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One hundred years ago today, the National Panhellenic Conference was meeting in Boston. Grace Goodhue Coolidge, Pi Beta Phi, had become the First Lady in August. One of the first orders of business was to authorize a telegram. “The Eighteenth … Continue reading
Following the custom begun several years ago, a special table has been presided over, at each luncheon, by Mrs. Tade Hartsuff Kuhns, beloved first grand president. Each day 11 or 12 delegates from active chapters have received personal invitation written in the name of Mrs. Kuhns. At the request of National President Mrs. Lloyd-Jones these invitations are to be taken by the delegates to their respective chapter, to be preserved in the archives chests as historic treasures.Kuhns attended the reinstallation of Kappa’s Alpha Chapter at Monmouth College in 1934. She was hit by an automobile in March of 1937 and died later that year. An editorial in The Key reflected on the loss:
The realization that never again will the fraternity be honored by Mrs. Kuhn’s presence at any of its meetings is staggering. For through her was preserved the living sense of the fraternity’s continuity with that brilliant past to which she contributed so much. It was through her, and almost through her alone, that the fraternity was virtually reorganized after the first 11 years of its existence. It is a tribute to her progressive thought that the reorganization was along lines which have required little fundamental change in the 56 years since she took office.
How fitting that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first one on this list. Her stamp was release this week. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg was initiated into Alpha Epsilon Phi at Cornell University.
Below is a list of sorority women who have been featured on U.S. postage stamps. Please let me know if I’ve omitted anyone.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alpha Epsilon Phi
Dinah Shore, Alpha Epsilon Phi
Fran Allison, Alpha Gamma Delta
Marian Anderson, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Maya Angelou, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Anna J. Cooper, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Althea Gibson, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Rosa Parks, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Toni Morrison, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Frances Willard, Alpha Phi
Lila Wallace DeWitt, Delta Delta Delta
Daisy Bates, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Mary McLeod Bethune, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Shirley Chisholm, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Fannie Lou Hammer, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Patricia Roberts Harris, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Dorothy Height, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Barbara Jordan, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Ethel L. Payne, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Wilma Rudolph, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Mary Church Terrell, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Marguerite Higgins, Gamma Phi Beta
Agnes de Mille, Kappa Alpha Theta
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Kappa Alpha Theta
Pearl Buck, Kappa Delta
Georgia O’Keeffe, Kappa Delta
Julia Ward Howe, Kappa Kappa Gamma
Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, Kappa Kappa Gamma
Carrie Chapman Catt, Pi Beta Phi
Hattie McDaniel, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.
Margaret Chase Smith, Sigma Kappa
Zora Neale Hurston, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
Sarah Vaughan, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
Jimmy Buffet dead? It can’t be. The man epitomizes joie de vivre. He’s been in the background of my life, via Radio Margaritaville. I often listen to the recorded concerts as I work on the computer. I know the words to the songs and the schtick between the sets by heart. It is truly a sad day. And I don’t know that it will be alright come Monday.
James W. “Jimmy” Buffet was born on December 25, 1946 and died on September 1, 2023. He started his college career at Auburn University. According to several interviews with Buffett, he said that he saw a guy with a guitar at a fraternity rush party. That guy had a bevy of young women enthralled by his playing, even though he later admitted to Buffett that he knew only three chords. Buffet asked the guy to teach him to play the three chords and from that encounter, a Parrothead Nation emerged. Buffet pledged Sigma Pi at Auburn but wasn’t initiated. In a 1979 performance at Auburn, Buffet admitted he left Auburn with a .32 GPA and “never looked back.” (A transcript on the internet reveals it was a 0.47, but why quibble?)
Jimmy Buffett on the Auburn University of Sigma Pi composite
He was a 1969 graduate the University of Southern Mississippi where he became a full-fledged member of Kappa Sigma. In his book A Pirate Looks at Fifty, he said, “Fall semester in a Southern college town has little to do with studying and more to do with football and fraternity rush. Heck, at the time I was really an Ole Miss fan, and to this day I still can’t figure out why I didn’t enroll at the University of Mississippi.”
My condolences to his family and friends and Parrotheads everywhere.
Buffett is to the right of the “67” on the composite.
Robert William “Bob” Barker, longtime host of “The Price is Right” game show, was a member of the Sigma Nu chapter at Drury University. He died on August 26, 2023 at the age of 99.
From 1956 until 1975, he was host of “Truth or Consequences.” In 1972 he took over as host of the “Price is Right” and served in that capacity until 2007. The show has a place in television history as the longest running game show. Barker would end the show with an admonition to “Spay and neuter your pets.”
At Sigma Nu’s 1978 Grand Chapter meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas, Barker was the emcee of an event entitle “An Evening with Sigma Nu.” At that convention, the largest one for the fraternity up until that time, Barker was the recipient of the Sigma Nu Distinguished Alumni Award.
From Sigma Nu’s archival collection
On August 3, 1923, Americans were waking to the news that Warren Harding had died suddenly, late in the evening on August 2, after he became ill in a San Francisco hotel. The Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge, and his wife Grace, were visiting the Coolidge homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where the Vice-President’s father, John, lived.
For about fours hours, the country was without a President, as it took that long for the news to travel from the west coast, where Harding died, to the hills of the small New England town where the Coolidges were staying.
Colonel John Coolidge’s home did not have a telephone. President Harding’s secretary telegraphed the initial message of Harding’s death to White River Junction, Vermont. The public telephone operator who received the message sought out Coolidge’s stenographer, W. A. Perkins, and Joseph N. McInerney, his chauffeur. They alerted a reporter. Much activity ensued in a short amount of time. They went to the Coolidge homestead at about 2:30 a.m. and knocked. Colonel Coolidge answered the door and received the news. He trudged up the stairs to wake his son. The President recounted the night in his autobiography:
I noticed that his voice trembled. As the only times I had ever observed that before were when death had visited our family, I knew that something of the gravest nature had occurred.
He placed in my hands an official report and told me that President Harding had just passed away. My wife and I at once dressed.
Before leaving the room I knelt down and, with the same prayer with which I have since approached the altar of the church, asked God to bless the American people and give me power to serve them.
The Coolidge family – Calvin, Jr., Calvin, Grace, and John shortly before Calvin, Jr.’s death. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Grace Coolidge went downstairs to join her husband in the parlor. A Bible belonging to Calvin Coolidge’s mother, who died when he was young, was on the table. As her father-in-law, a Windsor County notary, administered the oath of office to her husband by the light of a kerosene lamp in the small (14′ x 17′) parlor, she became the First Lady of the United States.
First-hand accounts vary as to the people in the room when the oath was administered. That is understandable given the haste of the activity, the darkness of the night, and the solemness of the occasion.
On that night, Grace Coolidge, a charter member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Vermont, and Calvin Coolidge, a member of the Phi Gamma Delta Chapter at Amherst College, became the first President and First Lady to have been initiated into Greek-letter societies as college students.
This full size portrait of President Coolidge was painted by Ercole Cartotto. Although it is now at the Phi Gamma Delta’s Headquarters, it was originally commissioned by the Xi Graduate Chapter for the Phi Gamma Delta Club in New York City. Ercole Cartotto’s painting was dedicated on February 20, 1929, in the Club library.
Grace Coolidge in her official First Lady portrait. In it, she is wearing her Pi Beta Phi arrow. On April 11, 1924, he portrait was given to the United States by Pi Beta Phi.
If you’re ever near Plymouth Notch, Vermont, you can stop by and see the room where Grace Coolidge became First Lady by the light of a kerosene lamp. Or if you’re near Northampton, Massachusetts, you can stop at the Forbes Library where there is a display of Coolidge memorabilia.
Thurman Munson, an initiate of Delta Upsilon at Kent State University, was a baseball catcher. He spent his entire 11-year MLB career playing for the New York Yankees. He won Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards. Munson died in a plane crash on August 2, 1979.
Delta Upsilon presents the Holtz-Munson Award of Merit in sports to members who have “exhibited excellence or notoriety in their profession.” It was first awarded in 2015 and is named to honor Munson and football coach Lou Holtz, also an initiate of the Kent State chapter.
The United States Women’s World Cup Soccer Team has at least four sorority women on it. There are two Stanford University Kappa Kappa Gamma members on the team as well as two Stanford Kappa Alpha Thetas.
They sorority women on the team are:
Sophia Smith, Kappa Alpha Theta
Naomi Girma, Kappa Alpha Theta
Kelley O’Hara, Kappa Kappa Gamma
Alana Cook, Kappa Kappa Gamma
Two Thetas interview each other
Below is a list of college and university presidents who are sorority women. I crowdsourced the list on the Focus on Fraternity History facebook page. If you have additional names, please let me know and I will add them.
Madeleine Wing Adler, Ph.D., President, West Chester University (1992-2008), Delta Delta Delta
Ann M. Amore, Ph.D., President, Rosemont College (2001-2005), Gamma Phi Beta
Roslyn Clark Artis, J.D., Ed.D., President and C.E.O., Benedict College (2017-present), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Jahnae Barnett, Ph.D., President, William Woods University (1990-2021), Alpha Omicron PI
Gretchen Bataille, Ph.D., President, North Texas State University (2006-2010), Alpha Chi Omega
Vernell Bennett-Fairs, Ed.D., President, LeMoyne Owen College (2021-present), Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Mary McLeod Bethune, Bethune-Cookman University (1923-1942, 1946-1947), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Judith Bonner, Ph.D., University of Alabama (2012-2015), Delta Gamma
Sarah Gibson Blanding, Vassar College (1946-1964), Kappa Kappa Gamma
Martha Burger, MBA, Oklahoma City University (2018-2021), Delta Gamma
Johnetta Cole, Ph.D., Spelman College (1987-1997), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Ada Comstock, Radcliffe College (1923-1943), Delta Gamma
Deborah L. Ford, Ed.D., University of Wisconsin- Parkside, 2009-present,Chi Omega
Gail Fullerton, Ph.D., San Jose State University (1978-1991), Chi Omega
Elizabeth Garrett, Ll.D., Cornell University (2015-2016), Chi Omega
Glenda Baskin Glover, J.D., Ph.D., Tennessee State University (2013-present), Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Also serves as International President of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Karen Holbrook, Ph.D., President, Ohio State University (2002-2007), Gamma Phi Beta
Danielle R. Holley-Walker, J.D., Mount Holyoke College (2023-), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Sue Ann Housman, Ph.D., Monmouth College (1994-1997), Pi Beta Phi
Frances Lucas-Taucher, Ph.D., Millsaps College (2000-2010), Delta Gamma
Tisa Mason, Ph.D., President, Valley City State University (2014-2017), Fort Hays State University (2017-present), Sigma Kappa
Shari McMahan, Ph.D., Eastern Washington University, Delta Delta Delta
Kelly M. Miller, Ph.D., Texas A&M Corpus Christi (2017-present), Alpha Gamma Delta
Peggy Gordon Miller, Ph.D., South Dakota State University (1998-2006), Chi Omega
Charlotte Morris, Ph.D., Tuskegee University (2021-present), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Shirley C. Raines, D.Ed., University of Memphis (2001-2013), Zeta Tau Alpha
Judith Rodin, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (1994-2004), Delta Phi Epsilon
Cheryl B. Schrader, Ph.D., Wright State University (2017-2019), Gamma Phi Beta
Mary Karsten Surridge, North Park University (2018-present), Gamma Phi Beta
Ivy Ruth Taylor, Ed.D., Rust College (2020-present), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Lori White, Ph.D., DePauw University (2020-present), Sigma Kappa
Nancy Lusk Zimpher, Ph.D., Chancellor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1998-2003), President, University of Cincinnati (2003-2009), Chancellor SUNY (2009-2017), Kappa Alpha Theta
Chellie Stevens (Wright) was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, but her family moved to Trinidad, Colorado, where she spent her youth. At the University of Denver, she became a member of Gamma Phi Beta. Although she was not a member of the Theta chapter charter class which was installed on December 27, 1897, she was initiated in 1899. She was a collegiate delegate to the 1900 convention held in Evanston, Illinois.
An article about the history of Theta chapter in a 1911 Crescent states she pledged in September 1898. However her fiftieth honors did not come until 1952 when she was identified as a 1902 initiate. She and Lindsay Barbee, a very important Gamma Phi, were members of the same chapter at about the same time and members of the Denver Alumnae chapter.
She married Frederick Richter Bright on October 19, 1904 in Trinidad, Colorado. A daughter, Chellie Stevens Wright, Jr., was born on August 7, 1905.
Chellie Stevens Wright was a charter member of P.E.O. Chapter J, Trinidad, Colorado, and the chapter’s first recording secretary. After her marriage, the Wrights moved to Denver and she was again a charter member of a P.E.O. chapter. This time it was Chapter AS, Denver, Colorado, and she served as its first president.
Wright made time for both P.E.O. and Gamma Phi. She served as president of Gamma Phi’s Denver Alumnae Chapter and she was president of the Board of Directors of the Gamma Phi Beta lodge. Her daughter was a 1926 initiate of the Theta chapter of Gamma Phi Beta. The chapter members affectionally called her, “Chellie Junior.” Fred Wright, a lawyer by day, was a musician who played the organ at church. It was said that his daughter inherited his musical abilities. Chellie Junior died suddenly in 1928.
Wright was president of Colorado State Chapter of P.E.O. She then served on the Board of Directors of The P.E.O. Record. She joined the executive board of the Supreme Chapter, as International Chapter was then known, and served as President of Supreme Chapter from 1937-1939.
It was during her tenure as International President that her husband died in 1937. She was on P.E.O. business in Houston when he passed away quite suddenly.
Fort Collins Coloradoan, December 17, 1937
A Gamma Phi sister described her thusly, “Sparkle, quickness and adaptability that have so characterized her in the various activities in which she has engaged since her graduation.”
Wright died in 1964. Cottey College, the institution of higher education owned by P.E.O., is located in Nevada, Missouri. Chellie Stevens Wright is honored with the name of the snack bar being the Chellie Club. It is located in the Center for Campus Life.
The Cottey College website had this quote from Wright. “There will always be two days in my P.E.O. life that will stand out as extremely happy ones….They are October 19, 1938, when the cornerstone was laid for P.E.O. Hall, and March 25, 1939, when the building was dedicated.”
Focus on Fraternity History