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She's a girl scout!

September 2006 - Heather Darrow

She commands space shuttles. She’s a poet laureate, a White House correspondent, a U.S. ambassador, and a World Cup soccer player. She is president of the American Medical Association, a brigadier general, and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She holds the titles Miss America and Miss USA. She has won gold medals for figure and speed skating, long jump, and swimming. She sounds like Wonder Woman because she really is – just ask Lynda Carter. She isn’t just any girl; she’s a Girl Scout. Once upon a time ...

When Judy Severance first joined Girl Scouts in 1948 as a first-grader, Girl Scout cookies were 50 cents a box, the girls wore three-quarter-length dresses with long sleeves, and there were no engineering badges.

Severance has been in Girl Scouts for 57 years in Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Texas. She served as a leader for both of her daughters and is currently the service manager for Service Unit 155 and a mentor for her granddaughter’s troop, Troop 3150. Severance’s mother and her close friend were her Girl Scout leaders, and she says that seven of the original Scouts made it to Senior, an advanced level.

“My mother is not alive, but my Girl Scout leader is still alive, and she says, ‘You are still in it?’ I tell her she did a really great job! Girl Scouts was one of the very few out-of-family things available to girls. We didn’t have the sports. Church and Scouting were part of your life, and that was it,” Severance said.

Severance stays in the organization because she believes in it. While times have changed, she notes that the group’s directive remains the same.

“It is an organization in which girls can be with girls and women can be with women and build camaraderie. Girl Scouts love to do service projects; they are good kids. There are a wide variety of girls with different ethnic, family, and financial backgrounds. They all do the same things, and one is not any better than another. There is so much pressure on kids, but this is something for which there is no competition,” Severance said.

Plano is divided into seven Girl Scout service units, and there are troops within each service unit. The city’s Girl Scouts enjoy a variety of fun, year-round events including the Plano Christmas parade in December, the polar bear swim in January, Girl Scout Thinking Day in February, and a spring camp out in April in addition to individual troop activities.

“There are so few places where girls can go to be with girls and have a good time with no hidden agendas. I wish that all parents would give their daughters a chance to participate in it. I know sports, drill team and cheerleading are important, but this is important, too, because life values are found here,” Severance said.

Girls – and others – benefit
According to Penny Farrall, director of communication for the Girls Scouts of Tejas Council, this is the second year that her council has donated cookies to the military. It is the first year that the Tejas Council, the Denton Council, and the Ft. Worth Council have worked together on the Troop to Troop project. This year, the Tejas Council, alone, sent more than 51,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to soldiers in addition to the cookies that went to community organizations. Farrall says the number of boxes increased more than 40 percent from last year.

“D-Day was delivery day. We had 31,000 boxes of cookies that day. Soldiers from Fort Hood came with big trucks, but they were not big enough, so they made three trips. It was successful beyond our wildest dreams. All the soldiers did that day, for three and a half hours, was to have their pictures taken with the girls. The girls loved it, and the soldiers felt like rock stars,” Farrall said.

This year, the Scouts enclosed disposable cameras and sent notes to the soldiers with addresses to write back. According to Farrall, some of the Scouts still keep in touch with the soldiers.

“We are the preeminent leadership organization for girls in the country. Within everything Girls Scouts do, there is almost always an element of service. When something happens, Girl Scout troops organize and help the situation,” Farrall said.

This year, Troop 2664 spearheaded a pillow drive at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Eight troops participated, and according to assistant leader Patty Townsend, between six and seven hundred pillows were distributed to evacuees at Plano churches and Reunion Arena.

An accomplished volunteer, Townsend is also trainer and volunteer recognition coordinator for Tejas Council as well as day camp coordinator for the 12 council day camps. Over the course of two days, Scouts worked for 12 hours to cut fabric, sew, stuff, and bag the colorful pillows which ranged from baby to adult sizes.

“I was never a Girl Scout as a girl. I wanted to be, but it didn’t happen. When I had a daughter, I put her in Girl Scouts, and I saw her grow and mature and become so confident in herself with all the positive role models in her life,” Townsend said.

Townsend says Girl Scouts offers girls the opportunity to do things they would not ordinarily get the chance to do. Her troop watched trials at the McKinney courthouse and listened to a policewoman discuss curfews and drinking and driving.

“To see these girls with some of the backgrounds they come from say, ‘I think I want to go to college’ is wonderful. Girl Scouts does it for them; it is a very wholesome organization to belong to. For some of these girls, there are two roads they can go down, and Girl Scouts have kept them on the right track. Years later, they tell you ‘I was so close to going with this group, and I see them now and I have Girl Scouts to thank.’ It is a place they can go and know they’ll be safe and not criticized for how they are dressed or where they come from. It really is a family,” Townsend said.

Stephanie Mathis, a recent Plano East Senior High graduate, was a member of Troop 2664 and helped with the pillow project. She plans to become an elementary school teacher and will attend Collin County Community College District in the fall. She started Girl Scouts in the fourth grade as a Brownie. After developing leadership skills, it was natural for this Scout to start a clothing and toiletry drive when her friend’s house in Greece burned down.

“Girl Scouts has helped me a lot with job applications. It helped me get the job with Michaels [an arts and crafts store] and PASAR [an after-school care program]. It also helped with school leadership, club organization, and responsibility. I really like to help people. When I heard about Katrina, I thought about my friend, and I knew if I were in that position I would want someone to help me. It feels good to help,” Mathis said.

Lions, tigers, tightrope walkers and ballerinas – Oh my!
Bryna Garrison, a 15-year-old, tenth-grader at Vines High School, became a Girl Scout in kindergarten.

“I thought it would be a lot of fun to join a big organization of girls. It has lived up to what I thought it would be. I had just moved to Plano and wanted to meet new friends. I made a lot of friends in Girl Scouts, several I am still friends with, and they are from all over Plano and even from East Texas,” Garrison said.

Garrison and her troop earned their Bronze Award together by creating a backyard circus for kids from the Journey of Hope, a support group for children who have lost parents or siblings. A member of the group, Garrison lost her father when she was 10 years old. She and her troop have provided the backyard circus event since she was 11.

With Garrison as the ring master, the older Girl Scouts are animal trainers, master clowns, mother butterflies, and ballerinas. The circus-goers are lions, tigers, leopards, butterflies, ballerinas, clowns, acrobats, and tightrope walkers, who walk with umbrellas while holding teddy bears on chairs. The Scouts spend hours making masks, decorating T-shirts with stripes and spots, and collecting ballerina costumes and teddy bears for the annual, one-hour event.

“I went to Journey of Hope. I knew that kids in that situation want things to be fun, and sometimes they don’t always get it. The kids’ faces showed that they were doing something fun, and it felt like you did something that mattered,” Garrison said.

For the troop’s Silver Award, the girls organized a service unit talent show at Haggard Middle School. More than 60 troops were invited. In addition to working a 12-hour day, the girls made programs, charged admission, and donated their $250 earnings to the Juliet Low (founder of Girl Scouts) World Friendship Fund.

Garrison also chose to do individual silver and gold awards. Because her mother is a Girl Scout registrar, she noticed that 10 girls did not have a leader. She started her own Daisy troop with her mother and Severance as adult leaders. Garrison has been doing all of the planning and organizing for the troop for four years. For her Gold Award, she is currently researching different buildings in downtown Plano. She is making an architecture box with activities for kids to check out at the ArtCentre of Plano. She has plans to make additional boxes in dance and music.

A Girl Scout ambassador, Garrison makes speeches about Scouting to organizations such as the Kiwanis and Lions Club. In return, Girl Scouts gives this budding structural engineer, who plans to build roller coasters, the opportunity to meet businesswomen.

“I get out in the community and help different people. That helps me to be a better person because I know what can be the downside of things, and that prepares me for life,” Garrison said.

You can register for Girl Scouts at the free Girl Scouts in Action registration August 29 from 6:30 - 8 p.m. at most PISD elementary schools. To register after the recruitment event, contact Debbi Garrison at debbixmas@msn.com or 972-599-9484; or e-mail Judy Severance at lserver1364@aol.com. Visit www.tejasgsc.org or call the Girl Scouts of Tejas Council at 972-349-2400 or 1-800-442-2260 for Girl Scout information.

Heather Darrow is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Plano Profile.

By Liz McGathey, Staff writer
Monday, August 14, 2006 3:10 PM CDT

Since the first Journey of Hope Grief Support Center groups met in June of 1998, the organization has served families from 39 communities and 12 counties in the North Texas area.

And, with the financial support of groups like the Meadows Foundation, Journey of Hope plans to continue to help children and teens affected by the death of a family member.

Most recently, Journey of Hope received a match gift of $30,000 from the Meadows Foundation.

“Journey of Hope’s match represented an outpouring of community support and underscores the generosity of individuals and their understanding of our mission to serve grieving children and teens,” said Susan Williams, executive director.

The match was part of a two-year grant of $88,000 to Journey of Hope. The funds included $58,000, which was distributed in 2005, with another $30,000 to be awarded in 2006 as a one-to-one match for funds raised by the agency. Journey of Hope successfully raised their end of the match, far exceeding the $30,000 requirement.

Funds for the match came from several large gifts including $10,500 from the city of Plano; $8,025 from Live from Plano; $5,000 from the Metrocrest Medical Foundation; and another $5,000 from the American Institute of Gastric Banding. Many other corporations, community groups and individuals made contributions ranging from $5 to $1,500, totaling more than $49,000.

The award went toward adding staff in order to expand additional free grief support services to children, teens and their families who have experienced the death of a loved one.

The Meadows Foundation is a philanthropic institution that was established to benefit the people of Texas. Since its inception, the foundation has dispersed over $430 million in grants and direct charitable expenditures to more than 2,000 Texas institutions and agencies.

Journey of Hope uses a curriculum written by teachers and counselors with the object of helping children and teens get in touch with their feelings and deal with them in their own way, Williams said.

“Grief is the feelings on the inside; mourning is how we deal with the grief on the outside,” she said. “We receive grief as a normal thing in our lives but when it happens to you, it’s not normal.”

She said Journey of Hope provides a safe place for children and teens and their families to walk their journey of grief.

“We know that telling the story is very important for people,” Williams said. “We provide a place where they can tell it every time they come; ask the kids to acknowledge the death.

She said this acknowledgement of the death is the first part of the healing process followed by embracing the pain of the loss. Then they are encouraged to remember the person who died and convert the relationship from one of presence to one of memory. The next step is to develop a new self identity or a “new normal” based on a life without the person who died. The death of someone loved can, and often does, permanently change one’s self perception. Then the search for meaning begins. Allowing bereaved children and teens to struggle, question beliefs, and even suffer as they seek their own answers, will provide them an opportunity to teach the meaning they discover for their lives.

Finally, the children receive ongoing support from others.

“It’s totally up to them when they stop — they have to come to their own realization,” Williams said.

For information, visit the Journey of Hope Web site at www.johgriefsupport.org or the Meadows Foundation Web site at www.mfi.org.