Bridging the Past to the Future:
It’s been nearly 40 years since the girls of Troop 32 sat by a fire melting marshmallows and chocolate onto a graham cracker. That is until Summer 2016.
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| 1973 First Class Award Girl Scouts from Troop 32 |
In the 70’s, Lone
Star Troop 32 was a vital camping and community service troop that consisted of
27 girls and four very strong leaders. The troop began when four mothers, Mrs.
Whorrall, Mrs. Teel, Mrs. Fink and Mrs. Foster, decided they wanted to have a
safe place for girls to have fun learning experience with one another. Each
mother had daughters the same age and each woman brought different strengths of
leadership into the troop. Without hesitation, they became the troop leaders
and thus formed Troop 32.
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| Troop 32 packed up for their camping trip to New Mexico |
These Girl Scouts
quickly became enthusiastic about outdoor events and loved the opportunity to
camp out under the stars. They took plenty of trips, but one of their favorites
was when they camped out in New Mexico. Ten of the girls even went onto earning
the First Class Award, now known as the Gold Award (see photo above) and were featured in the
Statesman.
As time passed the
girls and leaders moved on to establish their own lives always keeping close
the memories of scouting. They would think fondly of their time with their
troop, their many adventures and over flowing scrapbooks hoping that one day
they’d see one another again.
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| Leslie Teel, First Class Scout at the First Class Ceremony |
For Leslie Teel,
one of the leader’s daughters, hoping wasn’t enough, she took action by
initiating a reunion weekend for the original members and two leaders to
reconnect over food, songs, activities, and one an others company. Leslie had
only a few contacts from the troop, but with the help of Facebook and support
of her friends she was able to contact over 20 of the girls in the original
troop!
Below is the recap
of the reunion as told by Leslie:
Reunion Troop 32 –
July 8 - 9, 2016
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| 16 of the original members including Leslie Teel, far left in purple and two original leaders, Mrs. Fink and Mrs. Foster |
Friday started
with a few gathering a little early at my hotel room followed by the larger
gathering at Waterloo Ice House on Burnett. With our leaders we had 16 there
for dinner, the staff was wonderful and so patient with us. We kept having more
people coming in and hugging and no one was sitting down...glad it was kind of
a separate room. The waiter was wonderful and so patient with this excited,
crazy bunch of ladies! We eventually started sitting down just so he could get
our drinks placed somewhere. After orders were finally done, I interrupted
everyone and welcomed all and we decided which grace we were going to sing (I
asked on FB as we had a few favorites) We sang Johnny Appleseed (we had a
standing joke, if you need rain, that is the one to sing but if out camping you
had to wait until Sunday as it always rained!) We laughed when it rained on
Sunday morning at the end of the reunion.
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| Troop leaders, Mrs. Fink and Mrs. Foster w/memory books |
On Saturday, we started our Day at 1 pm at one of our member's home in Liberty Hill. People brought all kinds of snacks, there was about 10 people present that day. We shared pictures and patches and the memories to go with them. Then I had them play a game, it was related to something the leaders had us do our first year together. I gave each person a baggie with thin tootsie rolls, pretzels, and coconut in it! Mrs. Fink instantly knew what it was. Each person had to build a fire and we remembered the name of each type of fuel.
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| Making campfires w/pretzels, candy, and coconut |
Dinner plans
didn't go as planned but we laughed and talked about other times that happened
with our troop. We sang from a song book one of our ladies typed up from her
CIT song book many of us had back then (and some of us still do) and sat by the
fire made s’mores, and sang more songs. Though we didn't get into our
friendship circle and turn out like we use to (not sure everyone's body could
still do that, haha) We sang "Green Trees" and straight into
"Taps."
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| Girl Scout alum singing songs around the campfire |
It was a weekend
of happy tears, laughter, wonderful memories, rekindling of friendships, and
many blessings.
It had been as
the song we sang long ago..."and as the years go by, mmm mmm I will think
of you and sigh, mmm mmm this is goodnight and not goodbye"
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| Two of the original Troop leaders, Mrs. Fink (left) and Mrs. Foster (right) |
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