Yesterday
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Unprecedented sums up 2020 in a single word. We experienced a global pandemic that changed life as we know it. Businesses shut down, and gatherings of all sizes stopped because of COVID-19. Household items, like toilet paper and cleaning agents, ceased to exist everywhere in the summer months. Masks and social distancing became our “new normal.” It was all so very, well, unprecedented. Unprecedented also described the landscape in 1918-19, which is when the influenza pandemic struck. A member from Beta Chapter (Michigan) wrote about her and her sisters’ experiences in the January 1919 issue of The Crescent. Find this issue online at GPBArchives.org
Masks, quarantines, canceled events. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Members provided each other support from a distance during the influenza pandemic, and together, they got through an unprecedented time. The same is true in 2020. Members got crafty, connecting via phone calls, text messages and Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting. In 1874, E. Adeline Curtis predicted that Gamma Phi Beta would withstand the ravages of time. Our incredibly resilient members have proven this to be true over the past century.
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