Alma Irene Chambers, 1925
B.S., Denison University
Chicago Academy of Fine Arts
Chicago Art Institute
Shelbyville, Ind.
Citation awarded June, 1980
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Miss Alma Irene Chambers has led a distinguished career in advertising and sales promotion. She began her career with the Reed G. Landis Company in Chicago as an artist and became the only female agency production manager in the city. She then freelanced both art and copy writing, joined the Morris Stacks clothing chain as advertising manager, and then became advertising manager of Chambers Corporation in Shelbyville, Ind., which was the manufacturer of a gas range invented years earlier by her father, John E. Chambers, class of 1898. For a time, she also continued to write copy for Health Spot Shoes. In promoting the Chambers Retained Heat Range, she wrote cook books in addition to ad copy, and later did outlets and large cooking schools with an attendance of 2,000. As sales increased, she initiated training programs for regional sales and home economics personnel, traveled ten months a year, and provided jobs through her efforts for hundreds of people through the years.
Miss Chambers has also been active as a Civilian Defense executive in World War II and as a member of the Red Cross, YWCA, Tuberculosis Association boards, Tri Kappa (“Main Street Junior League”), Humane Society, Friends of the Library, Propylaeum (the oldest women’s cultural club in Indianapolis), Shelbyville Coterie (a literary society), Indianapolis Art Museum, and Clowes Hall Women’s Committee (backers of visiting theatrical productions and symphonies).
