The school's first service sorority
The school's first service sorority
Alpha Iota Delta was chartered in the fall of 1950 — in the yearbook's own words, the first group in Pottsville High School "whose sole purpose is service." Its twenty-eight charter members were chosen for scholarship, character, and industry, and its first adviser was Miss Hannah E. Chadwick. The Greek letters Α.Ι.Δ. are a backronym for the English word the girls built the club around: AID.
Spring Fantasy
AID gave Pottsville Area High School one of its most durable traditions. The sorority's first semi-formal ball came in March 1951; by the early 1960s it had a name — Spring Fantasy — and a yearly theme. The Pottsville Republican covered the 1964 edition, an outer-space fantasy chaperoned by adviser Mrs. William E. Aschman.
The humanitarian peak — 1966
By the mid-1960s AID was doing serious humanitarian work. The 1966 record shows the sorority delivering a Christmas basket and toys to an indigent family, running the Heart, Cancer, and March of Dimes drives, hosting an AFS foreign-exchange student as an honorary member — and, most strikingly, sponsoring CARE packages and medical supplies to needy villages in Africa at the request of Peace Corps workers.
Still here — the big- and little-sister tradition
Seventy-five years on, Alpha Iota Delta is still an active service sorority at Pottsville Area High School. It still pairs upperclass "big sisters" with incoming "little sisters," and still raises money for service through small traditions like its chocolate-roses sale — the same character it was chartered with in 1950.
The Coney connection
The Coney Island has poured for Pottsville since 1917, and the family that runs it carried Alpha Iota Delta in the house: Athena Palles wore Α.Ι.Δ., class of 2004 — named in the 2002 Hi-S-Potts below. The Coney is the unofficial tavern of AID alumnae — proudly, and as a matter of the family's own record.