Tennis Star turned WWII casualty
 

I have not routinely used GC to announce new posts on my blog. I figure anyone interested in GLO history can find it on their own (fraternityhistory.com or sororityhistory.com). I first posted this one in the ZTA forum, but since it had less than 100 views, I thought I'd post it here. Hope no one takes me to task for it. I am going to tell a lot of the back story, so if this stuff doesn't interest you, please hit the back button.

I was going through some Zeta magazines when I was at the University of Illinois Archives. I saw an article about Helen Marlowe and I was intrigued. She was a University of Southern California ZTA. Her sister Mercedes, Phi Mu, and she were tennis stars. Mercedes, who later appeared in a few films, was once turned away from Forest Hills for wearing red shorts under her skirt.

One of the pictures I used in the post is of Helen and Ellsworth Vines, Sigma Nu, another tennis star of the time. Helen was in the Marine Corp Women's Reserves in WWII. I found a wonderful portrait of her and the artist allowed me to use it in the post. If you don't want to read my post, I ask you to take a look at the artist's website http://chrisdemarest.net/

When I found Chris' portrait of Helen, I emailed him and asked if I could use it. The funny thing is that Chris' first showing of those paintings was at the Jones Library in Amherst, MA. The Jones is one of my favorite libraries; we lived in Amherst for two years and I spent many hours there with our then three pre-schoolers. Turns out Chris grew up literally around the corner from where we lived although a decade or two separated our time in Amherst.

The post about Helen is at

http://wp.me/p20I1i-1HE