Saturday afternoon was spent with the wonderful women of Pi Beta Phi’s St. Louis Alumnae Club at their Founders’ Day celebration. On the two-hour drive home, I realized I did not have a post written for today, Pi Beta Phi’s 147th birthday. There’s my official Historian post on the Pi Beta Phi blog (wp.me/p1CHDg-p3 ), but I wanted to post something here, too. But what? I felt like the shoemaker whose family had no shoes. How could I not know what to write about especially when I know Pi Phi’s history better than that of any other Greek-letter organization (GLO)?
Pi Phi’s founders were born between 1845 and 1850. By 1941, they were all gone. Pi Phi has pictures of them, but most were taken after they left Monmouth College. Pi Phi does not have any motion picture film of the founders. What Pi Phi does have is an old Edison wax cylinder from 1915. Founder Inez Smith Soule recorded a greeting to the Berkeley Convention, the first convention on the west coast, which took place during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Several years ago, the recording on the wax cylinder was saved to a more modern format.
After the transformation took place, I put the disk in my laptop as I sat in the Pi Phi archives. I heard a Pi Phi founder say, “Since I cannot be present to meet you at convention, I take this means to greet you one and all. I shall think of you assembled there and thus be present in spirit at least. Being present in spirit, I must greet you in spirit – the spirit of ’67. Inez Smith Soule.” What a goose bump moment that was!
That greeting was played on the first night of the 2007 convention and I know we had a room packed with women feeling the same way that I did when I heard it in the archives. Pi Phi’s links to the founders are gone; the women who met the Founders at conventions and meetings are very few in number, if any are still alive. The 1940 Pasadena convention was the last one attended by a founder. Any Pi Phi who attended that convention as a collegian would be in her 90s today. Inez’s voice is the only founder who living Pi Phis have the opportunity of hearing. The others eleven voices will never be heard. When she recorded the wax cylinder, did she know that almost a century later it would serve as a link to Pi Phi’s founding? My guess is that the thought never crossed her mind.
Monmouth College, located in northwestern Illinois about 20 or so miles from the Mississippi River, opened in 1856. Students who did not live in town needed to find lodging and board from local families. Ada Bruen and Libbie Brook, friends from Henderson County, found a room to share in Jacob Holt’s home. That southwest second-floor bedroom is where Pi Beta Phi was founded on April 28, 1867. The name they chose for their “women’s fraternity” was I. C. Sorosis. Its grip was accompanied by the motto “Pi Beta Phi.” Chapters began using the Greek letters prior to the official name change at the 1888 convention.
The twelve founders included two sisters, Emma Brownlee (Kilgore) and Clara Brownlee (Hutchinson), and their friends Ada Bruen (Grier), Nancy Black (Wallace), Inez Smith (Soule), Fannie Whitenack (Libbey), Libbie Brook (Gaddis), Rosa Moore, Jennie Horne (Turnbull), Margaret Campbell, Jennie Nicol, M.D., and Fannie Thomson.
Happy Founders’ Day, Pi Phi sisters!
The 2014 Founders’ Day celebration in the music room of Holt House in Monmouth, Illinois. (Photo by Amanda Pilger)
** If you’re wondering what Ring, Ching, Ching! is all about, please see my post on the Pi Phi blog, http://piphiblog.org/tag/fran-becque/page/8/
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© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com. 2014. All Rights Reserved.
