Oct. 11, 1986Dear D.,
Yesterday, Kimberly spent the night at my house because we got Friday off from school.
We went to girl scouts from 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. We cooked our own lunch. It was not so great.
For the talent show, our girl scout troop is doing a dance to the Purple People Eater.
My partner is Rebecca Richards. I like her a lot.
We had a very special girl scout troop called Troop 293. Our girl scout troop leader, Dr. Sullivan, was musically gifted, and put together impressive song and dance routines for us to perform in front of the school for talent shows and for badge awards ceremonies for our parents in the Sullivan living room.
We would sing and dance as she accompanied us on the piano. I remember seeing her playing the piano next to the stage, feverishly turning the pages of her music as she hit the keys in time, when she didn’t have a page-turner sitting next to her on the piano bench. Simultaneously, she kept an eye on us as we performed. Now THAT is multi-tasking at its finest.
Our musical performances combined with our creative, eye-catching, handmade costumes became famous at Scott Richards Elementary School. Our routines, which we practiced religiously for months in the Sullivan’s living room, always stood out and shined. (Scott Richards Elementary School was named after the grandfather of one of the girl scouts in our troop, Rebecca Richards. He was superintendent of the Medina City Schools in the 1960s. Rebecca’s dad, Robert Richards, was superintendent at the time, in the 1980′s.)
In fifth grade, we performed a medley of 1950′s songs and we all had matching poodle skirts. We also bought matching purple cardigans. By sixth grade, we had created plenty of hype, and the entire school looked forward to seeing our 1960′s dance medley, that we performed in our resplendent tie-dyed shirts, torn blue jeans, bare feet, and floral headbands.
Our girl scout troop leader and her family lived on a farm, and we would have camp outs near their lake during the summer.
Dr. Sullivan also read aloud to us the biography of Juliette Low, the founder of Girl Scouts. She read one chapter to us at the end of each meeting over the span of several months, as we all sat on the living room floor where we spent hours rehearsing our performances, gathered near their piano, thoroughly engaged with the life of the original girl scout. Hearing her life story from so many years ago was endlessly fascinating to us. An outside observer, such as a parent who arrived too early to pick up her daughter, could have heard a pin drop as Dr. Sullivan read aloud, we were so quiet, rapt with attention, hanging on her every word.
We never wanted the story to end. We never wanted girl scouts to end, for that matter.
We had our weekly girl scout troop meetings around the Sullivan family’s lengthy, dark, oak dining room table. It was long enough for all twelve girl scouts to sit comfortably around the table as we discussed the business for the week. We had our meetings on Friday afternoons, so they could easily transition into sleep overs, which they often did, whether it was at the Sullivans’ spacious country house or another girl scout’s home.
Dr. Sullivan insisted that we call her by her code name, Strawberries. This name was inspired by the fact that her parents manufactured, distributed, and sold strawberry jam on their farm in Medina, which was right next door to Dr. Sullivan’s home. It was called “Sullivan’s Jelly,” and was well known nationwide. Our troop went on a tour of their jelly plant once as a field trip, lead by Melissa’s maternal grandparents.
Strawberries kept notes from the meetings in a spiral bound, five subject notebook. She used the same notebook for the entire three year duration of Girl Scout Troop 293. I would bet anything that she still has it, carefully stored away somewhere, a relic of her daughter’s childhood.
Dr. Sullivan and her husband were high school sweethearts at Medina High School in the 1960′s. They attended different colleges, but then went to medical school together at Case Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland, Ohio, where they got married.
Eager to have children, Strawberries was pregnant with Melissa by the time she graduated. If there is one thing I remember about Strawberries, she loved children abundantly, and that love spilled into her making girl scouts the best experience possible for her daughter and her friends. She became a child psychiatrist with her medical degree, but while her kids were young, she was an overachieving stay at home mom and girl scout troop leader.
Strawberries was very sentimental and held onto everything. As proof, Melissa once opened the freezer in their kitchen, and gingerly pulled out a frozen flower made of frosting from her parents’ wedding cake. They had decided to save it forever, just an arm’s length away in the kitchen at all times. Surprisingly, it still closely resembled the flowers on the wedding cake in the pictures in her parents’ wedding photo album. Come to think of it, the decades had not altered the appearance of the sweet flower very much at all.
Maybe the 1960′s medley the girl scouts performed was Strawberries’ way of reconnecting with the very happy and innocent years when she fell in love with her soul mate.
Mrs. Sullivan created the girl scout troop for her oldest daughter, Melissa. Troop 293 was a tight knit group of girls from third grade until sixth grade. Melissa had two younger sisters, seven and nine years younger, and by the time they were in elementary school, Strawberries had burnt out on being a girl scout troop leader. She lamented from time to time, at the guilt she felt that she could not recreate the same girl scout troop for her other two daughters, however, that fact was a testament to the amount of time, energy, and spirit she tirelessly invested into Troop 293. Sometimes, in life, nothing great can last forever. However, I like to believe that sometimes it can.
We had reunions every now and then after that, until we graduated from high school. Some of us are still friends, but some of us, inevitably, have gone our own separate ways. Be that as it may, the warm memories of Troop 293 will always unite us, bonding us together in sisterhood for eternity.
