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May attended her first Convention as a speaker in 1896 and then served as assistant Marshal in 1898, where she was appointed deputy to the Grand Treasurer. She held that office until the 1900 Convention in Columbus, Ohio, when she was elected Grand Secretary. When the Grand Council met in July 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y., Jean Penfield was ill, leaving May to preside over private business sessions at which the Beta Beta debacle was discussed.
The following year she was elected Grand President and married (she later raised a son). As President, she accepted the gift of a gavel carved from a stairway at Monmouth’s Old Main, first used at the 1928 Convention. The devastating Fraternity Headquarters fire in 1965 damaged the Monmouth gavel. It was replaced at Convention by the Westermann gavel, first given in 1904 to Mary May Whiting Westermann by her Council, and then left to the Fraternity. At the end of her term, she was appointed Historian but resigned in 1905 and did no Kappa work for 14 years.
In 1918, however, the one-time adjunct professor and lover of English literature resumed her Kappa service as Custodian of the Badge.** As such she attended the 1920 Convention, where she was unanimously elected National President. During the historic two-terms that followed, she served as 1923 delegate to the National Panhellenic Congress (now known as Conference) in Boston at a time when opposition to fraternities was gathering at a number of universities.
