SISTERS WHO SERVE

By RICHARD L. BOCCIA

Sorority celebrates a century of experience

The service organization’s motto is: ‘Service to all mankind.’

YOUNGSTOWN — For the women who walked around Wick Park to celebrate the centennial of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, each of the 1,908 steps was a reminder of generations past, of black women who succeeded and supported one another.

Nine hundred chapters of the group across the United States took 1,908 steps at the same time Saturday morning to signify the year the sorority was founded.

For Miami University student Amaris Brady, being one of the 50,000 sorority members walking at the same time nationwide was a breathtaking experience. “We’re all walking as a community, as one. It is an honor,” she said.

The short, commemorative journey around the block spoke of the grander path taken by AKA over a century, from it’s founding by the first generation of black Americans born after emancipation to the women who continue a tradition of service beyond the black community.

As the sisters recalled on the centennial, the sorority’s motto is: “Service to all mankind.”

To Brady and her friend Ashley Turnage, a student at the University of Cincinnati, those words mean lending a helping hand to whoever’s in need of it.

The group has given aid during recent floods and wildfires in the West. They’ve seen that Alpha Kappa Alpha not only values service, but scholastic achievement. Health care is another value of the group, so walking offered an opportunity to encourage exercise.

The women did a group warm-up before setting out to the perimeter of the park with a banner leading the way. Other signs of AKA pride were everywhere at the park’s recreation center, from a branded umbrella and folding chair to the AKA-lettered license plates on cars parked outside.

In addition to dressing in sorority colors pink and green, members wore hats, pins and cell phone holders with the sorority emblem.

Theresa Yarboro, first-year president of Epsilon Mu Omega, Youngstown’s alumni chapter of the sorority, welcomed sisters from the greater Youngstown area and Western Pennsylvania to Wick Park.

“It is a special time,” Yarboro said. “How many organizations last 100 years?”

Sorority alumna Mary Moody has been a member for 55 of those years. She joined at Central State University, a historically black Ohio school. At 76, she now lives on the South Side, and she’s found that the sorority offers the chance to mingle with younger and older people. Her daughter Gail started a chapter of AKA at Spelman College, a historically black liberal arts school for women in Atlanta.

Beverly Fortune of Youngstown, another member, said that group members feel pride in each other’s accomplishments, and that the sisters are with each other through times of crisis and celebration.

“I only have one sister,” she said of her biological family, “but I have additional siblings.”

While careers and children can leave members with less time for the group, some sisters said the connection persisted even when they were less active in AKA.

Brenda Dede, assistant academic vice president at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, is one member who’s getting back to active status. When she moved from Houston to Pennsylvania, meeting new AKA members eased the transition. For her, there’s an instant connection.

“You know that you have the same morals, the same values,” she said, including the same high goals, both personally and in the community.

Yulanda McCarty-Harris, director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at Youngstown State University, is also becoming closer to the sorority again.

“It never leaves you,” she said. “These are sisters forever, and when they say sisters for life, they are.”

rboccia@vindy.com