12/27/1932 – Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City. It was designed by Edward Durell Stone. Donald Deskey did the art deco interior designs. Stone attended the University of Arkansas where he was a member of Sigma Nu. In 1949, he designed the Sigma Nu chapter house as well as a 1957 addition to the house. (It is not the house the chapter lives in today). In 1982, Stone was inducted into the Sigma Nu Hall of Fame.
Stone also designed a house for the Alpha Gamma Rho chapter at the University of Arkansas. The house was never built as the fraternity commissioned another architect to do a second design.
12/27/1968 – The Apollo 8 capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. It was the first orbital manned mission to the Moon. Apollo 8 launched on December 21 and the three man crew, Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, spent Christmas orbiting Earth. They made a Christmas Eve television broadcast, the highlight of which was the reading of the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis. While a good many of the astronauts belonged to Greek-letter organizations, the men of Apollo 8 were all graduates of U.S. service academies. (For a post about the female astronauts who belong to sororities, see http://wp.me/p20I1i-le)
12/27/1985 – Zoologist Dian Fossey died at age 53. On May 3, 1953, Fossey was initiated into the Gamma Xi Chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta while an undergraduate at San Jose State University. She wrote Gorillas in the Mist, a book published in 1983; it later became an Oscar-winning film. Fossey was murdered and the case has never been solved.
12/27/2013 – The Field Gate at Mount Holyoke College is lit as it has been for decades and decades during the holiday season. The Field Gate’s official name is the Fidelia Nash Field Memorial Gateway. It was dedicated on October 9, 1912 during Mount Holyoke College’s 75th Anniversary celebration. The gate is at the main entrance on College Street, near Lyon Hall, the building which is named in honor of the college’s founder, Mary Lyon. The brownstone and wrought iron gate was a gift of Helen Field James and Joseph Nash Field to honor the memory of their mother. Their brother, Marshall Field, the Chicago department store magnate, might have contributed to the gift had he not died in 1906. (I promised a mention of the Field Gate to my daughter Simone, an alumna of MHC, and her freshman roommate, Chloe. I recently had dinner with the two of them as they celebrated 10 years of friendship. Chloe started at MHC as a softball player. When MHC cut its softball program, she transferred to nearby Smith College. Chloe remained close friends with Simone and a group of other friends who lived on the third floor of Mead Hall as freshmen. At graduation, the group all attended Chloe’s graduation from Smith and then she cheered them on their Mount Holyoke graduation. She joined them for their five-year reunion last year. That MHC bond is a very special one.)
The Field Gate at Mount Holyoke College
(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
