The Great Sorority in the Sky

Today, one of the founders of my sorority passed away.  Wava Banes Turner Henry and a group of young women at Texas Tech University decided that a love of music and music education and service needed to be officially recognized in the form of a sorority dedicated to the service of college and university bands.  What started as a small group at Tech, after a few tough years of war and red tape and waiting, became Tau Beta Sigma, a national organization with over 200 chapters and thousands and thousands of members.

My sisters and I mourn Wava's passing today, but we are also incredibly grateful for her influence and that she had the audacity to make a group of women into something more than bystanders.  The fact that TBS was founded 66 years ago means that, in 2007, I got to rush Tau Beta Sigma and meet my best friend.  In 2008, I got to join Tau Beta Sigma and meet my sisters.  In 2010, I got to plan a district convention for over 900 students coming together to learn how to better serve college bands.  In 2010 and 2011, I got to lead a group of sisters as President and learn about myself and about true sisterhood in the process.  In 2011, I got to represent the sorority I love as a Homecoming princess and bring campus-wide recognition to our group.  In 2011, I got to say "see you later" to my sisters, but know that I would never have to really say "goodbye."  In 2011, I got to travel with sisters to National Convention and celebrate music, bands, and our sisterhood with the likes of Janet West Miller and Wava Henry and countless numbers of others dedicated to the same cause.  In 2012, I will get to reconnect with my sisters at Homecoming and remember some of the best times of my life with those who share a bond that doesn't really change.  And through it all, I got to play, work, and best of all, serve the band together with my sisters.  Tau Beta Sigma, and college band, changed my life, without question.

Without the work of Wava and her group, and the further work of the founders of the Iota chapter at Baylor, none of that would have happened.  So today, I want to honor Wava and try to follow in her footsteps and stay a member of Tau Beta Sigma "until I join the Great Sorority in the sky" and always have the "fortitude and courage to see an ideal, to seize upon it, and follow it wherever it may lead [me] in Tau Beta Sigma" and in life.