19 minute read
An Interview with Nancy DeVoe — Alpha Phi’s Most Tenured Past International President
by Gina Henke
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In Memoriam
Sadly, Nancy Wittgen Burks DeVoe (Gamma-DePauw), Past International President of Alpha Phi, joined the Silent Chapter on June 23, 2022. She was a guiding star to Alpha Phi and to its members for over 70 years, and we owe her a debt of gratitude for the leadership she displayed and inspired in others.
We felt so honored to know her and to have been welcomed into her home a few months prior to her passing to conduct the interview that follows. As always, Nancy was candid, forthright, interested and full of love for the sisterhood we share. She spoke of her family, her most beloved Alpha Phi memories and more. An excerpt of the conversation we had is included here.
Nancy had strong midwestern values: she spoke her mind, she worked hard, she followed through on commitments, she was pragmatic and collaborative. Family and faith were paramount, and she loved a good joke. She led as International President. Her volunteer leadership with Alpha Phi also included service as a District Governor, time on the International Executive Board, in the role of International Executive Board Vice President of Extension, Chair of the Board of Trustees and she also led as Alpha Phi Foundation Board Chair from 1984 to 1998. Her work in both the Fraternity and the Foundation gave her unique perspective that she used to advance our sisterhood.
She understood Alpha Phi’s growth potential and the importance of honoring our past while preparing for the future. Previously our oldest living past International President, Nancy has been a beloved voice for our Fraternity and shared her love for Alpha Phi wherever she went.
After the passing of her first husband, Nancy took the reins of the family business and managed the operational needs of the company, which was a novelty in 1959. When she met her second husband, the two adopted one another’s children and led a life devoted to raising their family of seven together while honoring their roots.
Nancy’s Alpha Phi survivors include her daughters Rebecca DeVoe Brown (Alpha Lambda), Molly DeVoe Tuemler (Alpha Lambda); granddaughter Carolyn Collins (Beta EpsilonUniversity of Arizona), sister Susan Wittgen Fox (GammaDePauw), and niece Elizabeth Fox Mills (Delta Rho- Ball State). She was predeceased by her daughter Cynthia DeVoe Price (Gamma-DePauw).
Present during this interview, in addition to the author, were: Susan Brink Sherratt (Beta Beta-Michigan State), Rebecca DeVoe Brown and Dakotah Lindsay (Beta Pi-USC).
Nancy had perspective that many of us do not – cannot. Her childhood overlapped the Great Depression. Her college years brought unexpected opportunities to lead amidst male students going off to fight in World War II. When she volunteered her time with Alpha Phi, she had a front row seat to changes in our culture as well as efforts advancing racial equality and women’s rights. As our Alpha Phi International President from 1982-1986, she recognized that Alpha Phi was a business in addition to being a sisterhood. She was part of Alpha Phi’s renewed focus in the 1980s that prioritized Fraternity fiscal and operational responsibility.
Could she have ever believed that one day nearly a quarter of one million members would not only elect her as our International President and, almost 40 years later, give her a posthumous standing ovation when a video clip of her played during our 73rd Biennial Convention?
Gina Henke (GH): Tell us what you were like as a child.
Nancy DeVoe (ND): I was pretty normal and more reserved. I was really an only child until my sister came along seven years later, but I grew up with very normal parents….And we were very lucky because this was during the Depression…so I remember the people who knocked on the door and were hungry, the people that my mother fed, sitting on the back steps. Those are the kinds of things that people don’t even understand about war today.
GH: When you were growing up, did you know you would attend college?
ND: No. Young people today seem to get on a driven path, I swear, by the time they’re two, that’s what it seems like to me, but the only thing that I ever remember is that my father spent any time he could saying, “You will graduate from college. You may get married the day after, but you will graduate.” So I knew that, but I didn’t have the slightest idea which direction I was going.
GH: What was it like to live through some of those bigger moments like World War II, economic changes, etc.?
ND: Three of the young men that sat at my table in homeroom in high school were killed during World War II. And our teachers kept disappearing because they were drafted, and that was before we even were actually in war, but that’s what they’d talk about and that’s what they were prepared for. People today simply don’t understand what that experience was like.
GH: It had to have been frightening, even though everyone was experiencing it as the “norm.” That seems like such a hard thing to have to go through, especially during your formative years.
ND: My college years and all, I thought they were normal, but they weren’t. At DePauw, all the young men were gone, except the ones that were 4-F and that’s because they had a physical reason they weren’t drafted…It was after my freshman year when the sailors came in, and they were in the dormitory, Lucy Rowland Hall. It was right across the street from the Alpha Phi house. That was quite an experience because they would come out in the morning early and do their exercises and stuff right in front of the house. Over on the other side of the campus, people were being trained to be Air Force officers. One of the guys that was there, he dated the glamor girl in the Alpha Phi house, of course, and he married Shirley Temple later. He was strikingly good looking. We called them fly boys back in those days.
… And they only let the men out for a couple of hours on Sunday, so at DePauw, nobody had a car. I mean, everything was very rigid, but we didn’t know it because that’s the way things were everywhere….The sailors that were right across the street were only let out of their training for two hours. So we [Alpha Phis] all had a big meeting sitting in the big living room in the Alpha Phi house and thought now what can we do to engage them in some way. In my class we had a woman who not only was one of the beauty queens, she was also a musical genius, the one we called Barbara Ramser Reppert. She was our music director and so we just decided, because we all liked to sing ... that we would have a sing along. We all sat next to each other, the sailors and all, on the floor. We all just had the best time singing.
And that really breaks my heart that chapters don’t sing as much anymore. It really does. It gives you a lift and it’s happy.
Dakotah Lindsay (DL): Some chapters do.
Susan Sherratt (SS): Yes.
DL: It’s not totally gone!
GH: What do you recognize now as your earliest Alpha Phi memory?
ND: Oh my. Well, probably going through recruitment, rush back then, and they held it early before classes started. I had gone up as a senior in high school to stay at the Alpha Phi house because I knew two of the women there, and my parents knew their parents. I had a good time, the weekend I spent there, and when I went back up, I felt at home…and so I just was, I guess, meant to be an Alpha Phi.
GH: What were those early days like?
ND: You had to make your grades, at that time, to be initiated, so we had to go over to the Alpha Phi house every Monday night and study. And you didn’t have automatic washers and dryers then, so we had these box things, and everybody on campus had them, and you put your clothes in there and mailed them back home. A company washed them and ironed them, and then they came back a week later. And as new members we were sometimes asked to take the boxes down to the mail, which was downtown and quite a few blocks away.
But anyway, we had a wonderful house mother and I remember that the most. I remember the fact that I couldn’t wait to go over, because on Monday nights we also had dinner there, and it was so much better than the dorm food, we really looked forward to it. And everybody, everybody in the house was so welcoming and kind to us. I remember that very well, too. It just made a good impression…. When Sally [Grant] and I were there, the dining room was a bit smaller, but we had assigned places to sit, at least by sophomore year, and the social chairman did that. I was a social chairman. I used to like to speak on that, just shows that a social chairman can become international president.
SS: How many members were in your new member class?
ND: Twenty-two. Well, there were 20 to begin with, and then we were allowed to take two more. And one of them, I mean, talk about... Boy, did we do a good job, because one of them was Barbara Ramser Reppert, who was such a genius. And the other one was Barbara Blakemore, who became editor practically every woman’s magazine there was at the time.*
* Barbara began her career at Women’s Home Companion, followed by time at Collier’s and then 19 years at McCall Corporation where she was the fiction editor of Redbook She then went on to become the executive Editor at McCall’s Magazine. At retirement, she was managing editor of Family Circle
SS: Maybe they didn't go through recruitment the first time.
ND: Or maybe they didn't like their first choice? I don't know. But they were both huge additions.
SS: Huge. Again, COB (continuous open bidding), we were just talking about that this morning.
ND: Yes, absolutely. They are a great, great advertisement for COB, definitely.
DL: And you had a bunch of mortar boards in your class as well, right?
ND: Well, we had six mortar boards, and I wasn’t one.**
DL: Oh, that’s right. That’s right. ND: I got to have the party for them, because I was social chairman.
SS: Darn good party, too, right?
ND: And we were all so excited. I went back and talked to the Dean one time when I was a district governor and I said, “Well, I always felt like a failure, because I was not one of the six that had [earned mortar board distinction]”. I was a district governor at that time. I just wasn’t one of them. And she turned around, looked at me and grinned and said, “But look at you now.”
SS: The other thing is everybody grows and learns at different rates, at a different pace. And you made the most of your college education.
ND: In different ways. In ways I’d never dreamed of.
GH: Of all that Alpha Phi had brought to your life, what’s meant the most?
ND: There’s so much. It’s important at that age which is why I think Alpha Phi was successful, to be part of a group that has a purpose. Particularly, at the time that I was in college, it was the women who ran the college, because the men were all fighting the war… so it was the women who were the leaders. I wouldn’t say that I was any big leader in the chapter or anything, I was always involved, I loved it. I probably met my husband because he went to Wabash College and that’s not that far away, so there are all kinds of connections Alpha Phi has given me through the years.
But I think probably the best part, and how in the world could I not have told you this, was that my chapter advisor was Betty Mullins Jones. Now, could anybody have had a better chapter advisor? I mean, her sense of humor! The other thing is, and my children used to tell me this, is that along the way, in dealing with all the young people in Alpha Phi, it helped me really understand my own children better, and what they were going through.
Rebecca Brown (RB): I was going to say that if she didn’t.
ND: Good.
RB: Because it really did. It made her understand that we were just normal kids.
SS: From your perspective, can you talk about how Alpha Phi, over the years, started to embrace a more strategic business approach while still focusing on sisterhood?
ND: That’s when I was president. The first headquarters, they called it the Executive House….We needed an office, and I started talking with Joyce Shumway (BetaNorthwestern) who was a director we had. And we were slowly working to become more professional. It was obvious we had to, and we were growing. So, I said, “The next time you order stationary,” which would’ve been right after I was president, “just have it say ‘Executive Office’.”…Back then, there was no executive meeting room. We used the dining room table, and that was not meant to be an office table. And we used to have a board within a board. Now, we have more simplified roles for volunteers, volunteer leaders and we have a staff. The way our structure has changed has allowed us to conduct business in a better way. And the women who started joining our boards started coming from corporations with experience in topics that were important to our goals [finance, development, communications, real estate, membership, etc.].
RB: Mom doesn’t toot her own horn very well, but one of the things you have to be proud of, Mom, is starting to guide Alpha Phi to run more like a business and less like a club.
ND: Yes. I am ... But those women thought differently, and you could even tell when they came in the office. I mean when they came in, I thought, “There’s no room in there.”
Past International Presidents (front, left to right) Mary Boyd, Nancy DeVoe, (back, left to right) Sally Grant, Phyllis Selig, Linda Massie, and Mary Adams.
No, there was room. When they came, they knew how to make room. And that’s the kind of women you had to have then, to get ahead.
GH: Tell us a little bit about the evolution of philanthropy within Alpha Phi Foundation, of which you were the Board Chair for a period of time.
ND: Nancy Craig (Beta Chi-Bucknell) and I would go to meetings of the different Greek life foundations, and we, and Nancy’s the one that pointed out, “You know, Nancy, look at this. It’s the ones that are, what I call, standalone organizations, that are the most successful.” And so we started looking, and hands down, that was true. So I just remember her saying that. I took on the role of Foundation Chair and so when we got back to the Alpha Phi office, I looked at Nancy Craig and said, “Call up the attorney. We have to be incorporated in Illinois,” where the office was located. And that’s when the Foundation really began to take off. When it was its own standalone organization, it really began to thrive.
GH: During the 1970s, we saw a period when Greek life came under scrutiny. There are times when Greek life is more popular and times when it is not, and in the 70s it was not. What was it like to navigate that?
ND: “Mighty lively ghost,” wasn’t that what Betty Jones said? And she was so right. But we got through it. It wasn’t particularly an easy time, but the friendship was important. And the members. The members grew, the women grew, we grew. That’s the reason I think we, that Alpha Phi, sprung ahead, because of some other groups relied heavily on the same approach to every situation, on following what had always been done before because that was how it had always been done. They didn’t listen enough to their new members, and that can stifle progress. We’ve been lucky that we have good members who push the envelope and try new things. And our leaders have valued that.
Six collegiate Alpha Phis, Nancy DeVoe, Linda Massie and a volunteer at Convention 1998.
GH: What is the thing you are most proud of in Alpha Phi?
ND: Our constitution. There was no discrimination, from the very beginning…no stipulations or people who were not admitted based on the Fraternal constitution. All you had to do was be a woman. When universities began asking to see our constitutions because there were some groups that had pieces written in that excluded others, we said, “You have our constitution. We don’t need to change anything.” And we didn’t have to change anything. And those are the kind of things, looking back, really helped us grow, I think. And our Founders had a great advisor in Dr. Coddington.
SS: I think we can all make our suppositions, but I’m thinking, “Those women were ostracized, so he didn’t want them to ostracize anybody else,” whether or not they wanted to, but I would guess that he guided them to make sure that no one was ostracized. Because why form another secret society and then make people not welcome?
GH: What’s your favorite Alpha Phi song?
ND: Maybe the one that has the lyric, “Dear old Martha Foote Crow!” because it’s so short and so Alpha Phi. The one that the Gamma chapter always liked was the Forget Me Not, the one we sang for Betty Jones.
GH: What are some of the emotions you can recall from your service as International President?
ND: The thing that I remember the most, was after I was elected president, was walking as the last person to enter Candlelight Banquet at convention. I remember telling others who have gone onto be our President, “Cherish that,” because I did, and one of the reasons was BR was on the piano, and so when we got up close to her, then she hit the Forget Me Not song, and that was so special.
GH: What opportunities do you think exist for Alpha Phi in the next 150 years?
ND: I just want them to go on as they, being proud…and continuing on as they have. It seems to me, they are on the right track. The relationships we have are so important.
GH: Why do you think Alpha Phi has remained a driving force to empower women as leaders year after year?
ND: Leadership, the proper leadership, smart leadership.
SS: What advice would you give today’s collegiate members so they can continue to carry on the legacy of Alpha Phi?
ND: You can learn so much about leadership in Alpha Phi, and how to get along with other people. You have so many different types of personalities, people from different regions who practice different religions, a re different races, approach life differently, and so you learn inclusion and acceptance as you work together. You learn how to get along in this world. I think you learn a lot about yourself in the Alpha Phi experience.
… And we all learned from the Alpha Phis alongside us – especially from Nancy.
So, do things look different in the rear-view mirror? Different after the fact? Different as memories instead of in the moment or up ahead? Until you’ve lived it, you cannot possibly know how it feels to run to Alpha Phi on Bid Day and how it feels when you meet up with your sisters still, 20 years later.
Later in life, it’s the memories that surface when you think of what it felt like to meet your chapter for the first time that give you pause. With the perspective of time, you also consider the memories you continue to make together because we know our friends made in the springtime of our youth will be with us all our lives.
Until we live it, how would we know what Greek life can add to our lives? How could we ever understand that the people we share these formative moments with will challenge us, change alongside us and cheer us on, becoming friends and then family?
Until we’ve lived it, we only know how a sisterhood looks from the outside. Thanks to Nancy and all Alpha Phis who came before us, we all understand how a sisterhood can change the lives of the people who call it “home.”
