Gloria Tribble, Ph.D., Delta Sigma Theta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 8, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Gloria Tribble, Ph.D., was born on September 1, 1934, in Youngstown, Ohio.  A graduate of East High School, she enrolled at Youngstown State University. She would go on to earn a master’s degree at Kent State University and a doctorate from the University of Akron.

University Photograph Collection, Youngstown State University

Education was her life. She taught at schools in Monroe and Madison and her specialty was teaching a specialized reading program.

Tribble was hired by Youngstown State University where she was one of the first African Americans to teach in the English Department. She then became the first African American woman to be chair of the University’s Education Day.

A dedicated member of  Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., she served the sorority in several ways and was a role model for many. She was also a dedicated member of the National Council of Negro Women for 50 years. She was the organization’s delegate to the International Women’s Forum in Beijing, China.

Gloria Tribble, Ph.D., died Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, in San Antonio, Texas, at the age of 88. Her Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. sisters conducted an Omega Omega service for her.

 

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June Wuest Becht, Alpha Delta Pi, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 7, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.
June Wuest (Becht) was born on June 9, 1929. She loved women’s sports when women did not have many opportunities in athletics and Title IX was light years away. Attending Ritenour High School in St. Louis, she played basketball, field hockey and volleyball and graduated in 1947. She chose to attend the University of Missouri in Columbia. There she became a member of the Alpha Delta Pi Chapter.

Alpha Delta Pi chapter

Her major was Mizzou was education and her specialty was physical education. After college graduation, she taught high school P.E. at Ritenour. She became Mrs. Harvey Becht on June 13, 1953 and they settled in Olivette, Missouri. Two daughters were born to the couple.

In 1971, she began working as an instructor at Washington University specializing in women’s health. While working on her master’s she discovered her passion – the history of the Olympics, especially the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. Becht earned a master’s at Washington University in 1979. She later taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

This love of the the Olympics and the roles of women and St. Louis became a second career for her. Becht wrote articles about Olympic history, especially focusing on women and the St. Louis connection. She was in demand as a speaker and was called “one of the world’s outstanding women sportswriters and sports historians.”

The Women’s Self-Help Center in St. Louis named her its second Slats Award winner for continuing support of women in sports. The award was named for Rita “Slats” Meyer Moellering, who played with the Professional Women’s Baseball League from 1946-1949.

Becht left her collection of Olympic historical information to the State Historical Society of Missouri. The collection is about 10 cubic feet and includes correspondence, photographs, newspapers and lesson plans.

June Wuest Becht died on January 2, 2014 at the age of 84.

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Mignon Talbot, Ph.D., Kappa Kappa Gamma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Paleontologist Mignonnette “Mignon” Talbot became a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at the Ohio State University in 1889. She followed her sister Ellen “Nellie” into the chapter. She earned Phi Beta Kappa honors.

From 1894-1900, Talbot served on Kappa’s Grand Council as Grand Registrar. In 1913, a reflection that she wrote appeared in The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma with this sentiment, “Since I am writing for the ‘old girls’, those who knew me in what I call ‘the good old days in Kappa’, I am going to be personal and write about myself as I should want other ‘old girls’ whom I know to write about themselves.”

She told about the years in between her service on Grand Council and the writing of the letter to the “old girls”. Her parents died with days of each other in 1899. From 1900-1902, she “continued to teach in the high school in Columbus, Ohio, at the same time carrying on graduate work at the State University and keeping up a home for my brothers.” Talbot doesn’t likely know it, but her words in the Kappa magazine rebutted this snarky value judgement entry I found on wikipedia when I started researching her (“Born into the upper-middle class with her maternal grandfather being a doctor and her father being the superintendent of a school for deaf children, she had the opportunities to pursue a post-secondary education and further a career in academia.”)

Talbot added, “In the fall of 1902 I worked in paleontology, entirely, at the University and after Christmas went to Yale and took up work under Professor Beecher along the same lines. Most of that summer and all of the next year and much of the following summer was spent on the work for my doctorate which was received in June, 1904 at Yale.”

She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in geology from Yale and was also the first woman to be admitted to the Paleontological Society. She finished her entry with:

After four or five weeks in camp (my ordinary summer recreation), I went to Mount Holyoke College to take charge of the department of geology. The ordinary advancements through the ranks up to that of professor followed automatically. For six years I was alone in the department but for the last three years I have had an instructor associated with me. My sister was at Mount Holyoke before I came and for the last two years my young brother and his family have also been here.

Of her life in South Hadley she said it had:

run along with a scarcely a ripple, an extremely busy life as all who are in the profession of teaching must know. As for ‘going into the world and accomplish something’ I fear that I cannot claim to have done that. I am nothing but an ordinary college instructor, aiming to give the girls who are under me something more to take away with them than simply book-knowledge, aiming to teach them to think for themselves, seemingly a hard thing to do, due in part, I think, to the fact that they have so little contact with the masculine minds of their own age, (you can see that I do not believe very thoroughly in colleges for women only) aiming also, as every one who teaches my subject must, to fill our minds with wonder and awe and the greatness of work which the Creator accomplished in the formation and development of our earth and with high appreciation of His great foresight and love in so bountifully providing for his creatures a world which seems to be so perfectly adapted to their needs.

In 1910, Talbot made a very big discovery in the fertile area where Mount Holyoke is located:

One small addition to science I have had the good fortune to make. Over two years ago I chanced to stumble upon an almost complete fossil skeleton of a dinosaur, one of the extinct reptiles which belonged to the Triassic period, a reptile that roamed through this beautiful Connecticut valley in days when its topography was very different from what it is now, so different that we probably should not recognize it could we see its picture. This fossil proved to belong to no known genus and I therefore published its description under the name Podokesaurus holyokensis. My regular work has left little room for research and that is the only research work I have done since leaving Yale.

The dinosaur Talbot found was described in a 1911 publication. She was the first woman to discover and name a dinosaur that was not a bird. In 1917, the Museum at Mount Holyoke burned to the ground and almost all of the specimens were destroyed including the dinosaur Talbot found. Replica casts of it still exist. The Podokesaurus holyokesis, however, became the official state dinosaur of Massachusetts. Podokesaurus holyokesis is said to mean “swift-footed lizard of Holyoke.”

She spent her entire teaching career, 31 years, at Mount Holyoke retiring as chair of both Geology and Geography in 1935.

In her 1913 letter to her Kappa friends, she added:

Going back to Kappa, at no time have my sister and I been the only members of the Fraternity on the campus. Winona Hughes of Beta Gamma, Margaret Stecker of Psi, and Eleanor Hunsdon of Beta Epsilon have all been here and much of the time there has been one student, at least. Once or twice a year we manage to get together and  have a Kappa meeting with members of the faculty and students from Smith College, and ‘Goodnight, my sister, ere we part’ is sung by a dozen or so voices, carrying us back to the ‘good old days in Kappa.’

One would hope that those Kappa meetings kept on going through the decades. Mignon Talbott died on July 18, 1950.

Kappa Kappa Gamma Memorial Service, July 13, 1952

 

 

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Jan Tholen Saab, Sigma Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.
Sometimes five women sitting around a kitchen table can start something that becomes much bigger than anyone could have anticipated. The Women’s Community Foundation (formerly Women’s Community Fund) began in 2000. In the ensuing 23 years nearly $400,000 in grant funding has been awarded to non-profit organizations which serve Harvey County in Kansas.

One of the women around that table was a Tri Sigma. Today there is a named endowment with the Women’s Community Foundation that has her name on it. Jan Elizabeth Tholen Saab was born in Winfield, Kansas, on October 30, 1944. She grew up in Emporia and graduated high school with honors. While at Kansas State Teachers College (now Emporia State University), she became a member of Sigma Sigma Sigma and she served as an officer of the chapter. Her degree in elementary education was earned in 1966.

Emporia Gazette, May 1, 1964

She married Fred Saab on December 27, 1966. She taught sixth grade for a few years before taking a break to raise three children, a daughter and two sons. Saab earned a  master’s degree from Wichita State University in 1987. For 19 years, she taught English at Newton High School.

A lifelong reader and a dedicated volunteer, Saab was the 2003 Woman of the Year in Education and the overall Woman of the Year that same year. After her retirement in 2004, she served as a substitute teacher. Saab died on February 14, 2012 at the age of 67.

In 2013, the Women’s Community Foundation membership created its first endowed fund in memory and honor of Jan Elizabeth Saab, one of its five founding members.

 

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Mary Wickes, Phi Mu, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 4, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Mary Wickes was born Mary Isabella Wickenhauser in Saint Louis, Missouri, on June 13, 1910.  She graduated from Beaumont High School at the age of 16. Her family home was a stone’s throw from the Washington University campus. Being an only child and a young entering freshman may have contributed to her college choice selection. 

The home in which the Wickenhauser family lived on Pershing Avenue in St. Louis

While at Washington University, she became an initiate of Phi Mu. She was also a member of Mortar Board, National Collegiate Players and Zeta Phi Eta, a national professional dramatic society. She was active in Thyrsus Club productions and comedy roles seemed to be her forte. After graduation in 1930, she was hired as an assistant publicity director in the university’s news bureau.

She attended the Phi Mu’s 1929 convention as a collegian and the 1931 convention as an alumna. She served on the staff of the convention daily newspaper, The Phi Mu Star. She also served on the editorial staff of The Aglaia and was a contributor to Banta’s Greek Exchange. 

1929 Phi Mu Star convention newspaper

The January 1935 issue of The Aglaia of Phi Mu

Wickenhauser appeared 104 times as an amateur in Washington University and Little Theater of Saint Louis productions. She often wrote sketches for the Little Theater Players. A dentist saw some of her work and she was commissioned to write a pageant for the 75th anniversary of the Washington University dental school.

St Louis Star and Time, November 27, 1931

She turned professional in 1933, according to an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Her first professional role was for the Casey Players was in Reunion in Vienna. The performance took place in the Shubert Rialto Theater.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 23, 1933

She first went to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1934 after being persuaded to make the trek by F. Cowles Strickland, who directed her on some Little Theater plays. She was successful in her attempt at summer stock and she made it to Broadway that fall. In October, it was announced in a Saint Louis newspaper that she accepted a role in The Farmer Takes a Wife as an understudy to Margaret Hamilton. It was mentioned that she would act under the name “Mary Wickes.”

At the 1940 Phi Mu convention she was awarded the Phi Mu national dramatic award. That November, on a trip home to visit her parents and appear in a local production, she was the guest of honor at a tea given by her chapter. In 1948, she was a special guest at the Founders’ Day celebration held by the Los Angeles alumnae chapter.

St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 6, 1940

She worked in radio with Orson Welles, appeared in films and then began appearing on television in 1949. Wickes played a variety of characters. Lucille Ball was a good friend of hers and she played a variety of guest roles on I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here’s Lucy. For a montage of Wickes‘ movie roles view this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2TMDL-WU0

St. Louis Star and Times, March 28, 1941

Wickes came home to St. Louis to visit her parents and often visited the Wash U campus. Adele Starbird, who served as Dean of Women, told of one of Wickes’ visits in a newspaper story.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 25, 1947

In 1955, Wickes was awarded a Wash U Distinguished Alumni Award. An honorary doctorate followed in 1969. She did stints an an artist-in-residence and guest lecturer and she rode in the 1986 Homecoming parade. The university remained a constant in her life.

Wickes died on October 22, 1995 at the age of 85 and is buried in Shiloh, Illinois. The grave marker does not mention her stage name and is a simple stone with her given name.

Washington University was the beneficiary of a $2 million bequest to establish the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts. The University archives contains many items pertaining to her time as a student and her career in New York and Hollywood. In 2004, she was inducted posthumously into the Saint Louis Walk of Fame.

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Irma Ginsberg Kalish, Phi Sigma Sigma, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Irma Ginsberg (Kalish) served as treasurer and archon (president) of the Phi Sigma Sigma chapter at Syracuse University.  She was also valedictorian of the December 1945 graduating class and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Irma Ginsberg was the chapter correspondent. This appeared in the March 1944 issue of The Sphinx.

Her writing career began early in her life. She created the Ginsberg Gazette when she was a child, and as she later commented that it contained all the news she could spell. She loved to write, but one of her Syracuse professors told her she would never be a writer. She refused to let his remarks come true and they became the impetus for her success as a writer.

After graduation, she headed to New York City where she was hired by a romance story magazine. Denise Austin was the pen name she used to write a few stories which appeared in the magazine. Later on, she wrote two mysteries with Naomi Gurian under the pseudonym Cady Kilian.

In 1948, she married Austin “Rocky” Kalish and they moved to California. Among their first gigs out west was writing for the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis radio show. When the comedy pair moved to television, so did the Kalishes. 

Together they wrote more than 300 scripts. Among the shows the couple worked on were the Ray Milland Show, Gunsmoke, F-Troop, The Brian Keith Show, My Favorite Martian, My Three Sons, Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie, the Bob Newhart Show, Too Close for Comfort, Maude, All in the Family, Good Times, Family Affair and The King and I. Irma was one of television’s first female producers. During her stint with Good Times, she took the title of first woman to serve as producer and then executive producer of a television series.

Irma Kalish was one of the first presidents of Women in Film and received its Founders Award. She was on the board of the Motion Picture and Television Fund for more than 25 years and also served as a vice president and longtime board member of the Writers Guild of America (West) and received the organization’s Valentine Davies Award and Morgan Cox Award.

In the late 1990s, Syracuse University awarded her the George Arents Pioneer Medal, its highest alumni honor. The University also bestowed upon her an Honorary degree in 2007.

The couple was married for 68 years until Rocky’s death in 2016 at the age of 95. On September 3, 2021, Irma died at the age of 96. She left Syracuse University a $25,000 gift to help support an artist-in-residence component of the Center for the Study of Popular Television. She also donated 14 linear feet of scripts and videos to the University libraries and special collections.

 

 

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Mynelle Westbrook Green Hayward, Kappa Delta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 2, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Mynelle Westbrook (Green Hayward), horticulturalist and garden enthusiast, was born in 1902 in Kentwood, Louisiana, and moved to Jackson, Mississippi, when she was a young child. She attended Mississippi State College for Women and Millsaps College. In 1920, she became a member of Kappa Delta at Millsaps.

The Millsaps chapter update in a 1921 Angelos of Kappa Delta noted that she and a few of her friends were:

just staying at home (Jackson) and enjoying life. Being young in years and Kappa Delta life, they are more a part of the active than the alumnae chapter but belong practically to both. Mynelle expects to go somewhere to study art after Christmas.

It does not appear that she went anywhere to study art after Christmas. She married Joseph C. Green in 1922 and they had two daughters, Gwynn, who became a Chi Omega, and Jonelle. The family lived in the home they called Greenbrook. It was near Mynelle’s parents’ home, Westbrook, built in the 1920s with Mediterranean features. She began planting and tending gardens on the seven acres of property where both homes were located. The property took on the name Mynelle’s Gardens.

In the 1920s, she along with her mother Alice Westbrook, established Greenbrook Flowers, a business still operating today in Jackson.

Joe Green died in 1947 at the age of 50. Harold “Hal” E. Hayward of Evanston, Illinois, became her husband on September 11, 1948. The ceremony took place at the bride’s home in Jackson. Dr. William B. Selah of the Galloway Memorial Methodist Church married the couple in front of the mantle decorated with magnolia leaves and gladioli along with green and yellow chrysanthemums. The bride chose a green wool suit as her bridal outfit and wore a coral hat of coral trimmed with feathers. The couple lived in Evanston after the marriage, but at some point they made their way back to Jackson. Hayward, a Sigma Chi at the University of Illinois, died on September 16, 1980.

Mynelle was described in a newspaper article as “small, dark and extremely pretty woman whose vivacity and charm can never be captured by a camera. Brimful of energy and effervescing with enthusiasm, her animation and interest sparkles in her eyes, vibrate in her voice and explode in the quick motions of her head and hands.”

In 1953 she opened gift shop called Mynelle’s, in Jackson. She helped found the City Beautiful Commission, which is now Keep Jackson Beautiful.

Clarion–Ledger, May 14, 1954

Clarion-Ledger, August 5, 1956

She had an intense interest in horticulture and served as a national judge for the Camelia Society.  A member of the Hemerocallis Society, she also served as chair of the International Hemerocallis Society. In addition she was a hybridizer of rare day lilies; her most famous daylily was the starfish, which won a national award in 1980. She taught floral designed and appeared on television speaking about it.

Clarion-Ledger, May 25, 1956

Although Mynelle Gardens was often used for charity functions in the 1940s, it was opened to the public in 1951.  In 1973, it was deed to the City of Jackson and became a public park.

Clarion Ledger, April 6, 1969

Mynelle Day September Fest took place on Sunday, September 30, 1990. It marked the      17th anniversary of the gardens being sold to the city. Mynelle Westbrook Green Hayward died on August 26, 1994 at the age of 92.

In 1990, she talked about her love of horticulture, “Plants are like friends – they are, they are – and very good ones, too.” She added, “I was born loving plants, I didn’t mind dirty hands.” Mynelle’s legacy, her gardens, remains a part of the Jackson community.

Photo courtesy of Janie Fortenberry http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com

Photo courtesy of Janie Fortenberry http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com

Photo courtesy of Janie Fortenberry http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com

Photo courtesy of Janie Fortenberry http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com

Photo courtesy of Janie Fortenberry http://southernlagniappe.blogspot.com

 

 

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Elva L. Bascom, Kappa Alpha Theta, #NotableSororityWomen, #WHM2023

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Elva Bascom enrolled at Lake Erie College before she entered Alleghany College in 1890. There she became member of Kappa Alpha Theta’s Mu chapter.

She won the Arlie Mead Thoburn Essay Prize in 1893, graduated in 1894 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa when the chapter was chartered on the campus in 1904. She had been active on the college publication, The Campus. After graduation in 1894, she started working in the editorial offices of the Chautauqua Century Press in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Bascom loved books and library work interested her. In 1899, she went to Albany, New York, to study at the New York State Library school where she received a degree in library science. She remained at the state library editing and indexing publications. Two years were spent working on the American Library Association Catalog which was published in 1904.

In 1908, she was named editor of the ALA Booklist, the associations list to help librarians pick out books to purchase. A Theta who interviewed her for an article noted that Bascom had “to personally read 100 or more books a month and had to be responsible for every comment made.” When the work was transferred to Chicago in 1913, she chose to remain in Wisconsin as the head of book selection of the Wisconsin Library Commission.

In 1913, she wrote a manual, Book Selection, that was used in library schools to train librarians. The book was revised several times.

From Wisconsin she went to the University of Texas where she organized a library school. The January 1924, Kappa Alpha Theta included this note:

The Texas library association program for its 1923 meeting, San Antonio, November 26-28, sounds interesting even to a layman, and we note that for the year just closing this association has had as its energetic and inspiring president, Miss Elva L. Bascom, Mu , chairman department of library science at the University of Texas, and also chairman for Kappa Alpha Theta’s memorial alcove in DePauw University Library.

Bascom belonged to an alumnae chapter wherever she lived. It was said, she “never let her engrossing library duties keep her from gatherings of both college and alumnae chapters.” She and Theta Grand Council member L. Pearle Green were long time friends having met at the New York State Library School. They even shared a birthday.

She wrote an article in the magazine. It focused on the field of library work. According to Bascom, “The girl who is fortunate enough to possess good health, good sense, good education, enthusiasm, executive ability and personal charm – or a ‘pleasing personality’ – has the open sesame to anything the library profession has to offer to women – provided she is willing to work, and work hard.”

After six years on the University of Texas project, the budget was cut and she severed her relationship with the school and moved to Pittsburgh.  There in 1925, she joined the library school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She compiled a list of 500 books for a Kappa Alpha Theta chapter house library and made this comment:

To select five hundred books for any group as large and as varied as our Kappa Alpha Theta chapters is a task that no one can envy the selector. The result will satisfy no one as a whole; no lit ever does, just as no anthology of poetry ever satisfies a poetry lover. But please do not criticize the list because it does not contain a books that was published after its compilation – which was the first criticism that arrived after the 200-title list was printed in 1933. Whatever may be lacking – and a great many good books are not here (500 is 500, after all, and there are thousands of good books) – here are books worth reading.

Pittsburgh Press, October 18, 1936

Ella Bascom’s last gig as a librarian began in 1937. She served at the Sunday School of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, Ohio. She died in Cleveland in 1944.

 

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Crowdsourcing a New Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities

Posted on February 2, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

William Raimond Baird published the first edition of Baird’s Manual of American College Fraternities in 1879.

Baird’s death, others took on the job of editing Baird’s Manual. The twentieth and last edition, edited by Jack Anson, Phi Kappa Tau, and Robert F. Marchesani, Jr., Phi Kappa Psi, was published in 1991. It’s a very large book (8.5 x 11 x 2.5) and if another edition were to be published, it would likely have to be twice the size, what with the changes that have taken place in ensuing three decades. Moreover, it would be outdated before publication.

The 1991 Baird’s

But there is a resource for those ruing the lack of a modern Baird’s Manual. Carroll Lurding, Delta Upsilon, made his hobby the study of fraternities and sororities. For decades he painstakingly researched the local groups which became national organizations. He kept track of the changes that have happened in the fraternity and sorority world since the last edition of Baird’s was published in 1991. He expanded on information offered, including the names of local organizations which became chapters of fraternities and sororities.

The Almanac has several sections. These include:

the evolution of the fraternity and sorority system

founding dates, chronology

a list of the founding institutions

largest organizations by decade.

The organizational listing is divided into three sections:

Men’s

Women’s

Co-ed

In each section, there is a listing of the manner in which an organization evolved. Information includes the name of a local if that is how it was founded, when it became a part of the organization and the chapter identifier, as well as any time the chapter may have been inactive. There is also a section dedicated to organizations which are no longer active.

The institutional listing encompasses more than 1,000 North American higher education institutions. It includes information about the institution’s founding, the status of housing for fraternal organizations and the chronology of the chapters. The men’s groups are listed first, followed by the women’s groups and then the co-ed organizations. Organizations that are in bold-face type are currently active on campus. There is also a section for more than 100 institutions which no longer exist.

Please help publicize this important resource and help us update it. There is a mechanism to send updates if you find any errors.

Here is what the landing page looks like.

 

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“The Duchess” on Kappa Alpha Theta’s Founders’ Day

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Kappa Alpha Theta was founded on January 27, 1870.  In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie McReynolds Locke [Hamilton] was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana.  Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision.  She later said of her time as a student, “We were all refined, good girls from good families, and we realized somehow that we weren’t going to college just for ourselves, but for all the girls who would follow after us – if we could just win out.”

The daughter of Dr. John Wesley Locke, a mathematics professor, she was a formidable student.  During her sophomore year, Locke received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge.  The badge did not come with a dating arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity.  When Locke declined the badge because it did not come with full membership rights and responsibilities, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter substituted a silver cake basket, inscribed with the Greek letters “Phi Gamma Delta.”  With encouragement from her father, a Beta Theta Pi alumnus, and her brother William, a Phi Gamma Delta, Locke began plans to start her own fraternity.  She and Alice Allen, another female in the first coeducational Asbury class, studied Greek, parliamentary law and heraldry with an eye towards founding a fraternity for women.

An early Kappa Alpha Theta badge (courtesy of Kappa Alpha Theta)

On January 27, 1870, Locke stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written.  She then initiated Alice Olive Allen [Brant], Bettie Tipton [Lindsey], and Hannah Fitch [Shaw].  Five weeks later, Mary Stevenson, a freshman, joined the group.  Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870.

Virginia Marmaduke joined Kappa Alpha Theta while a student at the University of Iowa. She was born in Carbondale, Illinois, on June 21, 1908. At the age of ten, her family relocated to Chicago. A teacher encouraged her to write and that lead her to Iowa City and the university. She did not graduate as she married Harold E. Grear in April 1930. His parents  owned the Herrin Daily Journal, a newspaper in a southern Illinois town. For 13 years, until she and Grear separated, Marmaduke wrote most of the stories in the newspaper, although few had her by-line.

In 1943, she moved back to Chicago, where she was hired by the Chicago Sun. Marmaduke told the editor she wanted to cover news, not the topics of the “women’s pages” – fashion, cooking, and social events. She had moxie and managed to get the scoop before others on important news stories including the beheading of a six-year-old girl. The term “Duchess” came about because the editor said that “Miss Marmaduke” was a mouthful to shout across a crowded newsroom. The moniker stuck.

After she was featured on This Is Your Life television show, she hosted programs on radio and tv.

April 26, 1953, The Pantagram, Bloomington, Illinois

January 31, 1954, The Pantagram, Bloomington, Illinois

One of those shows was called “Coffee with the Duchess.” Marmaduke was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame. After she retired, she moved to southern Illinois and lived in a log cabin that had been in her family for generations. She became a staunch supporter of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the region, and she died in 2001. .

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