On March 25, 1917, seven female Cornell University students founded Sigma Delta Tau. Their organization was originally called Sigma Delta Phi, but when they discovered the name belonged to another Greek-letter organization they changed the “Phi” to “Tau.”
Sigma Delta Tau’s founders are Dora Bloom (Turteltaub), Inez Dane Ross, Amy Apfel (Tishman), Regene Freund (Cohane), Marian Gerber (Greenberg), Lenore Blanche Rubinow, and Grace Srenco (Grossman).
There was also a male involved in the beginnings of Sigma Delta Tau. Bloom asked Nathan Caleb House to write the ritual. “Brother Nat” is the only man to honored with the organization’s gold membership pin.
SuEllen Weissman Fried attended University City High School in St. Louis, Missouri. During her senior year, she was president of the Student Council. From 1949 until 1951, she was a member of the St. Louis Municipal Opera (the MUNY, for locals) Dance Ensemble.
She graduated in 1950 and enrolled at Washington University. There, she was a member of the Modern Dance Club and a maid of honor on the Homecoming court. In September 1950, she was one of 20 women who formed Kappa Chi which in February of 1951 became a pledge chapter of Sigma Delta Tau. It was chartered as the Alpha Eta chapter on April 29, 1951. She served as her chapter’s corresponding secretary.
She married Harvey Fried, a member of Zeta Beta Tau, on June 29, 1952 after she finished her sophomore year. They would share their lives for 65 years until his death in 2018. They raised three children and are the grandparents of seven.
In 1975, Fried finished her Bachelor’s at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. She also earned a Master’s equivalency from the American Dance Therapy Association in 1996.
Fried’s passion for dance shaped her life and helped her become an advocate for children, inmates and those suffering from mental illness . She was a dance therapist for two decades. She spent 17 years, from 1961 until 1978 as a volunteer at Osawatomie State Hospital in eastern Kansas, south of Kansas City.
President Richard Nixon appointed her to his Task Force on the Mentally Handicapped in 1971. She was a consultant to the National Institute of Mental Health and the Center for the Advanced Study and Continuing Education in Mental Health.
Fried served as President of the Kansas Mental Health Association. In 1982, she founded STOP Violence, a program in which trained volunteers utilized Reaching Out From Within, a rehabilitation program, to teach prison inmates how to change their actions, thoughts and language. She is President Emeritus of Reaching Out From Within. In 1984, Sigma Delta Tau honored her with its Achievement Award and 20 years later she was named one of its Outstanding Alumnae.
She added bullying prevention to her repertoire and authored a number of books on the subject. In 2002, she founded BullySafeUSA. Fried served as President of Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA) and she has a lifetime appointment as a member of its Board of Directors. She also was a guiding force in the philanthropic partnership between PCAA and Sigma Delta Tau. She was a speaker at her sorority’s centennial celebration in 2017.
She was included on George H.W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light list. In 2015, she received a L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth Award in 2015.
