A LOOK BACK: KAPPA HISTORY
National Silhouettes at the 83rd Grand Chapter Meeting. Photo credit. 106FOTO.
an entirely voluntary, unofficial group, with no delegated powers except those granted by courtesy and common con- sent. This proposal was discussed before the local chapter and many objections now being raised were offered at the same time. However, even its opponents considered it fair to give the proposition a thorough trial. What were the immediate results? These women and girls with an unusual spirit of sacrifice and devotion to the interests of their men folk, purchased material, curtained the windows, made covers for the beds, assisted in the decorations and performed tasks of labor cheerfully and freely to which some of them were unaccustomed even at home. Rooms that were previously scantily fur- nished, cold and cheerless, were made to look more inviting; and it was due to their pioneer efforts that an otherwise curtainless, comfortless, empty house,
was made to look clean, cheerful and homelike. The Alumni Chapter found itself facing payments on the mortgage and interest, together with taxes and current expenses, that drained its treasury. At times the students residing in the house, upon whom we depended as a part of our source of revenue, were unable to meet their obligations. For a while there was great danger that the house would be sold for taxes, or that we would face a deficit too heavy for even the willing members of the chapter to carry. Again, the auxiliary stepped into the breach, and at the request of our chapter, turned over to us the contents of its treasury. Not only this, but the members of the auxiliary assessed themselves, promoted social functions through which they raised more money and kept us on our feet when we could not stand alone. At the Grand Chapter Meeting in Chicago,
in 1922, the auxiliary bore the expenses of the official reception, and its mem- bers went into the kitchen and with their own hands served eight hundred and forty people in two- and one-half hours, a service that we could not have afforded had it not been for them. The services performed for us by the auxil- iaries could not properly be requested or expected from any allied sorority however favorably disposed it might be. The financial aid extended to us was not foreseen nor even planned at the time of the submission of the plan for an auxiliary. . . . After the efficient service of the auxiliary during the Grand Chapter Meeting in Chicago in 1922, many visiting men were so favorably impressed that they personally announced their intention of following a similar plan with their own chapters. This gave rise to the organization of a number of other
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