Founder’s Day Celebration

One of the nation’s newest chapters of the 129-year-old Tri Delta sorority is thriving at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston. In early 2016, the Louisiana Tech Panhellenic Council selected Tri Delta to recruit potential members and colonize a new chapter in the fall of 2016.

Beginning with approximately 70 young ladies accepting bids, the Epsilon Pi Chapter of Tri Delta was formed at Tech in late 2016, and in its second full year has now grown to a 100-member-strong sorority that was recently honored at a Tri Delta Founder’s Day Celebration.

In December, a newly-chartered Ruston-based Tri Delta Alumnae chapter hosted the Founder’s Day Celebration to honor and recognize 129 years of Tri Delta, which is today the third-largest sorority in the country and one of the nation’s largest financial supporters of St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital.

Local Tri Delta alumna Lesley James arranged for the Founder’s Day event to be held at the historic T.L. James family home (circa 1884), with the decor of the home recreating an atmosphere similar to the Thanksgiving Eve in 1888 when Tri Delta founders Sarah Ida Shaw and Eleanor Dorcas Pond started the organization.

Following a collegiate chapter meeting, the current Tri Delta sorority members at Tech joined their alumnae sisters for refreshments and a formal Founder’s Day program. Julie Kyte, alumnae president, presented a reading of this year’s Tri Delta Founder’s Day Proclamation from National President Kimberlee Di Fede Sullivan.

The inaugural Tri Delta Founder’s Day celebration in Ruston closed with a traditional candle-lighting ceremony in which all 192 national chapters of Tri Delta are recognized.