Camp Fire Leader Shows Her Kids Good Values

Marcia Asmussen learned how to work hard on her parents’ farm outside the little town of Harrington, Wash., west of Spokane. She picked rocks, hoed weeds and hated it at the time.

Now, she translates those virtues of self-discipline, perseverance and goal-setting into an arena in which she helps shape the next generation: Camp Fire Boys and Girls.

“They’re the leaders of America,” she says.

Asmussen is a Camp Fire leader and head of the 18-county district that takes in the Valley and North Idaho. She’s earned several regional awards. This January, after seven years in Camp Fire, she won the Anita Lindner Memorial Award, named for one of the Fairchild Air Force Base shooting victims.

Even before her two children were born, Asmussen knew she wanted to be involved in a group like Camp Fire.

“I’m probably the only person out there who called the office and said ‘I want to be a leader,”’ she says. That was when her daughter, Mara, now a 12-year-old sixth-grader at McDonald Elementary, was a kindergartner.

Asmussen, a young 45, has hung in there through the second-grade year, when she had 22 boys and girls in her Camp Fire group, and on through the fourth- and fifth-grade years, when “cool” began to set in and her group dropped to 11. This year, she has six well-adjusted, don’t-care-who-knows-it Camp Fire diehards.

“I give them leadership,” she says. “I love to go and do.” She doesn’t play mom; she doesn’t make all the decisions. At their weekly get-togethers, the girls vote on what project to pursue. And they have a forest of emblems from which to choose.

Asmussen’s group does several service projects. They help once a month at the Valley Food Bank. They go once a month to Ogden Hall. Summers, they tackle the huge Kids Helping Kids school supply drive. And in January they make Valentines for Vets, which are sent to veterans’ hospitals around the country.

Then there are the more traditional Camp Fire activities: fire-making (“You have to actually have a fire going, or you’d never get all the s’mores done,” she says), compass training and just plain fun. Camping, bowling, sleep-overs, skating.

“We always plant a tree for Arbor Day. Oh, there are a bazillion things.”

It’s not the same life as a family farm. Some evenings, Marcia’s husband, Ron, is working his second job. Other evenings her volunteeer work takes her away from their home. The family doesn’t always eat dinner together.

But at the heart of it, Asmussen is still applying lessons learned on the farm. She’s showing children the value of working for a cause greater than oneself.

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