118 Years of Zeta Love

Happy Founder’s Day Zeta Sisters!

I can remember the morning of my initiation day like it was yesterday. I remember trying to soak up every last word. I remember hoping those moments would last a lifetime. Looking back now as an alumnae and General Advisor, I didn’t fully grasp the concept of “Zeta is Forever”. Today we celebrate the 118^th Founder’s Day of Zeta Tau Alpha and it has given me a chance to look back on how ZTA has help make me the woman I am today.

(A few pictures from my collegiate days...)

(And best of all, my composite from Sophomore year!)

Founder’s Day is one of my favorite ZTA celebrations. It’s like celebrating a birthday with over 245,000 other women! Did you know that ZTA’s Founders Day ceremony is an open ritual that anyone can witness? What a great way to show those outside our circle of sisterhood how important ZTA means to us by honoring our nine Founders and their hopes and dreams of our beloved ZTA.

My most memorable Founders Day ceremony took place at the President’s house at the University I attended. His wife was a Zeta and she graciously opened up their beautiful home for our Founder’s Day celebration. I was a sophomore at the time, and as the Treasurer on Executive Council, I had the honor of taking part in the ceremony and was selected by my sisters to read the role of our Founder, Ethel Coleman Van Name. Ethel was known to be the ideal of tolerance and justice. I can remember reading my part in the ceremony and taking them to heart. I knew right then that there was more to ZTA than just four years. I knew that I wanted to live out those words and one day aspire to be an inspiration to a collegiate member like Ethel was to me. (By the way, I still have that candle from the ceremony in my guest room!)

            As an alumna, I have learned to love ZTA more than I thought I ever could, or would, as a collegiate. The alumnae world unites women from all different collegiate chapters and brings a sense of familiarity that you can’t understand unless you are a part of it. When we get together for a fun game night or a perfectly planned progressive dinner, we act like we have been friends for ages. We act like sisters! We have a common bond that unities us all and the conversation never stops! It doesn’t matter what college team we cheered for during those four years, we all love ZTA and what it will bring us throughout our lives.

As a young advisor, I met a woman who took me under her wings and showed me how to truly mentor college women. Not only is she a charter member of her chapter, she is #1 in the book! She loves working with collegiate women more than anything. Over the years she has taught me to be true to myself and to have the welfare and harmony of each member of ZTA as a high priority. I now call this sister one of my best friends. Although we now advise for different chapters we still continue to support each other. We talk daily, looking for guidance and ideas to help support the women in our chapters. We are each other’s cheerleader and cant’ wait to brag to each other on what amazing things our chapters are doing! As an advisor, ZTA has taught me so many things, but none more than how to truly “be humble in success, without bitterness in defeat.” ZTA is so much more than just me, it’s about the women who I strive daily to help build up and mold into the brave, bright, strong women I know they all have inside of themselves. These women teach me something new every day and challenge me to strive for greatness. I can only hope that I do the same for them.

Each year on Founder’s Day, as the nine burning tapers are lit during the ceremony, we are reminded of the promise we made as ZTA’s to further the ideals that our Founders left in our care. On October 15, 1898, at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Virginia, nine young women envisioned an organization that would perpetuate their ties of friendship. I hope that I make our Founders proud. I wish that I could thank the Founders for all of their efforts and for teaching Zeta’s young and old that the foundation precept of Zeta Tau Alpha was Love, “the greatest of all things.”

Kati Mize, General Advisor