Women wearing floral dresses and tea party hats wait inside Umphrey Lee on a rainy Saturday afternoon on March 7. After checking in, they head to the Martha Proctor Mack Grand Ballroom for the Mothers Centennial Tea hosted by the SMU Mothers and Dads Club.
A tradition that dates back to 1926, the SMU Mothers Tea is a fundraising event where mothers of SMU students and alumni dress up, drink afternoon tea and bond with others. This one is a special occasion, though, because it celebrates a 100-year milestone.
Outside the ballroom, there’s a table at the front where artists draw mothers and students. Inside, tables are adorned with plates of food and tall pastry sets. A string quartet sits up front to the left, tuning their instruments as people walk in. Special reprints of SMU Look Magazine Winter 2025-2026 lay on the chairs, which list the itinerary of the event, the sponsors and the article “Style Files,” which compares old-fashioned trends to SMU students’ fashion at the time.
The event opened with SMU Belle Tones, the premier female a cappella group, which sang a rendition of “Blackbird” by The Beatles. After them came the first speaker, Co-President Jeanne Slay, whose daughter is a recent SMU graduate. She traced back to the history of the club, which began on March 24, 1926, when SMU’s third president, Charles Selecman, asked six women to organize a Mothers Club. These women then beautified the campus by planting flowers and trees, hosted luncheons, supported the libraries and the arts and provided loans for students.
“One of the most remarkable compliments that I found in archives occurred in the 1930s, when the Mothers Club provided school loans, especially for women students,” Slay said. “Keep in mind, it wasn’t until the 1970s that a single woman could apply for a loan without a male cosigner.”
The club may be quietly present, but it always offers comfort for students, Slay said. She shared an anecdote from a student fashion show she attended in 2020 that demonstrated how important having a Mothers Club is for students.
“Several young women came up to me and hugged me and said, ‘It meant so much that you were here,’” Slay said, starting to tear up. “‘We missed our parents.’ I was their mother.”
The next speaker was Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Davis Mersey. She honored the partnership between Mothers and Dads Club and SMU, emphasizing how their contributions prepare students academically and socially. She wants to ensure that the university repays its efforts by improving its educational programs and encouraging students to become more independent and ambitious.
“Our aspiration is to be known as a university for transformative teaching and programs. A place that sets students up for success in a rapidly changing world,” Mersey said. “I want every parent to say what Jeanne said to me: ‘My daughter is happily employed.’”
The third speaker, Melissa Rieman, vice president of Fundraising Special Announcements, showed a video of students sharing their appreciation for the funds the club raised and how they have helped their organizations. The video included SMU Esports, Alpha Epsilon Delta, Catholic Campus Ministry, The Big Event and many more organizations.
Rieman then mentions the SMU Look reprint, which has a map of the campus on the back that shows all the buildings and monuments the club helped fund.
“This actually highlights some of the things that the Mothers and Dads club has given over the past 100 years,” Rieman said. “And so I just want to make sure everybody gets a chance to look at that…and it really does impact a lot of things that you see as you walk around the campus.”
The fifth speaker, invited by Slay after she watched him conducting at President Jay Hartzell’s inauguration, was Jack Delaney, director of Bands and professor of Music. From Cincinnati, Ohio, he never thought he’d call Dallas home, but is happy to do so after teaching many wonderful musicians at Meadows for 36 years.
“You’re only a visitor at Meadows once,” Delaney said. “After that, you’re family.”
He introduces the Meadows Spring Quartet, which played an arrangement of the William Tell overtures before closing remarks.
After the event ended, many attendees lingered around the ballroom to take photos and chat. One of the attendees was Stacy White, whose husband graduated from SMU in 1991 and whose daughter is currently a senior. She praised how welcoming the people of the club were and how they helped her become involved at SMU.
White was amazed to see all the former presidents of the club at the event.
“What a beautiful testament to the foundational element that [the] Mothers and Dads Club play on this campus,” White said. “It was also a great highlight to see how they work in conjunction with their counterparts that work for SMU. It was beautiful.”
