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Page 22
Aside from domestic duties, his law practice and lobbyist
activities, Pap became more involved running the family farm and
in other agrarian pursuits, including the purchase of Hereford
bulls. The livestock provided grist for his pen on more than one
occasion, including a memorable account of some thoroughbred
price-fixing. Pap even started thinking like a bull (or as he
imagined one of his prize studs would feel after the animal was
struck by a train).
He also found time to champion small and solvent independent
banks like the family-owned Russellville institution against
onerous government "reform" regulations during the Depression; to
promote his old alma mater, Western Military Academy; and suggest
a hospital tighten up its security after he fell victim to
thievery.
Pap wrote some family history--a poignant account of a chair that
was an heirloom, and a satirical account of his grandfather's
attempt to create a new county with Russellville as its seat of
government. That effort may have failed, but Russellville still
wound up with good credit at the Waldorf-Astoria during daughter
Joan's wedding.
OUTRAGED OVER SORORITY POWER
Excerpt from a letter Pap wrote to his mother-in-law, Mrs.
Sawyer, sometime in 1930.
. . . Joan has triumphed overwhelmingly and unequivocally.
A college sorority in my way of looking at it is a very small
matter. In college circles, it is a thing of momentous magnitude.
It is ridiculous--utterly ridiculous--that sororities should have
the hold they have and should wield the power they do . . . and
the heartbreaks they cause or bring about. . . This letter is to
be read by you and by no one else. And then it is to be
destroyed, and its contents divulged to no one. Because I am
actually ashamed that my daughter could be so influenced so
permanently by so small a thing as anybody's college sorority. . .
It happened at the time Joan entered college. As is customary, at
high school graduating time, the sororities look over the girl
graduates with a view to bidding them admission to the several
sororities. Joan was invited to a great many--among them Kappa
Alpha Theta. Kappa Alpha Theta was founded at DePauw probably 50
years ago. It was among the first of all sororities. I had a
cousin, now long since dead, who was one of the founders. In
fact, I think she was probably the most active of all of those
founders. All of my people, except Sister Margaret D. Bridges and
one cousin, were naturally Thetas. Mrs. Bridges did not go to
Depauw, but went to a girls school, Oxford, where they did not
have sororities, so that let her out. . .
Joan asked me which was the best of all. . . I told her that
Theta was best, and I felt sure she would get a proposition from
them, . . . that if I were she, I would belong to Theta or
nothing. And of course I meant it, and for that matter mean it
now. Well, that sort of talk fortified her to refuse others, and
therefore I was to blame indirectly for what happened afterwards,
because I am inclined to think if I had said nothing that she
would have joined another. . . And I did not know what
heartbreaks were in store for her. The Thetas invited her to
their "rushee" party, and things looked well. Then something
happened. I do not know what it was, but she was dropped and
never bidden into Theta . . . and so she became a barb--that is a
non-sorority girl. She was ignored so far as parties were
concerned. She did not get into the social life of the college
scarcely at all. The fraternity to which I had belonged invited
her to two or three things, and then sort of dropped her because
she had no sorority to reciprocate with. . .
In spite of this social handicap she began in a small way to make
herself felt in college circles. It became noised about by the
faculty what a fine scholar and girl generally she was. It came
to me from a thousand sources--or almost a thousand. Some of the
other and lesser sororities came to her and asked if she would
consider a proposition. By that time, she had her back up, and
she declined universally. But many is the night during these two
years when she was studying in the dining room that she would say
that this one and that sorority or fraternity were having a big
dance, or something along social lines. Blue, of course she was
blue. And discouraged and humiliated. But she is a thoroughbred.
She never disclosed it away from home. Just went about her daily
college business. Kept her scholarship and head up, however she
might be hurting inside. . .
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