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Girl Scouts celebrate 90 years Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell From left, Terri Johnson, Bette Eppinger and Emily Johnson, 14, represent three Rogue Valley generations of Girl Scouts. They'll join in the organization's 90th anniversary celebrations this week. Rogue Valley family's involvement extends over three generations By BUFFY POLLOCK for the Mail Tribune When Bette Shaw Eppinger became a Girl Scout in 1938, she was a bashful 10-year-old with no idea that her loyalty to a national organization and the values it would impart would stick with her throughout life. As the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. celebrate 90 years of "helping girls grow strong," 73-year-old Eppinger looks back at what being a Girl Scout has meant to three generations of her family and how things have changed, 50 million girls later. Tuesday marks the 90th anniversary of the first Girl Scout meeting. March 12, 1912, founder Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls in Savannah, Ga., with the goal of getting them involved in their communities. Nine years later, in 1921, Girl Scouting came to the Rogue Valley when Troop No. 1 of the Rogue Valley Girl Scouts met in Medford. Eppinger joined Troop No. 6 in 1938 with two sisters and her actively involved mother, Cora. Early Girl Scouts hiked, played basketball, camped, learned to tell time by the stars, studied first aid, sewed and made bread. Eppinger has watched uniforms change and remembers when Brownies didn't earn patches and Girl Scouts sewed them on their sleeves. She has helped girls sell cookies for 50 cents a box - now they cost $3. As a young girl, many of her own scouting memories were connected to World War II. When Eppinger was about 13, her troop volunteered with the Red Cross at a hospital kitchen on Main Street and at the Medford airport, making hamburgers and milkshakes for servicemen. "People were hard to come by, and we were an active bunch," she said. "The Army moved in, and we had jobs we all did for the war effort." About six years later, Eppinger became a junior counselor at the Medford Day Camp on Bear Creek - now the site of the south Medford interchange on Interstate 5. During summers, she camped with girls at the Mount McLoughlin Boy Scout camp until Girl Scouts acquired the Low Echo camp in 1946 at Lake of the Woods. One of her fondest memories as a counselor was being nicknamed "Bumblebee" by Low Echo's first director, Marjorie "Beaver" Hopkins Sax. "Beaver, I mean Marjorie, said I was always buzzing around doing things and I reminded her of a bumblebee and that name stuck for a long time." After her marriage to Dean Eppinger in 1948, she led two scout troops from Brownies to Seniors and served as assistant troop leader for four others. Early Girl Scout levels consisted of Brownies, Intermediates and Seniors. Today's Girl Scouts become Daisies, Brownies, Juniors, Cadets and Seniors. In 1959, her second-grade daughter, Terri, started Brownies, wore a brown dress and beanie and sold cookies for $2.50 a box. "There were a lot of opportunities you had through scouting that you wouldn't have had without it," said Terri Johnson, now an Eagle Point teacher. "We were kind of a scouting family. My dad was even involved." Girl Scouts acquired the Tomlin Forest Day Camp at the top of Hillcrest Road in 1959 and Eppinger was its first director in 1960. In the early 1960s, the Rogue Valley Girl Scouts combined with councils from Northern California and other parts of Oregon to become the Winema Council of Girl Scouts. In 1989, her daughter Terri gave birth to a girl, Emily. "When I had Emily, there was never a question of 'if' she would be a Girl Scout. It was a question of when," Terri said. "Girls learn a lot through all the badge work and community service. It shows them they can make a difference." Johnson and her mother started a troop when Emily, now 14, was a second-grader in 1989. "That was something I always wanted to do was have a troop with my daughter and my granddaughter," Eppinger said. "Three generations of Girl Scouts." Since the end of her granddaughter's time as a Scout, Eppinger has worked with other troops and, with her husband, on the site committee for Tomlin Forest Day Camp. Since she began, she has worn many hats, but Eppinger says the one that matters is that she was "most of all a Girl Scout." "I've looked at a lot of little Girl Scout faces over the years and they're all sweet." Buffy Pollock is a free-lance writer living in Medford. E-mail her at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.