This year, 2022, the Ceremonies Committee, chaired by Helen Usener, celebrates and honors the memory of our amazing Beta Zeta founders, women educators in the Texas Hill Country. Beta Zeta Chapter was founded on March 23, 1935 at the Nimitz Hotel by DKG Founder Dr. Annie Webb Blanton and DKG charter member Mrs. Lalla M. Odom. Miss Julia Estill was installed as the first president and Mrs. Annie Wendler as the first recording secretary. Assisting them were Mrs. Marian Steves, Mrs. Lucretia Hite, Miss Esther Mueller, Miss Flora Wertheim, and Mrs. Austin Durst as the first officers of Beta Zeta. Other charter Beta Zeta members were Miss Dora Conrads, Mrs. Stella Jung Browning, Miss Norma Kessler, Mrs. Flora Mueller Dicke, Mrs. Ella Schaefer, Mrs. Olga Reichenau Zesch, Miss Victoria Brewer, Mrs. Ora Brown, Mrs. Effie Roy Felps, Mrs. Nola W. Jones, Mrs. Hedwig Stieler, and Mrs. Harriet Dietzel. They were from seven counties including Menard, Mason, Kimble, Gillespie, Kerr, Kendall, and Bandera. Think about what it must have been like traveling to meetings, communicating with members and such. Things were very different in 1935!
Flora Wertheim
Flora Wertheim, a charter member and the first treasurer of Beta Zeta, was born in Fredericks- burg, TX on November 18, 1899 and graduated from Fredericksburg High School in 1918-1919. * She earned her Bachelor of ArtS degree in English from the University of Texas in 1923. * She attended the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1926 and received her M. A. from the University of Texas in 1934. * Her first teaching assignment was in the Wrede One Room School before she went to college! * She taught in a number of different high schools as well as at FHS. * In 1960-61, Flora taught journalism, English, and German at San Angelo Junior College. * When her aging mother became ill, Flora returned to Fredericksburg to teach and take care of her mother. * Flora was a member of the Fredericksburg Music Study Club. * She attended the 25th Birthday Luncheon of Beta Zeta and the 50th Anniversary of The Parent Teacher Association. * Flora received the Achievement Award from Delta Kappa Gamma, Alpha State in 1955. * The Flora Wertheim Bequest was established by the Fredericksburg Historical Society to provide an award to the winner of an annual Historical Essay Contest. It was Flora’s wish to reward the student who expressed the most enthusiasm in learning the history of Fredericksburg. The award is $1,000.
Esther Mueller
Esther Louise Mueller was born on February 21, 1902 in Fredericksburg, Texas the oldest daughter of William and Emma Wehmeyer Mueller in a house built by her grandfather, Conrad Wehmeyer. • She received her teacher certificate while in high school in Junction, Texas. • Her first train ride and trip alone, in 1919, took her to her first job as a teacher in a rural one-room school on the Oklahoma border. • She graduated from Fredericksburg High School in 1921 and after teaching at Morris Ranch, Harper, and Fredericksburg, she received her Bachelor of Arts (1937), Bachelor of Journalism (1942) and Master of Arts (1943) degrees at the University of Texas. • Her thesis, a novel, Cornerstone, depicts the historical background of Fredericksburg. • On March 23, 1935, Esther was initiated as a charter member of Beta Zeta and was elected as the chapter’s first corresponding secretary. From 1944 to 1946 Mueller taught journalism at Texas Woman’s University, Denton. Later, while studying at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she taught extension courses in feature writing and short story writing to adults in Detroit and Saginaw. From 1951 to 1953 she worked at the U. S. Military School in Munich, Germany. From 1955 until she retired in 1964, she taught English and journalism at Fredericksburg High School. She organized and sponsored the Heart of the Hills Future Teachers Club. Mueller was also a member of Theta Sigma Phi (journalism) and Phi Kappa Phi (scholastics). Mueller’s interest in Fredericksburg’s pioneer life began when she interviewed descendants of early settlers for a feature writing course. As a member of Gillespie County Historical Society’s book committees, she co-authored both volumes of Pioneers in God’s Hills. She wrote the pageant presented in 1946 for the centennial celebration of Fredericksburg’s founding: “Fredericksburg: Colony, Town, and City.” She wrote two other pageants presented locally: “The Coming of the Bluebonnets” and “The Lutheran Church in Texas.” Her research on Oster-Feuer, locally and in Germany, enriched the production of the Easter Fires pageant.
Julia Estill
Miss Julia Estill, Beta Zeta’s first president, was a graduate of Fredericksburg High School. She received her B.S. in 1904 and M.S. in 1905 from the University of Texas. Est I’ll taught for over 36 years, 11 of those years as the FHS principal. She was the sponsor of the first FHS yearbook, The Mesa. While teaching she earned 18 hours toward her Doctorate degree. Estill spent six summers working for the State Department of Education as a member of the College Examiner’s Board for affiliation of schools working under Dr. Annie Webb Blanton, the Delta Kappa Gamma founder. Estill became a charter member and first president of Beta Zeta on March 23, 1935. was a leader in community organizations, a charter member and life member of the Fredericksburg Parent-Teacher Association, and a member of the PTA Choral Club. She was an honorary member of the Reading Club, a charter member of the Gillespie County Historical Society and the Texas Historical Society. She was the founder and sponsor of the Junior Historians, a Fredericksburg High School organization. Estill was recognized state-wide both as a journalist and as a literary writer. Townspeople paid her a tribute when, on her Silver Jubilee as a teacher in Fredericksburg, several hundred people honored her with a reception at the Nimitz Ballroom.