Five flashbacks from business consultant Jeanne Bliss:
1. Freshman year, 1977. "The snow was so fierce, a bunch of us Theta pledges would hold hands and walk from the Theta house to our dorms in complete whiteouts at night. My dorm, of course, was at the South Farms, so the walk was long, blinding and cold. And no, no one was really tipping cows."
2. "I was taking a lot of classes for my minor of apparel design — and one of them was nude drawing. That first day when the male model walked in, just dropped his robe and sat on a chair really knocked me for a loop."
3. "As a Theta, we had a back door into Kam’s. It was essentially our ‘annex’ — and they treated us like gold over there."
4. "When I came back as an alumnae to speak, I happened to be working at Lands’ End. And we happened to have lear jets. As our lear jet touched down into the Champaign airport and I stepped out of that plane, my lovely teachers who met me at the plane were as blown away by the whole thing as I was."
5. Sisterhood. "There were 28 girls in my pledge class in 1978. Thirty-five years later, last summer, 16 of us got together. We chat and connect with each other nearly weekly now on Facebook, urging on each others’ lives. It really does last a lifetime — and that bond is unlike anything else. For essentially three-and-a-half years in your life, you establish a bond that lasts a lifefime."
