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Abstract

When I was a student at The University of Chicago, (I am S.B., 1916; S.M., 1917), and again after service in World War I, Geography and GEOLOGY were housed in Rosenwald Hall, and students of those fields rubbed elbows with each other. Students in GEOLOGY were enjoying the fellowship of a national professional fraternity in "their field". Geography students had no similar association, nor was there the least bit of concern on the part of students or faculty in Geography because of lack of this privilege. In 1924-25 I was a senior fellow in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, with the privileges of "all fees paid plus a cash grant of $500." I found at Clark a newly organized and weakly functioning Clark Geographical Society, with a rectangular gold key as emblem, surprisingly imitative in shape to the long illustrious Phi Beta Kappa Key. During the Academic year 1924-25, in the "bull sessions" that made a Clark experience "thrilling", I made much of the need for a national fraternity in Geography, --patterned after that functioning in Geology, --but found no person interested. I n fact, at the dinner party ending the scholastic year, given by "the returnees" for the "departees" as a final professional farewell, --with gifts significant of the year just closed, -I was presented with a huge pasteboard key, covered with gold paper, shaped like a Phi Beta Kappa key, -and labeled "National Geographic Fraternity.", --much to the hilarity of all present. Dr. Kathryn Thomas Wettmore and Dr. Rollin Atwood were present on this occasion, -each receiving the A.M. degree, Clark 1925.

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