in 1874 was a church oyster supper. Her father, Dr. Erastus Otis Haven, was recently elected Chancellor of the university. At that supper, she met the man who would become her husband, Charles Melville Moss. She also met two members of Alpha Phi, a women’s fraternity founded at Syracuse in October of 1872. Instead of accepting the invitation to join Alpha Phi which had been offered to her, she joined with three other women – Mary A. Bingham (Willoughby), E. Adeline Curtis, and Helen M. Dodge (Ferguson) –  and they founded an organization of their own. The date was November 11, 1874. The organization is Gamma Phi Beta, the first of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations to use the term “sorority;” Syracuse Latin professor Frank Smalley suggested the word to the young women.

A Minnesota Gamma Phi

I was looking at a century old  Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta and this entry caught my eye. Of course I had questions about it.

1920 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta

Did Miss Duesler, a member of the University of Minnesota chapter, perhaps meet Mr, Aurness on the ship? How romantic was it that they married at the “little church round the corner,” the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration at 1 East 29th Street.

Some research found that the bridegroom wasn’t a shipboard suitor or European friend. He was a Delta Upsilon from the University of Minnesota who was two classes ahead of his new wife.

The three Gamma Phis on the Philadelphia. Ruth Duesler is in the middle.

Duesler won the 50-day trip to Europe in a Minnesota Daily News subscription contest. She was one of a dozen winners and she set sail on July 1. On her return trip aboard the steamer Philadelphia, she posed for a picture with two other Gamma Phis. Minnie Brewer from Upsilon chapter at Hollins College had been sightseeing, too. Della Brunstetter from Psi Chapter at the University of Oklahoma had been studying abroad. They considered it “a coincidence that Gamma Phis from the east, north and south could meet in such happy circumstances.”

The Aurness family

The Aurnesses had two boys, James and Peter, born in  1923 and 1925, respectively. The couple divorced in 1948. James and Peter became actors. James changed his last name to Arness. He played Marshall Dillon in Gunsmoke. Peter’s stage name was Peter Graves. An initiate of Phi Kappa Psi at the University of Minnesota, he starred in Mission Impossible.

Photo from an article in the August 25, 1958 edition of the Minneapolis Star

In 1957, Ruth Aurness married Maurice Eugene Salisbury. She died in Calfornia on September 14, 1986 at the age of 87.

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A Sigma Kappa Lodge on Founders’ Day

Posted on November 9, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On November 9, 1874, Sigma Kappa was founded by five young women, the only females enrolled at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. They received a letter from the faculty approving the organization’s petition, which included a constitution and bylaws.

The five founders of Sigma Kappa are Mary Low Carver, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, Ida Fuller Pierce, Louise Helen Coburn and Frances Mann Hall. In Sigma Kappa’s first constitution, chapter membership was limited to 25 women. The original chapter is known as the Alpha chapter. After Alpha chapter’s membership reached 25, a Beta chapter was formed. A Gamma chapter soon followed. Although there were some early joint meetings, the members did not think it feasible to continue that way. In 1893, a vote was taken to limit Alpha chapter to 25 members and to allow no more initiations into Beta and Gamma chapters. In due time, Beta and Gamma were no more.

The Delta chapter was installed at Boston University in 1904. In 1905, Sigma Kappa became a member of the National Panhellenic Conference. Sigma Kappa’s Alpha chapter closed in 1984 when Colby College banned all fraternities and sororities from campus.

I was intrigued by a picture of the Sigma Kappa lodge in an early edition of The Triangle. It belonged to Mu Chapter at the University of Washington. The chapter was founded on April 30, 1910. A local group, the Altheims was formed in 1909 by two Sigma Kappas. One was an alumna from the Alpha Chapter and the other was a transfer from the University of Illinois chapter.

Dorothy Louise Anderson was an early member of the chapter. She was at the University but one year, on account of illness. She died on March 5, 1912.

Dorothy Louise Anderson

Her parents, Ada Woodruff and Oliver Perkins Anderson, gave a lodge to the chapter. Mrs. Anderson was a novelist and Mr. Anderson was a Seattle entrepreneur who made maps, blueprints and turned an interest in photography into a business. He even named a lake for Dorothy while making surveys and maps of the Seattle area. During Dorothy’s life and well afterwards, the Andersons supported the chapter, hosting events and showering the chapter with gifts.

The Sigma Kappa Lodge was a “rustic lodge on an island on Puget Sound,” near Crystal Springs, “where the Sigma girls can spend week-end, summer vacations, and give some very unusual and jolly rushing parties.” The Andersons provided the chapter with two canoes aptly named Sigma and Kappa. The lodge had a “large comfortable living room with a large fireplace and French windows, a large bedroom and a sleeping porch, a kitchen and bathroom.”

A non-profit organization, the Puget Sound Association of Sigma Kappa Sorority, was organized in April 1914 to own the property. The Andersons also began the “building fund by the gift of two lots in West Seattle.”

The dedication ceremony for the lodge took place on May 17, 1914. A report in the 1920 Triangle provided this information:

Annually we give a big lodge picnic, the only time men may invade our domain. It is the custom of the seniors to give themselves a farewell party at the lodge. We feel that Mr. and Mrs. Anderson have, as in no other way possible,  kept alive and green Dorothy’s memory, and have found the ideal way to expressing the Sigma spirit of service that was Dorothy.

In 2020, it’s a risk management nightmare to think of  a chapter owning a summer/vacation property miles from campus. I don’t know when the Puget Sound Association of Sigma Kappa divested itself of the lodge. However, in 1919, a 14-room house at 4732 21st Avenue NE became the chapter’s home. It was soon outgrown and property at 4510 22nd NE was purchased in 1926 for the building a new chapter house. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in April 1930 and the chapter moved into it in 1930. The chapter is still in the house 90 years later, although the house was expanded and renovated throughout the years. And I wonder if that bronze table which was over the fireplace in the Sigma Kappa Lodge still exists.

Update 11/11/2020 from an advisor to the chapter:

Thanks for featuring Dorothy and the Sigma Kappa Lodge! Unfortunately, no, we don’t have the old plaque that was above the fireplace anymore. The lodge ended around 1931, when Dorothy’s parents sold their property the lodge was on, and ΣΚ agreed to let it go. In return, the Andersons donated a new library to the chapter in 1935, and the chapter still has all the books from that era, which include a nameplate remembering Dorothy, so her legacy lives on at the Mu chapter house!

The lodge’s guestbook. A Pi Phi, Olive Cline, was a guest. She was an alumna of the Butler College chapter.

These wonderful pictures of chapter members at the lodge on Bainbridge Island are also in the chapter’s possession.

 

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Happy Founders’ Day, Alpha Sigma Tau!

Posted on November 4, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

On November 4, 1899, eight young women, Mable Chase, Ruth Dutcher, May Gephart, Harriet Marx, Eva O’Keefe, Adriance Rice, Helene Rice, and Mayene Tracy, formed a sorority at the Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Alpha Sigma Tau was the name they chose. The organization became a national one in October 1925.

Carrie Washburne Staehle was born on April 11, 19oo, about six months after the sorority was founded. She became a member of the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau on January 12, 1924. And while she was not a founder of her beloved sorority, she was indeed a builder and played an integral role in the growth of Alpha Sigma Tau.

Lansing Star Journal, December 6, 1944

In 1926, Alpha Sigma Tau joined the Association of Education Sororities (AES). She served as national president of the sorority from 1934 through 1949. Alpha Sigma Tau became a full member of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) when the merger of AES and NPC was formalized in 1951. Staehle served as Alpha Sigma Tau’s NPC Delegate for 20 years from 1947, when AST became an associate member of NPC until 1967. From 1952 until 1960 she was National Secretary and from 1960 until 1976, she was Director of Publications. She was named President Emerita in 1970.

April 11 of each year is known as Carrie Washburne Staehle Day. Of her service, Alpha Sigma Tau said:

Renowned Past National President Carrie Washburne Staehle, Alpha, was a natural change agent – and innovated and managed change at a critical time in Alpha Sigma Tau’s history. As a leader, she inspired her Sisters to grow, develop, perform, and (perhaps most importantly) embrace change to help our Sorority achieve the “loveliness of its ideals.”

Carrie Washbourne Staehle died on June 17, 2001, at the age of 101, according to an obituary published in the Alameda Times. As a member of the Alpha chapter, she lived the history of the organization and was alive at its centennial. What a magnificent role she played in the sorority she loved!

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Sorority Women on the U.S. Supreme Court

Posted on October 27, 2020 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

In June 2023, Ketanji Brown Jackson became an honorary initiate of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She became the third sorority woman to be a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Amy Comey Barrett, an initiate of the Kappa Delta chapter at Rhodes College, was the second sorority woman appointed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English. She is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Mortar Board and is in the Rhodes Student Hall of Fame.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an Alpha Epsilon Phi, was the first sorority woman to serve in that capacity. Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Justice, was not a sorority woman, although many think she was.

Ruth Bader Cornell University yearbook)

I am reminded of the quote from a post which was highlighted previously. In 1921, Mary Love Collins, Chi Omega , said “All women are lifted up by heights attained by one woman.”

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