Something wondrous happened Monday morning in the Great Room at the Village at Heritage Point.
Something that made the years melt – and that collection of grandmothers and great-grandmothers, gathered in that room, to laugh delightedly when it was done.
That was when somebody broke in to the “Brownie Smile” song.
And that was when everyone joined right in, with not one badge of shyness or grasp at the lyrics.
“… I’ve got something in my pocket that belongs across my face
“I keep it very close at hand in a most convenient place
“I’m sure you couldn’t guess it (if you guessed a long, long while)
So I’ll take it out – and put it on – it’s a great big Brownie Smile …”
It was in Morgantown at the residential and care facility that caters to an elderly clientele, but in that moment, on that Monday morning, all those nanas and matriarchs were transported back.
They were all 8 years old again, and all cloistered around the Girl Scout campfires of their youth.
An observer would have needed an atlas to mark the geography of the memories.
West Texas.
Southern California.
Muskegon, Mich.
Tulsa, Okla.
Greencastle, Pa.
Cincinnati, Ohio and Dayton, too.
Connecticut, Wisconsin and the former Czech Republic – right after World War II.
The occasion was an informal “Girl Scout Reunion.”
Rae Jean Sielen, Barb Howe and Lisa Crone, who all grew up in scouting – Sielen in California, Howe in Ohio and Crone in Oklahoma – thought that it might make for a nice event.
Besides, they said, it was good timing: Those famous Girl Scout cookies are again upon the land.
Tagalongs and Thin Mints aside, it’s hard to forget the Girl Scouts, they said.
Especially if you were one.
The Scouts at the Village talked about the Girl Power lessons they got from scouting.
Looking back, they said, that wasn’t surprising.
After all, they said, Juliette Gordon Lowe founded the organization that would eventually become the Girl Scouts in 1912, while American women were still lobbying for the right to vote.
Girls going into scouting soon learned that they could accomplish things.
And that what they did could have social relevance.
Sometimes, they even found out they could ease people’s pain, just by being who they were.
Gwen Rosenbluth realized that early on when her Scout troop in Breckenridge, Texas, spent several weeks crafting stuffed animals for their peers not as fortunate.
It was 1950 – and the toys were for polio victims marking the precious minutes of their youth in the iron lung machines that were keeping them alive.
“We wanted them to be able to enjoy the toys,” she said. “That was important to us.”
Renee Bergner’s Girl Scout troop even faced down an authoritarian regime.
This was in the former Czech Republic.
In summer 1946, while Europe was still mired in the chaos and the rubble wrought by World War II, Berger’s troop worked alongside their Boy Scout counterparts on a shared mission.
Both sets of Scouts carved out a camp in the wilderness – which lasted until February 1948, when the now-former Soviet Union invaded the country.
Young people were give a Cold War “choice,” Bergner recalled.
“They said we’d have to join the Communist League or disband,” she said. “We chose to disband.”
Life took Bergner to America – first to Vermont, then eventually to West Virginia.
She never forgot her time in scouting, though.
Over the years, she managed to stay in contact with her fellow Scouts and former counselors on the other side of the Atlantic.
Being a Girl Scout was also a gateway to her first job in the States, she said.
“I got a job as a camp counselor in Vermont,” she said.
“It wasn’t a Girl Scout camp, but when they found out I was Girl Scout counselor back home, that got me hired right then and there.”
