#dorothy shaver

[doubledaybooks]

Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor championed American designers during World War II–before which US fashions were almost exclusively Parisian copies–becoming the first businesswoman to earn a $1 million salary. 

Learn more about Dorothy Shaver and the other owmen who changed American fashion in WHEN WOMEN RAN FIFTH AVENUE by Julie Satow.

[abwwia]

Some of you might know I run social media channels under Art by Women - Women in Arts. Every so often while doing my research I come across Fashion HerSTORIES like this one.

Therefore I've decided to start a new series on my Fashion Account, dedicated to

Women in Fashion History = Fashion HerStory

Today I would love to share with you some informations about:

Dorothy Shaver

- the first woman in the United States to head a multimillion-dollar firm!

Dorothy Shaver (Jul 29, 1893 – Jun 29, 1959) was a well known leader of the fashion industry.

Shaver graduated from high school in 1910 at the age of 17. She then earned a teaching certificate from the University of Arkansas. Shaver returned to Mena and began teaching seventh grade. Her teaching career ended abruptly in May 1914, when the local board refused to renew the contracts of Shaver and three other single female teachers because they had attended an unchaperoned dance. (?!?)

In 1916, Shaver and her younger sister Elsie moved to Chicago. While in Chicago, Dorothy studied English literature at the University of Chicago.

(...) Shaver succeeded Walter Hoving as president of Lord & Taylor in 1945. She was given a salary of $110,000. This was the highest salary on record for an American woman at that time, and although it was noted by the author of an article in Life Magazine that the salary was only a quarter of what some "similarly placed male CEOs earned" [comparing it with Thomas J. Watson Sr., President of International Business Machines], the salary was commensurate with what Lord & Taylor paid its top male executives. Walter Hoving, her predecessor, was earning a salary after 10 years as chief executive of $127,015 in 1944.

In 1947, Life Magazine called Shaver "the No. 1 American career woman."' By that point, she was managing a $40 million business.

Shaver served as president of Lord & Taylor until her death in 1959. By the time of her death, sales at Lord & Taylor reached $100 million a year.

via Wikipedia

#DorothyShaver #FashionHerStory #historyoffashion #FashionIcon #PalianShow

[trombonepunk]

Little Shaver Dolls by Dorothy and Elsie Shaver

[lrandconkdors]

Just heard about an upcoming platform fighter where all the playable characters are based on public domain characters. Infatuated less with the advertised concept and more with the execution. This is no average indie fighter... it's an indie toon fighter - a sub-genre term I just coined to describe fighters where every attack is basically just a visual gag with a hitbox attached - like Darkstalkers, or Rakugakids, or Cuphead-if-you-ignore-the-part-where-it's-not-a-fighting-game. (It's a somewhat under-repped subgenre.) Instead of simply portraying these old characters as our society generally remembers them, RoyalFree uses these strange crack-cocaine caricatures, except replace "crack cocaine" with whatever drug makes the world look cuter. They made Sweeney Todd a walking electric shaver / barbershop pole with a cape and pointy teeth. You have Dorothy from Wizard of Oz as a little dog (not Dorothy's little dog from Wizard of Oz like my brain first autocorrected it to) with a command grab where she grows an elephant's trunk to grab enemies and then stabs them by sprouting giant tusks. Grade-A nuttiness on display. I used to pray for games like this.

Additional notes:

Keep an eye out during the reveal trailers and you may notice each character is apparently played by a fictional actor. I don't have any opinion on this yet. Kind of waiting to see whether they do anything with this element.

There was this movie that reimagined Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends as monsters, and this other time somebody announced a horror parody of Mickey Mouse's first cartoon feature, while the mouse's semi-publicization was still hot in the news cycle, and as a result, every video @/RoyaltyFreeForAll uploads has at least one Jeffrey commenting, "Finally 🙄, a project that turns public domain characters into anything other than horror movie garbage," demonstrating Blood and Honey has fatally wounded the way ppl think when they hear the phrase "public domain"

The inclusion of Lilith, a mythological figure who shows up in pop culture all the time, yet I needed someone to explain who she was supposed to be, reveals how much potential the public-domain toybox holds, but I don't know if this much potential is a wholly positive thing. Royal Foy'll might be destined to the same issue as MultiVersus where no matter how many characters it adds, the candidate pool is so large that everyone will still have one or two characters they would have chosen for the game.

The current reigning queen of Missed Potential by a Character's Design is Mother Goose, who is described as the ancestor of every bird ever, and employs a flock of avian-centric attacks (fave is the feather-formed crossbow). But it's a bummer that nothing in her arsenal acknowledges her being pretty much the mascot of nursery rhymes. The team forwent the endless possibilities at hand wing, and instead created an OC whose entire thing is just Being A Bird.

With the newest character revealed, Roifuri's devs have- okay that's JUST Orcane. Humanity just invented Orcane again! maybe with a bit of Ranno mixed in as well? First Marvel Rivals rips off Orcane, and now this?! Im eating it up!! more games rip off Orcane please!! anyways, my initial reaction was 'why not Moby Dick?' I questioned how they could pass up the ferocious White Whale with a Tale in favor of Shady Photograph of a Bathing Lizard.. but on second thought, that might have given Aether Studios actual grounds to sue..

To be clear, there is a lore reason as to why Dorothy is a dog, hidden in the description of her moveset guide. To make another MultiVersus comparison, it reminds me of the blurb they give Shaggy Rogers to explain why he's a Saiyan in this one. To be less clear, the official website gives a seemingly contradicting origin story for the pupper.. I also want to re-spotlight the elephant move, whose origin of existence is stated to be "it's frickin cool" and like? they're not wrong??

wait hold on, i have a thought about that "actor" thing now. Why do the actors' names, on average, sound more fictitious then those of the characters they play? "'Sweetpea' as lilith" "'Knighty Knight' as lancelot" are you listening to yourself right now??? Imagine if like uhhhh. Antonio Banderas' legal name were Dr. Dashing or sumtg and he voiced a dapper swordskitten named umm. "Ramón." like "we did the story of Ramón for our school play" "oh you have to see Ramón's Last Wish it's better than you'd think" actually now that I mention it Puss in Boots would go hard in this game. you literally couldn't mess up the character if you tried

[bucolicbook]

Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion by Nancy McDonnell 

US pub date - 8/27/24

Fashion is huge and it’s always, always around, regardless of where you are. 

Many are familiar with Dior’s New Look or his name, if little else. Or Richard Avedon.

But… 

Elizabeth Hawes?

Zelda Wynn Valdes?

Ann Lowe?

Claire McCardell? 

Marjorie Griswold? 

Dorothy Shaver?

Lois Long? 

Virginia Pope?

Eleanor Lambert?

Diane Vreeland?

Louise Dahl-Wolfe? 

Carmel Snow? 

With the exception of Diane Vreeland, these are names I was introduced to for the first time in the first chapter. Have you heard of these fashion creating women or the women who helped these fashions succeed? 

Nancy McDonnell, a fashion historian, has obviously put time into researching and bringing these women and their accomplishments into the light of the twenty-first century. 

Though I would have also liked to read more about WOC in fashion, I enjoyed this, spent a lot of time googling, and learned quite a bit. 

Recommended for anyone interested in fashion, history, 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the DRC 

[docrotten]

PIN (1988) – Episode 253 – Decades Of Horror 1980s

“Where did you learn to do that?” Learn to do what? Oh…that. Join your faithful Grue Crew – Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr along with guest host Ralph Miller – as they visit another strange twist on the ventriloquist/dummy subgenre called PIN (1988).

Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 253 – PIN (1988)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! Click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Gruesome Magazine is partnering with the WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL (https://wickedhorrortv.com/) which now includes video episodes of Decades of Horror 1980s and is available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, and its online website across all OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Isolated by his strange parents, Leon finds solace in an imaginary friend, which happens to be an anatomy doll from his father-the-doctor’s office. Unfortunately, the doll begins to take over Leon’s life, and his sister’s life as well.

  Directed by: Sandor Stern

Writing Credits: Sandor Stern (screenplay); Andrew Neiderman (based on the April 1981 novel by)

Selected Cast:

David Hewlett as Leon

Cynthia Preston as Ursula (as Cyndy Preston)

Terry O’Quinn as Dr. Linden

Bronwen Mantel as Mrs. Linden

John Pyper-Ferguson as Stan Fraker (as John Ferguson)

Helene Udy as Marcia Bateman

Patricia Collins as Aunt Dorothy

Steven Bednarski as Leon – Age 13

Katie Shingler as Ursula – Age 11

Jacob Tierney as Leon – Age 7

Michelle Anderson as Ursula – Age 5

Joan Austen as Nurse Spalding

Jamie Stern as Eddie Morris (as James Stern)

David Gow as Officer Wilson

Terrence Labrosse as Dr. Bell

Aline Vandrine as Mrs. Shaver

Joanna Noyes as Mrs. Henry

Andrew Carter as Andy

Leif Anderson as Dave

Joel Johnson as Jack

Shawn Johnson as Tim

Robin MacEachern as Richie

Jonathan Banks as PIN (voice)

Beware the anatomy doll! Ralph Miller III joins Jeff, Bill, and Chad for a look back at PIN (1988) from director Sandor Stern. The cast includes David Hewlett (Scanners II: The New Order, Cube), Cynthia Preston (The Brain, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss), and Terry O’Quinn (Silver Bullet, The Stepfather, Lost). While it struggled to find an audience upon its initial release, critics praised PIN as well-made, bizarre, and disturbing. Fangoria would later feature it in its “101 Best Horror Films You’ve Never Seen.” Now, it’s time for the Grue-Crew to revisit the film and share their thoughts.

At the time of this writing, PIN is available to stream from YouTube.

Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, moving into our Grue Believer Celebration Shenanigans month and chosen by guest host Scott Wells, will be The Queen of Black Magic (1981), an Indonesian horror film quoted as being an inspiration to modern-day Indonesian filmmakers such as Kimo Stamboel and Joko Anwar. You can check this one out on YouTube.

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans – so leave them a message or comment on the Gruesome Magazine Youtube channel, on the Gruesome Magazine website, or email the Decades of Horror 1980s podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com.

Check out this episode!

[filletedfennysnake]

thank you for the tag ollie!

La Tavola Ritonda, by Anonymous and translated by Anne Shaver

Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach

A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

The Last Knight of Albion, by Peter Henratty

Niccolò Rising, by Dorothy Dunnett

Russka, by Edward Rutherfurd

The Faerie Queen, by Edmund Spenser

The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian

tagging… @gwalch-mei @rainbluealoekitten @gingersnaptaff + anyone else who wants to join in!

Got tagged by @gellavonhamster to share 9 books I want to read in 2025! This post matches my favorite reads from 2024 as well hehe

- Human Acts by Hang Kang. Recently got it as a gift, can't wait to read it.

- Tristan by Gottfried Von Strassburg (+ Thomas) because it's Tristan.

- The death of King Arthur translated by Simon Armitage. Need I say more.

- The brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. My friend Dumas made me lose all fear for long books so perfect time to finally get my hands here.

- My brilliant friend by Elena Ferrante. Currently in queue for the audiobook at the library. Estimated availability is end of March 💀

- Bucharest: dust and blood by Margo Rejmer. About the fall of Romanian dictator Ceaușescu that the nicest ever lady sold me at the book fair. I'm hugely interested in Romanian history so it was well sold.

- Las hijas horribles by Blanca Lacasa. This is not available in English but it's basically an essay about mother/daughter relationships (title translates to 'the awful daughters' so you get the idea)

- Madhouse at the end of the earth by Julian Sancton. Polar exploration baby!!

- The looking glass sisters by Gøhril Gabrielsen. I'm not entirely sure what this novella is about, and that's part of the appeal. Let's get a surprise!

Thanks a lot!! This was fun!! I love not shutting up about books 🥰

Tagging @a-funeral-pyre @briarhips @emberdune @cucullas and honestly anyone else who'd like to do it!!

[historical-nonfiction]

After the stock market crash in 1929, American department stores had a conundrum. How could they sell fashion and stay in business in a country that was experiencing such a severe economic depression? There were various answers to that question. Some stores went high-end, trying to tempt women with the most glamorous and expensive looking clothes. Other stores went bargain basement, selling as cheap as possible. Neither approach worked very well.

In 1932 Lord and Taylor, led by Dorothy Shaver, tried something different: promoting American fashion designers as American fashion designers. Until then, French fashion was dominant, and everyone worked for French fashion houses or copied their products. But under Shaver's direction, American fashion became desirable for being American. Between 1932 and 1939, Shaver's presentations featured the practical sportswear creations of more than sixty designers. These designers espoused a new "American Look" which was made up of interchangeable separates, in simple designs, which could look good at multiple types of events.

This was revolutionary. Today, it is hard to grasp how much of a jump this was, but before the American Look, fashion was about selling women complete looks (usually a dress, perhaps with a matching jacket) which could be worn at specific types of events. It was assumed chic women would change at least twice a day, so their outfits could match their activities, and that whatever they were doing their dress would not get dirty or sweaty. The American Look did away with that.

The American lady at top is from 1935. Notice how her jacket and printed silk top are separates, able to be mixed and matched.

[doubledaybooks]

Elise Shaver moved to NYC with her sister, Dorothy Shaver, in the 1920s. Elise, an artist, and her sister were inspired by the success of the Kewpie Doll and crafted their own dolls out of bandage cotton and wrote stories to accompany the dolls. Dorothy sold her sister's "Little Shaver" Dolls to Lord & Taylor and eventually became the first female CEO to earn a $1 Million dollar salary.

Learn more about the sisters in WHEN WOMEN RAN FIFTH AVENUE by Julie Satow.

[abwwia]

Dorothy Shaver (Jul 29, 1893 – Jun 29, 1959) was a well known leader of the fashion industry.

Shaver graduated from high school in 1910 at the age of 17. She then earned a teaching certificate from the University of Arkansas. Shaver returned to Mena and began teaching seventh grade. Her teaching career ended abruptly in May 1914, when the local board refused to renew the contracts of Shaver and three other single female teachers because they had attended an unchaperoned dance. (?!?)

....

Shaver served as president of Lord & Taylor until her death in 1959. By the time of her death, sales at Lord & Taylor reached $100 million a year. via Wikipedia

#DorothyShaver #FashionHerStory #historyoffashion #FashionIcon #PalianShow

[pulpsandcomics2]

“Amazing Stories”  August 1946    cover by H. W. McCauley

The Sea People by Richard S. Shaver

March of the Mercury Men by Don Wilcox

The Gift by Berkeley Livingstone 

Some Are Not Men by John and Dorothy de Courcy

Bothon by Henry S. Whitehead

New Evidence for Atlantis by Vincent H. Gaddis

[planetdrivenbrands]

Episode 20: Dorothy Shaver, Global Marketing Sustainability Lead @ Unilever & Board Member @ Food for Climate League

Planet Driven Brands Podcast Dorothy Shaver. Dorothy is a global leader in plant-based, sustainable food and is absolutely committed to making as big a difference to the planet as she can. She works in the foremost with sustainability of the Knorr brand at Unilever, but is also actively involved with the Food for Climate League, the WWF partnership with  Future 5o Foods and  "World Eat for Good" day, plus the KM Zero Squad! I have no idea how she packs it all in, but if you listen in to this podcast you'll understand the reserves of energy Dorothy possesses and is using to help spread the message. It's a must listen podcast for everyone as Dorothy gives us snapshot of her journey through all of the above. She describes it as "the most delicious revolution ever"! She ends on such a positive note with a rallying call for 'varietarianism'  As she points out: "The impact is through food, and the way to make the most positive impact is to eat a wider variety of food, which is better for you, better for the planet and also can be absolutely delicious!" I love it. Count me in as an endorser!! Dorothy, like all our panellists, is passionate not just about her business brands, but about all businesses and brands and the role everyone is playing in creating a better future. Here, in Planet Driven Brands Podcast Dorothy Shaver shares her passion and experience with us. I think you'll love it and I certainly enjoyed the chat :) If you'd like to meet Dorothy digitally here is her LinkedIn profile About The Podcast The planet driven brands podcast is a library of thought leadership on brands and their responsibility to the welfare of the planet. We are about changing the world, one brand at a time. It may sound a little pretentious, but it is a real belief. We know brands have positive impacts on consumers and we want to bottle that! We will highlight brands as drivers for change and the role they play as influencers. This is a library of useful content for all to share. It's our small contribution. If you enjoyed this please do tell someone! If you'd like to subscribe please do so here: SUBSCRIBE Recruiting Thought Leaders We want to attract the best guests to come and tell us how we can harness the power of brands to help us build a better planets for all – people, animals, plants, the oceans – you get the drift! It may be a lofty aim; who knows, let’s find out. If you'd like to come on the show, I'd love to hear from you Nic is a brand consultant and has over 30 years experience with brands across agencies, consultancies and brand owners – here’s the LinkedIn profile! Here’s the RSS feed for the podcast should you wish to copy it! If you have any comments please get in touch. The same goes if you want to come and chat to us and be a star of our show Thanks for listening to the Planet Driven Brands Podcast Dorothy Shaver.

Check out this episode!

[ishtarphotography]

5 Painting with Light Images/Artists

1.HAROLD ROSS

Harold Ross is the most recognisable artists using the ‘’Painting with Light’’ technique. He has even created his own tools which you can buy on his website. He usually photographs objects that seems random at first, but they always have an interesting back story that has some value to Ross. 

2. ALLAN MENDEZ

Allan Mendez has a very similar style to Harold ross, however his composition reminds me of an old oil painting a lot - fruits, vases, objects that make the image look even more like a painting. 

3.Dorothy Ringler

Dorothy was one of Harold Ross’s students, what I really like about her work is that she photographs a lot of metallic surfaces, which is something that I would want to try when doing my work. I also love how she kept the detail in the background - the letters engraved in wood

4.Peter Zentjens

I really like the vintage, nostalgic look and feel of Peters photos, the yellowish tint to the photos is setting the right mood. Peter is also a painter, who uses watercolours so he has an additional understanding of how the light works in paintings which has an affect on his photography, giving it a very original look.  I really like the small details he captures in his images - for this one, its hair sprinkled round the old school shaver .

5.Vadims Pjatrikovs

Vadims is a still-life photographer and light painter, he has been working on different commercial and still life photography projects in London, UK, for the last 10 years. He has started of as a painter which is definitely a big bonus that  helped him develop his own light painting style. The reason I have picked this image is because I have never seen anybody capturing fire when light painting, it looks very interesting and adds to the composition.

[bespokehandengravedstationery]

#1 of 6 EARLY-APRIL SERIES. Photograph by Horst P. Horst, a fashion magazine advertisement art directed by Jeff McKay for Donald Brooks, as seen in jeffmckay.us, the website that I designed. "...Mr. Brooks emerged as American designers began to develop their own style during and after World War II, introducing more casual sportswear while stepping out of the backrooms of garment manufacturing to become fashion personalities with their own labels. Mr. Brooks was hand-picked by the influential Lord & Taylor president Dorothy Shaver to design a collection for the store in the 1950's. … …He was more interested in theater than anything else," said John Fairchild, the retired publisher of Women's Wear Daily. "He was one of the early American designers who did clothes for the theater and movies, and that was where his niche was. He was atypical of Seventh Avenue." —Excerpted from Donald Brooks, 77, Designer of Stage and Screen Fashions, Dies by Eric Wilson, The New York Times, August 3, 2005. . . . @horstphorst #horstphorst #fashionphotographer #americancouture #couture #vintage #vintagecouture #fashion #vintagecouture #vintagefashion #fashionhistory #lizaminnelli #leeremick #diahanncarroll #carolburnett #julieandrews #hollywoodcostume #hollywoodglamour #hollywoodcostumes #hollywoodinbrisbane #costume #collector #style #filmcostume #fashioninfilm #gay #glamour #donaldbrooks https://www.instagram.com/p/B-7B5grp1Q6/?igshid=1dbsqm7tok1v1

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Jim Bailey column: Music, music, music — and you could understand the lyrics

Probably the first popular song I can remember was recorded in the late 1940s by an artist named Art Mooney:

I’m looking over a four-leaf clover

That I overlooked before.

It was a simple song by today’s standards. No hidden meanings. Few moral or political allusions. No rock, heavy metal, reggae, rap or disco sounds. But you could understand the words.

That was the tail end of the crooning era. Most of the artists had a soft, sweet sound, a mellow voice or a catchy lilt. And big bands were in vogue.

Teresa Brewer’s big hit was typical:

Put another nickel in,

In the nickelodeon,

All I want is lovin’ you

And music, music, music.

Radio and television in those days aired the top few songs every week on "Your Hit Parade," featuring Frank Sinatra, Eileen Wilson, Snooky Lanson, Russell Arms, Dorothy Collins and Gisele Mackenzie.

Some of the top songs of the late 1940s and early ‘50s included “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and the Weavers, “Cruising Down the River” by Blue Barron, “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” by Red Foley, “Buttons and Bows” by Dinah Shore, “Mister and Mississippi” by Patti Page and others, and “Sentimental Me” by the Ames Brothers.

Les Paul and Mary Ford ushered in multiple-track recording as they doubled down on tunes such as “Tennessee Waltz,” “How High the Moon” and “Mockin’ Bird Hill.”

Western swing caught on with Vaughn Monroe’s “Riders in the Sky.” Then came “Mule Train,” seemingly recorded by every artist in the business. The Weavers, who already had teamed with Gordon Jenkins on “Goodnight Irene” and “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena,” climbed to the top with “On Top of Old Smokey.” Monroe came back with “Bamboo,” a number predicted to overshadow even “Mule Train.” It didn’t.

Crooners were in their element. Bing Crosby had “Galway Bay,” “Dear Hearts” and “Gentle People and Faraway Places.” Perry Como had “Hoop-De-Doo.” Nat King Cole was king with songs such as “Mona Lisa” and “Too Young.”

Then there was the big band sound: “Harbor Lights” and “Room Full of Roses” by Sammy Kaye, “The Hucklebuck” by Tommy Dorsey and Charlie Shavers, and “My Truly, Truly Fair” by Guy Mitchell and Mitch Miller.

Some got gimmicky: “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake” by Eileen Barton; “The Thing” by Phil Harris (I discovered a bump-bump-bump right before my eyes); “Aba Daba Honeymoon” by Debbie Reynolds and Carleton Carpenter; Rosemary Clooney’s accented “Come On-a My House;” the Ames Brothers’ “R-A-G-G M-O-P-P Rag Mop!” and of course Spike Jones’ classic spoof on horse racing to the tune of The William Tell Overture.

The advent of rock and roll and later musical evolvements would change popular music. But the era when you could actually tell what the artists were singing lives on in history.

Jim Bailey’s reflections on Anderson’s past appear on Sunday. His regular column appears on Thursday. He can be reached by email at jameshenrybailey@earthlink.net.

[ztafraternity]

Four ZTA sisters who were ahead of their time

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of Themis magazine.

By Patti Cords Levitte, Archivist (@ztamsu), and 
Susan L. Beard, Archives Committee Chairman (@samfordzta)

Zetas today take great pride in being progressive, but that’s not a new trend. Throughout our history, many women have made ZTA proud by being ahead of their time and forging new paths with their ideas and in their careers. These four Zetas are no exception.

Pictured: Founder Ruby Leigh Orgain served as the Clerk of Dinwiddie County (Virginia) at a time when it was uncommon for women to hold political office.

We cannot mention women ahead of their time without giving credit to Founder Ruby Leigh Orgain, who stepped out of the very defined social role women had in the South in the early part of the 20th century. When her husband, Albert M. Orgain II, passed away in 1928, Ruby was left with three young children and no job. Albert had been elected as the Clerk of Dinwiddie County, an office he and his father before him held continuously since the end of the Civil War in 1865. Although it was uncommon for women to hold political office in Virginia at the time, Ruby was selected to fill his unexpired term just eight years after women won the right to vote.

Ruby, who went on to be re-elected several times, served in that office for a total of 17 years. She loved her government work, even though it was something she had never planned on doing, and enjoyed defying people’s expectations. Ruby was always the rebel of the Founders!

Pictured: Dorothy Shaver worked her way up to the role of president of Lord & Taylor Department Stores.

Another Zeta who defied expectations was Dorothy Shaver (Epsilon Chapter, University of Arkansas), one of the earliest female fashion executives in the United States. She began her career with Lord & Taylor Department Stores in 1921 after moving to New York City to pursue a career in design and eventually made her way up through the ranks until she became president in 1945.

Dorothy promoted the “American look” throughout the 1930s, urging women to buy American products and look to U.S. designers for trends rather than Parisian designers. She was instrumental in encouraging the growth of the U.S. fashion and textile industries, which was beneficial when the U.S. entered World War II in 1941 and lines to European designers were cut off for years. During the war, Dorothy served as a consultant to the U.S. Armed Forces and designed uniforms for the Army branches.

Dorothy was also one of the first female executives to empower her female workforce, encouraging them to have children and then return to work. In 1937, while at Lord & Taylor, she said: 

Far from penalizing women…we hold their jobs for them until they are ready to come back…we can trust them to handle their lives with sufficient skill so that both their homes and their jobs are protected. 

This was an extremely progressive viewpoint at a time when getting pregnant usually meant the end to a woman’s career. According to “Life” magazine, she was the highest-paid female executive when she was president of Lord & Taylor. She remained in that position and continued to support the balance of career and family for women until her death in 1959.

Pictured: Geraldine Townsend Fitch was a big proponent of closing cultural gaps with education.

There was another Zeta in our history who broke the mold by working for a more globally-connected world and promoting the idea of cultural exchange. Geraldine Townsend Fitch (Beta Tau Chapter, Albion College) was an educator and YMCA worker in the Far East. She wanted American women to interact with the Far East rather than just view it as a collection of “exotic cultures.”

After marrying George Fitch in 1924, Geraldine became an advocate for Korean independence from Japan. She and her husband were close to Chinese President Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. In fact, the Fitches were the first foreigners to host them after their wedding in 1927.

This relationship led to Geraldine working with ZTA’s National Council in 1944 to develop a program to fund scholarships for promising Chinese women at Ginling Women’s College in Nanjing. This was a way to bring American educational concepts to Chinese colleges. Geraldine also hoped to create an exchange program between Ginling College and colleges with ZTA chapters so our Fraternity could play a bigger part in bridging the East-West culture gap. Unfortunately, our continued work with Ginling College came to an end when the communist revolution began in China in 1946 and President and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek went into exile. Geraldine did, however, open our eyes to how cultural differences could be better understood through education.

Pictured: Margaret Brewer was the first female general in the Marine Corps.

Another groundbreaker was Margaret Brewer (Alpha Gamma Chapter, University of Michigan), who became the first female general in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1978. Beginning in 1952, Margaret served in various roles in the Marine Corps and rose through the ranks. By 1977, she was the Director of Women Marines.

Her promotion to general came when the Marine Corps decided to integrate women completely into their branch rather than having a separate section within the Corps for females. Because there was no precedence for promoting a woman to the level of general, President Jimmy Carter had to submit her nomination to both Houses of Congress, which approved her appointment in 1978. Margaret went on to win the Legion of Merit from the Marine Corps twice, and she was honored as ZTA’s Outstanding Alumna in 1984. Her ability to thrive in a field that wasn’t entirely welcoming to women made her a Zeta who changed the rules and paved the way for other women.

These women should serve as inspiration for all Zetas to challenge themselves and their circumstances so they can make a positive difference in the world.