Girl Scouts enjoy first reunion

A former printing warehouse in the West Central neighborhood was transformed into a carnival Sunday for the first-ever reunion of Girl Scouts from Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

Funhouse mirrors, beanbag tosses and henna tattoos were some of the entertaining events that attracted a crowd to the new home of the Girl Scouts Inland Empire Council at 1404 N. Ash St.

While one father spun out sticky pink clouds of cotton candy, girls modeled uniforms from earlier eras, including a pale blue denim dress from the 1930s – when Girl Scouting was launched in Spokane. Eleven-year-old Crystal Kelly strolled through the big warehouse in a perky Brownie dress and brown felt hat from the ‘50s.

Some of the women who used to wear those uniforms were on hand to tell what Scouting was like in earlier times. Their stories were captured on videotape.

Alicia Arn, 80, said she became a Girl Scout leader nearly 50 years ago when she was a 32-year-old mother.

Her husband’s job in the finance department of General Electric and other major companies took her to Wisconsin, Brazil, Boston and Minneapolis. The couple retired in Spokane 18 years ago.

“I like working with girls,” she told her interviewer, Kayla Peterson, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at Skyview Elementary School and a member of Troop 109. Girl Scouts is the biggest international organization in the world for girls, Arn noted.

Arn said she especially loved camping and ice skating. When Kayla asked her for her favorite camp story, Arn recalled having to discipline a group of girls for climbing trees during a rainstorm at summer camp and refusing to come down.

“Their punishment was to sit in a circle with their backs to each other and not talk. One girl later told me that was the worst punishment she’d ever had – not to talk for half an hour,” Arn laughed.

Betty Lukins told Cassie Moyer, a Cheney High School freshman, that she became a troop leader for girls at Jefferson Elementary in Spokane in the mid-‘60s.

Lukins kept Troop 259 until the girls graduated from high school. She also served on the board of the local Girl Scout council, which serves over 5,000 girls in 21 counties in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

In high school, the girls went to the symphony and had dinners together.

Several achieved the organization’s highest honor – the Girl Scout gold pin, Lukins said.

“I felt bonded to the girls. Seven were left when they graduated. My own daughter Kelly was in that group,” Lukins said.

Scouting has changed, the former leaders agreed.

It’s harder to recruit leaders now because many mothers work outside the home and don’t have as much time, said Izzy Hawkins, the former executive director of the local Girl Scout council who retired in 1980. She was interviewed by Tiffany Zipse, 12, an eighth-grader at the Sandpoint Charter School and a member of Troop 131.

Zipse and Hawkins agreed they share a favorite Girl Scout memory – summer adventures at Camp Four Echoes.

The new Girl Scout headquarters, which occupies most of an inner-city block between Maple, Ash, Sinto and Maxwell, is a work in progress, said Teri Wessel, a board member of the Inland Empire Council.

The $3.1 million project is being completed in two phases.

Phase 1 involved selling the council’s former property on the South Hill, buying the North Side site and renovating existing office and meeting spaces.

That work is complete, Wessel said.

In Phase 2, the 9,000 square foot warehouse is being transformed into a gym and multipurpose room. The facility also will include art and computer areas, a kitchen and a hostel.

The remaining $1.2 million for Phase 2 is coming from a fund-raising campaign that includes a $200,000 challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Council leaders hope to raise the money by September 2006.

The Girl Scout council offers its program free to approximately 800 girls, most living in inner-city neighborhoods of Spokane. Counselors in the schools located in those neighborhoods have told Girl Scout leaders that at-risk elementary school-age girls need cooking lessons and other life skills courses, Wessel said.

The hostel, to be located in an old brick building on the site, will house 50 out-of-town girls traveling to Spokane for Girl Scout programs and city visits.