Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993 TAG: 9304080043
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
50 YEARS AFTER THEY HUNG UP THEIR UNIFORMS, THEY'RE TOGETHER AGAIN AS THE `OL
I T was the harsh years of segregation in Roanoke, but for a bunch of little girls it was a time of pride and belonging that transcended divisions of race.They were, after all, honest-to-goodness Girl Scouts.
Organized in 1941, they were one of the first black Girl Scout troops in the city.
They hiked in the countryside - all the usual Girl Scout stuff.
"We sewed, we danced, we modeled. We did everything," former troop leader Evelyn Craghead Cothram Brown said.
More than 50 years after they took their scout oaths together, Brown and the members of Troop 34 are meeting again. They laughingly refer to themselves as the "old lady Girl Scouts."
Most have retired. They rarely see each other anymore. It was time to catch up.
Louise Williams - Mary Louise Macklin when she was Troop 34's vice president - got the reunions going after a friend found a 1940s newspaper picture of Troops 34 and 35, both black. In the clipping, the girls were lined up in their uniforms at Lucy Addison High School.
Down in her basement, Evelyn Brown found a 1940s scout manual and the troop's minutes - all the neatly recorded details and dates, such as how they began their meetings by singing "God Bless America."
Brown and 10 former troop members who were in the newspaper photograph met late in March at former member Dorothy Curtis' house.
Brown quickly came up with the names of dozens more members. Some have died or haven't been located. The women hope the next meetings will attract many more of their old scouting buddies.
At the first meeting, members read off names of their fellow scouts. "Remember Cleo Dodd? Stella Law! Remember Stella Law? Ersilla Martin?" Brown remembered them.
She recited the Girl Scout "promise," too - without any prompting and just the way it was said back then: "On my honor, I will try to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times and to obey the Girl Scout Law."
Brown was just beginning a long Roanoke teaching career in October 1941 when she and 14 girls organized the troop. Their sponsor was the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Times were tight for families in those war years, so some girls or their mothers made their scout uniforms, instead of ordering them.
They met in Lucy Addison classrooms, in their homes and sometimes in a little building behind Burrell Memorial Hospital.
Mothers fixed cocoa, Kool-Aid, sandwiches and cookies for the meetings.
At Burrell, they learned cooking tips and nutritional lessons from the hospital's dietician. Former scout Gertie White Manns said the troop witnessed a birth there once. It was such a shocker, Manns swore she'd never have a baby, but when she grew up she did anyway.
Dorothy Curtis recalled a nice woman who invited the girls into her home for refreshments when the troop hiked by on its way to a farm where the girls liked to swim.
Sallie Hawkins Whitten recalled walking home from a hike one especially hot day. The scouts took off their shoes and socks and stepped in some scorching tar on the street. Dorothy Curtis' mother had to rescue them in a car.
Back then, LaVerne Craghead Fuller-Prunty's mode of transportation was her scooter. She always had a hole in her left shoe from pushing off with that foot, she remembered.
She recalled that the troop learned how to make seafoam candy and how to be ladies. "I was very impressed," she said, "that somebody would show me how to put makeup on and how to walk."
Roanoke's black and white Girl Scout troops began to integrate about the time that the city's schools did in the early 1960s, according to Brown.
At Troop 34's first reunion, Katherin Anderson, development director for the Virginia Skyline Council of Girl Scouts, and public relations director Betsy Parkins praised the reconvening of such an old troop.
Older Girl Scouts are reuniting all over the place, it seems. A white Lynchburg troop from 1943 recently got together.
Many women now reaching retirement age are returning to their home communities and in the process are unearthing scout memorabilia. Some have brought old materials to council offices in Salem, which oversees troops in 37 Virginia counties. Anderson and other staffers have been helping women find their former troop members.
"It must be wonderful memories to make them want to come back together," Anderson said.
Old Roanoke Troop 34 has set a potluck lunch for 2 p.m. April 15 at La'Cove Restaurant, 1801 Cove Road N.W. Former members may call Louise Williams at 563-9214.