110 years of sisterhood

Today is the 110th anniversary of Zeta Tau Alpha! I love my sorority and I love thinking about how today the 9 women who founded ZTA in Farmville, Virginia met in secret and created the rituals, crest and started the sorority that has over 190,000 members in 238 chapters. It is just awesome to think these 9 women who wanted a way to make their friendship more permanent created something that is so special to so many women.

I may not have been the most active sister in college, but I love everything ZTA stands for, the history, tradition, rituals and how I am connected to so many amazing women. I realised this after being out of college and running into other women when wea

ring letters and joining an alumni group, and I want to continue to make ZTA something in my life, and not just something I was a part of in college.

I love our creed and even though memorising it was a nightmare, I think it is something special.

To realize that within our grasp, in Zeta Tau Alpha, lies the opportunity to learn those things which will ever enrich and ennoble our lives; to be true to ourselves, to those within and without our circle; to think in terms of all mankind and our service in the world; to be steadfast, strong, and clean of heart and mind, remembering that since the thought is father to the deed, only that which we would have manifested in our experience should be entertained in thought; to find satisfaction in being, rather than seeming, thus strengthening in us the higher qualities of the spirit; to prepare for service and learn the nobility of serving, thereby earning the right to be served; to seek understanding that we might gain true wisdom; to look for the good in everyone; to see beauty, with its enriching influence; to be humble in

success, and without bitterness in defeat; to have the welfare and harmony of the Fraternity at heart, striving ever to make our lives a symphony of high ideals, devotion to the Right, the Good, and the True, without a discordant note; remembering always that the foundation precept of Zeta Tau Alpha was Love, “the greatest of all things.”

-- Shirley Kreasan Strout