Infinite Thanks to Lois Wilhelm Appleby....

Gamma Iota expresses its sincere gratitude to Lois Wilhelm Appleby for her generous gift endowing scholarships for future Gamma Iota sisters.

“I feel my gift to the Foundation gives me the opportunity to thank ADPi for having given me such wonderful experiences.”

— Lois Wilhelm Appleby

Remembering Becky Brown Beatty & Carol Zimmer Bellamy

"Remembering Becky and Carol is as if the fifty-plus years that have gone by since we were coeds were just yesterday.  Carol was in my pledge class of 24 in 1960, and Becky was a year older.   As to memories, ADPi was such a large part of our lives. We shared everything but boyfriends. Rush dresses, class notes, homecoming projects, and rides homes as Carol and I were both from Ft. Lauderdale.  Becky was our campus activites chairperson.  She made sure our chapter was well represented in all facets of extra-curriculars.  Perhaps my most favorite memory is her leading the girls of Mortar Board, the most prestigious women's honorary, through the house in the early morning hours to tap Sharon Sites Pesek and myself for membership our junior year.  It was thanks to her that we qualified.  Becky later graduated as the top female graduate of the Class of 1963. Both girls graduated with honors.

 Becky, Carol and myself met our husbands while we were students at UF. We would linger together on the front porch afterdates with our "pinmates" as the housemother flicked the lights reminding us that we had to quickly get inside before the door would be locked for the night. After marriage,  Becky's husband, Jackson,  and my husband, Bruce, finished law school and soon were practicing together in Tallahassee.  Then,  Carol's husband, Ray, began setting bones in town as a favorite orthopedist..  We joined the ADPi alums where the IOTAS came out of the woodwork, but they were most tolerant of their orange & blue sisters. We raised our children together. I still tear up recalling the day Becky and I were going to lunch, and she shared that the doctor had found a lump in her breast.  She was 35 years old.  She died five years later to the month.  She was my best friend.
Carol and I soldiered on sharing our common interests of politics, some graduate school, PTA, Junior League, and tennis.  Then Carol joined FSU's first law school class and once graduated, worked for my husband.  She was such a bright star, and soon made the leap into local politics and was elected to the Tallahassee City Commission. Carol had experienced an early bout of cancer before she was thirty, but had been cancer free.  In her late forties, another form returned.  Sadly she died at 50.

Both girls have left enduring legacies in their beautiful children.  I see Carol's son on occasion when I have an orthopedic issue as he practices with his father, and her lovely daughter lives in Tampa not too far from my daughter, Blair.  Becky's son lives in St. Petersburg with two adorable daughters, and her daughter, Bethany, settled in North Carolina where she has three handsome sons. Perhaps the ribbon on Becky's last gift to me was given the week before she died.  She asked me to make sure her daughter, who was 14 at the time, would be an ADPi at Gamma Iota.  With tears streaming down my cheeks, I replied, " That will be my pleasure."  Bethany did go down to UF, and not only was she an exemplary member of Gamma Iota, but she was my daughter's big sister three years later. The bond of clasped hands  lives on."

— Virginia Michie "Pep" Culpepper (1960)