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Founders’ Day
Anita Wray, Chapter I
Music played by Anita Wray
January 25, 1990
(Please contact the state recording secretary for the cassette tape that is part of this program)
Each January, we observe our Founders’ Day. We have often heard how seven young ladies, in the year 1869, ___ years ago, established our sisterhood on the firm foundation of faith, love, purity, justice, and truth. They could not know, those seven, not even in the far stretches of their imaginations, the expansive horizons of their dreams.
There is something legendary about the number seven. Since ancient times, it has conveyed qualities of mystery and wonder. God’s exultation of the Creation was on the seventh day. The Old Testament reports seven years of plenty, seven years of famine, and the seven years of plagues. Greek Mythology tells of seven impossible labors of Hercules and of seven daughter of Atlas who were transformed into the stars of Pleiades. In fantasy, we have traveled on seven league boots to admire the Seven Hills of Rome. We remember ancient mariners charted the seven seas. In our present age, when a call was made for volunteers in America’s space program, all were eliminated except seven, who became our first astronauts. Everyone recalls the subsequent flights of Faith 7, Friendship 7, Liberty 7, and Apollo 7.
Mary Allen, Alice Bird, Hattie Briggs, Alice Coffin, Franc Roads, Suela Pearson, and Ella Stewart in many ways were very ordinary people— people very similar to you and me. They were students involved in higher education during a time of awakening for women. They were trained to be teachers, artists, musicians; they married lawyers, university officials, ministers, bankers, and businessmen or they chose to remain unmarried. But all of the seven had a particular quality which made them very unusual, uncommon people, and it was this quality which makes P.E.O. the unique organization it has become under their original leadership. They all had a sense of the future. There is really no difference between our past and our present. The pin looks a little different now, and the Constitution certainly has changed, but the essence of love, concern and sense of sisterhood and worth—the essence of P.E.O.—remains constant.
Today we shall memorialize our Founders through music. We know that the first P.E.O. meeting was held in the music room at Iowa Wesleyan College. And history tells us that this choice of room was not at all surprising, as all had participated in musical events.
The literature of music frequently mentions stars. Therefore, today we shall remember our Founders through star songs. Our first musical selection seems particularly appropriate to Ella Stewart, who was interested in serving others through social service. I think Ella would have liked the idea that to a star it makes no difference who you are. For Ella, we will hear “When You Wish Upon a Star,” music by Leigh Harline.
(Play first selection on tape or have someone play it)
Suela Pearson is remembered as being happy and sociable. She seems the logical choice for the seventh sister who is found being sociable among the myriad of little stars. For Suela, we will hear “In the Starlight” by Glover:
“In the starlight, in the starlight,
Let us wander gay and free,
For there’s nothing in the daylight
Half so dear to you and me.”
(Play the second selection on tape or have someone play it)
Alice Coffin dedicated her life to the teaching profession. One of her students said of her that she was the kind of teacher that the girls copy and the boys silently worship. It was her privilege to guide students up the ladder of learning. Therefore, for Alice Coffin, we will hear “Star of the Seas.”
(Play next selection on tape or have someone play it )
Mary Allen was the most poised member of our founding sisters. Throughout her long years of service as a minister’s wife, she had need of that poise. Although, sometimes living in towns where there was no P.E.O. chapter, Mary remained true to our star while serving under that special star which stood over a stable in Bethlehem. For Mary Allen, we hear “Star of Wonder.”
(Play next selection on tape or have someone play it )
Hattie Briggs, we are told, was the perfect homemaker and mother, although her days were brought to a close all too soon. The star of love in her eyes brightened the home life of her family. For Hattie, we shall hear “Stars in My Eyes.”
(Play next selection on tape or have someone play it )
Alice Bird loved literature and was herself a writer. We think of poets as being in another world. It seems appropriate, therefore, to play for Alice Bird, “Star Wish” by Alec Wilder.
“Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight
Wish I may, wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.”
(Play next selection on tape or have someone play it)
Franc Roads is described as highly intelligent—advanced beyond her time in her thinking. Her daughter said that she was an inspiration to them all. The one star in the heavens which has probably been of the greatest inspiration to mankind is the evening star. For Franc Roads, we will hear “Evening Star” from Wagner’s Tannhauser.
(Play last selection on tape or have someone play it)
Out of all the clubs and groups I have belonged to, P.E.O. is the only organization I have observed that has retained the fervor of its founding, and has not deviated from its original course. But this in no way implies that P.E.O. is archaic or sedentary. Rather, our bright and gifted Founders left us a heritage that, without alteration, is capable of constant growth while remaining essentially the same.
Our Founders began P.E.O. as a way of binding themselves to each other in love; they extended that love to each new member they initiated. That love for each particular sister has passed along the chain from the Founders to each of us and it is only by our expression of love to our sisters and new initiates that P.E.O. can continue.
There is only one thing for us to keep in mind: the actions of a P.E.O. today have far more impact on the future of our group than all of the words of all of the Founders. P.E.O. is what it is today because our sisters in years past took seriously the idea that they were laying foundations in P.E.O. for us to build upon. Our sisters recite the Objects and Aims of the Founders; they look to each of us for the meaning and interpretation of those words. As Alice Bird Babb said, “Continue to read over and over our Objects and Aims, to learn to be small and modest rather than haughty and great , and above all, be kind to all—be kind.”
To become and to be a P.E.O. is to share a certain grace, a certain glory—those abiding qualities to enhance the memory of this day and the Founders’ Days of all the years.
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