My William and Mary Tour -- Stop 13: Kappa Kappa Gamma House
I didn’t know anything about sororities and fraternities – the “Greek System” -- when I went to college. My older brother Ken was the first person in my family (going back generations) who went to college, and he went to a college that did not have a Greek System. Early in my first semester, however, I became aware of the college sororities and fraternities.
Back then, “rush” (the recruitment process) didn’t occur until second semester, so I was able to spend some time looking around and figuring things out before I decided whether to join a sorority. Casual contact with members of a sorority was strictly regulated – members could talk to me and we could hang out, but any conversation about the sorority was prohibited. The “actives” were not allowed to visit the freshman girls in their dorms, and the freshmen girls were not allowed to visit the upperclass dorms. It was considered “dirty rush” and the sorority could be sanctioned for violating these rules. Despite these restrictions, I was able to get to know some of the girls in various sororities, and began to think about joining one of the groups. (I’m going to call them “girls” in this essay, because that’s what we called them then. College “girls” didn’t become college “women” until the later.)
A side note: the first Greek organization in America – Phi Beta Kappa – was formed at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg on December 5, 1775. We know this organization now as the elite college academic honor society, but back then it had a major social component as well. Which is why it was formed in a tavern.
Back to my story.
Without getting into the details of the process, I ended up joining Kappa Kappa Gamma. I liked the girls I met -- and, let’s face it – the Kappas had a reputation on campus as a “good” sorority. By becoming a Kappa I was identifying with a particular image. The spirit of the times is evidenced by this common statement: “You dated the Tri-Delts but you married the Kappas.” You also frequently heard the phrase “as cold as Kappa” — but I digress.
Here’s a picture of my sorority “pledge class” – the girls I joined Kappa with in January of 1966.
Here’s a little about the history of this organization.
The first chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded at Monmouth College, New Jersey, in 1870. There are currently about 130 chapters in 41 states. Notable Kappas include Mariska Hargitay (Special Victims Unit ), Kirsten Maldonado (Pentatonix), Kate Jackson (Charlie’s Angels), Meghan Markle (!), Julia Ward Howe (she wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic), Jane Pauley (The Today Show), Kirsten Gillibrand (US Senator from New York), Lou Henry (wife of Herbert Hoover), Shelley Moore Capito (US. Senator from West Virginia), and others. I don’t think this actually means anything important but it is interesting.
The Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at William and Mary (confusingly identified as the Gamma Kappa chapter) was installed in 1923 with 12 charter members. Sororities played an important role in helping women integrate into W&M after the university began accepting women in 1918. The Panhellenic sororities that are on campus today - Alpha Chi Omega, Chi Omega, Delta Delta Delta, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Pi Beta Phi, and Phi Mu - were safe spaces for women on this campus in a time where there were few women in higher education.
Prior to 1929, sorority housing was spread out over the Williamsburg area. In the early 1920s, William & Mary purchased homes on Richmond Road to house the sororities. Over the next couple of years, a few other houses on Richmond Road were acquired for sororities. When Kappa Alpha Theta moved to Richmond Road in 1928, it joined only Chi Omega and Alpha Chi Omega in the Sorority Complex. In the spring and summer of 1929, three new houses were built that by the fall were occupied by Kappa Delta, Pi Beta Phi, and Alpha Chi Omega. The houses were the first on campus to have dining rooms, changing the nature of sorority life.
As of 2015, the Sorority Complex consisted of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Chi Omega, Chi Omega, Delta Delta Delta, Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Delta, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Alpha Epsilon Pi.
For the historical record (and because I wasn’t sure I could recreate this), here’s who lived in the house with me my senior year:
Room 201: Bobbie Henry, Linda Lacy, Linda Sundin
Room 202: Suzanne Fauber and Ann Hamilton
Room 203: Ann Morris and Sue Tarpley
Room 204: Anne Miller and Sandy Irwin
Room 205: Donnie Chancellor and Susan Small
Room 206: Judy Banks and Peggy Sothoron
Room 207: Gail White and me
Room 209: Lyn Andrew and Sandy Barrack
I have way too many memories associated with this house than I have room for here. But here are a few:
Rush Week – both as a freshman and as a member of the sorority in my last three years.
Weekly sorority meetings in room 201 (every Monday night at 7:00 pm)
Many many many meals accompanied by so much laughter. And singing. We sang a lot.
Many late-night talks in the living room. Some involved tears. Sometimes I was the weeper and sometimes I was the hugger.
Late night forays to the Highs Ice Cream store a block away. We wore raincoats over pajamas (and sometimes over nothing) to comply with the college dress code that did not permit girls to wear pants.
Carefully walking around the girls who were playing bridge on the living room floor before dinner.
Many morning line-ups for the two showers serving 17 girls.
Many curfew-driven snuggles on the porch after a date with Tim.
Parking my car in the small lot behind the house. I got to drive my car to go to my “student teaching” assignment during the second semester of my senior year. Students were not generally allowed to have cars on campus, but you could get permission to bring a car if you were doing something like student teaching and had to drive to fulfill the course requirements. In preparation for this, I bought my first car — a 1961 Plymouth Valiant during the summer before my senior year, and I drove a couple of other student teachers to my student teaching gig at Ferguson High School in Newport News.
As an interesting bit of closure, I spent my last 15 years as a teacher at Woodside High School in Newport News. Woodside was built when Ferguson closed in 1995. At Woodside, I taught with a couple of people who had been teachers at Ferguson 25 years earlier, when I did my student teaching there.
Many evenings watching Walter Cronkite at 6:30 pm. (almost always with Suzanne, who lived in room 202, and her boyfriend Ty). The Vietnam War was never far away and we were glued to the news. Some of my sorority sisters lost fathers, brothers, or boyfriends in Vietnam. One lost her husband there in 1971. Suzanne and Ty married in 1970, the year after Tim and me; Suzanne died in 2014.
To Wrap Up:
It is not accidental that my last stop is Stop 13. When we were in school here, the Colonial Williamsburg shuttle buses went down Boundary Street rather than Henry Street, where the route goes today. The bus stop on the corner of Boundary Street and Duke of Gloucester was Stop 13, and the bus driver announced the upcoming stop as “Stop 13 – Merchant Square and the College of William and Mary.” The Kappa House was the first college building you saw when you got off this bus.
One of my sorority sisters, Joyce Hill (she was a year ahead of me), a very talented musician, wrote a lot of the songs we sang at Rush and other events. One of the songs was called “Stop 13,” and as I recall, it was set to the Pinky Lee television show jingle. The jingle went, “Hello, it’s me, my name is Pinky Lee” and (as I recall) Joyce’s song went “Hello, come see, we’re here at Stop 13.” I had a license place that read “Stop 13” for a few years. I organized this entire series of William and Mary Tour blog posts so that it would have 13 stops with the last stop being the Kappa House.
Thanks for the inspiration, Joyce.