Tuesday, November 8, 2011

40 Kappa Delta alumni meet for "60s Sisters Reunion"

Marion Tolbert Coleman '71 of Austin wrote to share about a gathering last month of 40 Kappa Deltas from pledge classes 1964-1969, who spent the weekend of Oct. 7-9 in New Braunfels.

"They called it the '60s Sisters Reunion' and they came from 10 different states. One actually came by car, ferry, bus, plane, and car again (from San Juan Island, Wash.). Forty Kappa Deltas in all spent the weekend at the Prince Solms Inn in New Braunfels, remembering and celebrating 40-plus years of life during and since TCU days.

"Most of us had not seen each other since leaving school. Big sisters reunited with little sisters. Roommates recalled nights of laughter, helping each other climb in and out of chapter room windows after curfew, and trying to hear 'Paul is dead' when playing the White Album backwards. Pledge classes remembered their ties, the most infamous of which was when the 1968 pledge class tied their pledge trainer, Ellen Strickland Wilson '68 to the parking meter in front of radio station KLIF in Dallas. If the DJ had not decided to interview them, chances are they would not have been punished with extra months of dry pledgeship and postponed initiation. Every single one of them said it was their best memory.

"And the ladies still rock. The most surprising (and hysterical moment) was at the Saturday night dinner when our mistresses of ceremonies Darleen Williamson Nixon '70 and Lolly Squires Young '70 asked that the sister (that they knew of) who had gotten a tattoo reveal herself. Needless to say, the room went wild when not only six women stood but they were the from the earliest pledge classes in the group. There was so much laughter and there were tears.

"We have lost a few sisters, some have had tremendous challenges. At least five in attendance were breast cancer survivors. We posted sheets on the hotel front hall that folks could write on. On the one that said, Kappa Delta will always mean to me. Someone wrote, 'A springboard to who I am today' and 'A reminder that all those years ago, KD sisters believed in my worth and they still do' and on the one that read, 'This weekend will... someone said it all. It reminds me of what a gift sisterhood is, one that keeps on giving.'

Coleman hopes the reunion will hopefully inspire other women of our age in other sororities to do the same. Every one of us considers it a small miracle that we actually came together especially since there has not been an active chapter for a long time around which to rally.

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