How in the world can it be 50 years? I was initiated into Pi Beta Phi on January 20, 1976, but it seems like a day or two or maybe a week before yesterday.
I was a first generation college student, the daughter of an immigrant, my high school was lower middle of the road and I had no one I could turn to for figuring out anything about college. But I knew I wanted and needed to go to college. The guidance counselors weren’t of much help and I knew no one, save for the teachers in my high school, who were college graduates.
I worked on the high school newspaper and there was a two-week high school newspaper workshop at Syracuse University. I was able to get funding to go to the workshop and I fell in love with Syracuse and the campus (please note this was a summer workshop – I was also clueless about Syracuse winters). I was insistent that Syracuse was the best place for me. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t, but, then again, maybe it was. Regents’ financial aid, scholarships, loans and part-time jobs help pay my way.
When I went through recruitment at Syracuse University, it was on a whim and strictly to see the insides of the sorority houses. I had no intention of joining any group. Somehow I ended up feeling so at home at the Pi Beta Phi house. I often say it was like finding a comfortable pair of shoes – like when you try on a pair of shoes and your feet just know that it’s a great fit. And that’s how I felt in the Pi Phi house.
But when I say I was clueless about fraternities and sororities, please believe me. I had no idea. It took a long while for it to all settle in my head – that the organization survived only because of the women who did what had to be done, and did it willingly and earnestly. It took me a while to realize that every act of mine reflected credit or discredit upon Pi Beta Phi. And the knowledge that I was but one little link in a very long chain of sisterhood did not come to me in the beginning of my Pi Phi journey, but it dawned on me eventually.
Before I was initiated on that January day, 50 years ago, I remember meeting some of the local alumnae at one of our pledge meetings. It was over dinner in the dining room and I thought to myself, “How strange. Don’t these women have a life? Why are they spending a Monday night having dinner at a sorority house?” A concept like that was totally foreign to me.
Little did I know that I would turn into one of those women! After all, it turned out that the almost four years I was a collegiate member pale in comparison to the 46 I’ve been an alumna.
I fell in love with the history of my chapter by looking through the old histories and the bound Arrows that were in the archives. I loved nothing more than to take one of those bound Arrows and sit in the second floor “smoker” and read (smoker was the term for the second floor landing with its sofa, arm chairs, end tables and ashtrays).
Due to the faith placed in me when I was a member of the chapter, and in having won the International Chapter Service Award, I felt that I should and must pay that faith forward. And I have tried to do that in the ensuing 46 years.
It came full circle the other day when I opened the Winter 2026 Arrow that was in the day’s mail. There was a letter to the editor, from an alumna from my chapter. Leigh Smith Charron was the Alumnae Advisory Committee chair when I was in the chapter. She was one of the women who had faith in me.
Then came a birthday card from the Pi Phi who was my randomly assigned roommate at the 1987 New Orleans convention. It was my first convention. We were both young mothers serving on Alumnae Advisory Committees and we just hit it off and stayed in touch all these years. We touch base at Pi Phi events whenever possible and anytime I’m near Bloomington, Indiana, I try to stop in to see her. She invited me to her alumnae club’s Founders’ Day event where Golden Arrows are honored. (I do belong to a very, very small alumnae club and I am the one who plans our very casual lunch get togethers and there is no way I would even think about planning an event to celebrate my being a Golden Arrow and this dear Pi Phi friend knows that).
My Pi Phi experience shaped me in ways I could never have imagined as that clueless freshman 50 years ago. Pi Phi’s Poet Laureate and Past Grand Council member, Evelyn Peters Kyle, a 1930s initiate of the Illinois Alpha chapter at Monmouth College, wrote Loyal Ties ten years before my initiation. But its closing words ring so true to me today:
From pledge to Golden Arrow year,
These loyal ties are always here.
So think what your life might have been,
If Pi Phi hadn’t said ‘Come In!’
A magnetic nametag honoring my Pi Phi and P.E.O. affiliations, designed, stitched and finished by my daughter Simone who is also a member of both organizations.
