History
Adelia Prichard of Oregon, a National President of Business and Professional Women's Clubs from 1923 to 1925, spearheaded the sorority's organization by proposing a national education and service sorority. In 1929 a group of community oriented women in Jacksonville, Texas drafted an organization charter. With ten signatures, a national charter was issued to ESA by the state of Missouri on February 11, 1930. The organization still functions under the original charter but is now incorporated in the state of Colorado.
Prichard was appointed the first National Director, and spearheaded the sorority's early growth. She asked prominent women from around the United States to serve as members of the Founder's Chapter and to act as advisors. The chapter included Pearl Kinman; Clara Leach; Althea Terry, State President of the Business and Professional Clubs; Susan. B. Rebhan, a State Supreme Court Judge; Florence Sterling, writer and editor; Phoebe Kerrick Warner, author and National Chairman of the Rural Women's Clubs; businesswoman Florence Crawford; teacher Daisy Birchfield; and Mary Redfield Plummer, lecturer on parliamentary law at Northwestern University. The first National Headquarters office was located in Kansas City, Missouri, with a central states divisional office in St. Louis.
Director Sybil Murphy Flaherty organized the first National Convention in 1938. Two chapters in Kansas City hosted the convention with about 60 delegatess attending. At that time, delegates set up a National Advisory Council (the forerunner of the present International Council), and elected Irene Copeland Lugland of Kansas City as the first National President.
During World War II, ESA National Headquarters sponsored an “Empty Your Purse for Uncle Sam” campaign, one of the first nationally organized activities of the organization. In this door to door campaign, members collected metal for recycling into munitions. ESA also collected books and other reading material for distribution to soldiers around the world. Local projects to assist the war effort were encouraged, and many chapters enrolled and sponsored Red Cross courses to combat local emergencies.
In 1948, an ESA chapter was organized in Voorsburg, in the Netherlands. The name of the National Advisory Council was then changed to the International Advisory Council. Since then, Epsilon Sigma Alpha chapters have been organized in Germany, Guam, Denmark, Peru, Australia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Scotland.
Read more about this topic: Epsilon Sigma Alpha
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