Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Famous scouts, famously determined

By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 7, 2005

CLEARWATER - On a television screen, Alma Powell, wife of former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, sings a Girl Scout memory, a campfire song about the lasting bonds of friendship.

On a living room couch, seven examples of what she's singing about are taking notes for an ambitious documentary project they're currently producing under the working title On My Honor. They're the girls of Troop 1157, together since 1997 through different schools and shared adventures, many of them scouting activities.

They're no different from other teenage girls: Conversations are punctuated with giggles and crutch words such as "like" and "you know." They constantly interrupt each other's sentences with another subject, or finish them as if sharing one mind. The girls make a point of saying one member, Lauren Copeland, 15, is sick and can't make this interview, but please don't leave her out of the story.

Nice kids, attempting an impressive project.

Their movie is months from completion and isn't likely to win an Oscar, but it's a good bet for a Gold Award, the Girl Scouts' equivalent to the Eagle Scout award of their male counterparts. Spokeswomen for scouting headquarters in the bay area and nationally can't recall such a historically valid video project.

"This is certainly the first one in our jurisdiction," said Jody Johnston, chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of Suncoast Council. "Even if there were similar projects to this across the country, this has to be the most ambitious, exciting Gold Award project I've ever seen."

Girl Scout troops typically work for Gold Awards through charity and community service. Troop 1157 is working through the lens of three video cameras paid for by fundraisers and cookie sales. Girl Scouts are known for going door to door, but these paid their way to New York and Washington, D.C., in July to interview successful women of politics, science, commerce, sports and the arts who grew up scouting.

"All these women have a special story that I think people would like to know, or would understand if you're a Girl Scout," said Christina Roberto, 15, a Clearwater Central Catholic ninth-grader.

"I mean, everybody has a memory of the uniform, like how they didn't like the color, like how it was really ugly. But they also remember the camping and how Girl Scouts has helped them in their lives."

Rough-cut video of On My Honor includes Powell expressing pride in her mother's effort to start the first Girl Scout troop for African-Americans in Alabama during the segregation era. NASA research scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig remembers seeing the sunrise for the first time during a Girl Scout camping trip and deciding in that moment where her career lay.

These pieces of the past, when scouting was more widely considered cool, are being assembled by eight who still believe it is. Troop 1157 lost half its original members over the years. "I always believe it's the smart ones who stay in," Johnston said. "As girls age, their interests change and they begin to drop out around fifth or sixth grade."

Those are the ones Troop 1157 member Shay Perry, 14, hopes will see On My Honor when it's completed.

"It's for girls who are thinking of getting into Girl Scouts," said the Palm Harbor University High School student, "but it's also for girls thinking of getting out of Girl Scouts, to keep them interested; those girls who think it's not cool anymore or they're too old for it. This can show them it's something significant, and important to stay in."

Countryside High School student Kelly Sawtelle, 14, added: "Any of these stories could be inspiring for younger viewers. It's also important for viewers to see there are still Girl Scouts going strong today.

"I'd like to think we're paving some kind of way. There aren't a lot of 14- and 15-year-old girls who are going out and making a documentary with a bunch of friends."

The project began nearly 18 months ago after Mimi Rich, 15, a former member of the St. Petersburg Times' Xpress reporting team, interviewed Powell and television journalist Deborah Norville for a Girl Scouts newsletter. Her mother and troop leader, Marion Rich, is involved in several community organizations including the Film Foundation of Tampa Bay, supporting aspiring young filmmakers. Combining their avocations into a documentary project for Troop 1157 became an easy decision.

"We came up with the idea, and it helped that (my mother) knows a lot of people who can make making a documentary easier," said Mimi Rich, a Palm Harbor University High School sophomore, noting her mother's contacts with bay area companies such as Tampa Digital Studios, which is donating its editing facilities.

"I thought it was a really cool idea," said Roberto, "but I never thought it would become as big a project as it is, that we would get as many women to talk, and go on such a cool trip to meet all the women and make those connections."

On My Honor began, as so many things do today, with an Internet search, this one for famous women who are former Girl Scouts. Nearly two dozen candidates for interviews were listed and biographically researched for interview topics if they agreed to participate. Few turned down the troop's media-savvy request process.

"We made packets, like, telling about ourselves and explaining what we're doing," said Taylor Nash, 15, a Clearwater Central Catholic sophomore.

"We let them know when we were going to be in New York and Washington D.C. There was a response card they could fill out and send back to us. We had a Web site created (www.troop1157documentary.org) that they could look up for information about the project. Then we just set up the appointments."

Not every woman on the list chose to participate. It turned out that screen and stage star Chita Rivera was never a Girl Scout, despite the Internet lead. Soap opera actor Susan Lucci needed hair and makeup considerations the troop couldn't afford. Kitty Carlisle Hart of What's My Line fame wasn't a Scout, either, but the 95-year-old performer invited the girls to her apartment anyway to chat about her childhood and sing a selection from Die Fledermaus. The girls still giggle about that.

They burst into loud laughter recalling one woman who was a Girl Scout, CBS news correspondent Rita Braver, but probably won't make the final cut. "She was not the most polite interview, I guess," said Countryside student Hannah Jones, 14. "Some of the stories she told aren't exactly the image that Girl Scouts want."

Mimi Rich tried several times to reach lifestyle maven Martha Stewart, who had a pressing commitment at the time.

"I kept asking her representative: "Will she be in Florida any time, or we can go to her house and film her there? We can go on location.' And the lady was really reluctant but she finally said: "Martha's under house arrest. I'm sorry.' But at least her people responded."

Troop 1157 now meets weekly to sort through the interview footage, looking for a common theme and noting portions to keep in mind on time code sheets provided by Tampa Digital. Once the dozens of hours of footage are streamlined, they plan to take the advice Marion Rich got from documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at the recent Telluride Film Festival: Use as much archival footage as possible, available from Girl Scouts of the USA offices in New York.

"We're still trying to find our common thread," Mimi Rich said. "We need to figure out what's going to tie everything together."

Already the scouts are focusing on the changing world for women since their interview subjects were scouts.

"In a lot of the interviews, they're talking about how, when they were young, women couldn't be lawyers," Jones said. "They could be a nurse or teacher or homemaker. Times have changed so much just in these women's lifetimes. Women can express themselves so much more now than they could then."

The same goes for the girls of Troop 1157, as On My Honor proves. Yet they remain focused on the stories they're collecting, not their own.

"Some people think we should put ourselves in the documentary, make it about making the documentary," said Mimi Rich. "To me, that's like a student doing a project about how to do a project, or somebody giving a speech on how to give a speech. If you just know that girls made this movie, that's enough."

That the project will be completed isn't doubted after visiting Troop 1157. What kind of an impact On My Honor can make is where the faultless dreams of adolescence kick in. A few, such as Danielle Rodnizki, 14, don't think it'll get a theatrical release, "but I think any woman or girl would appreciate it." That's conventional wisdom, but less conventional things have happened before.

"Since we first came up with the idea, I've been picturing, like, us at the Academy Awards, or watching it in a movie theater with a lot of people talking about it," Nash said. "Really farfetched, but I guess that's our big goal."

Mimi Rich would be satisfied by documenting a history that, through the accomplishments of the women in the movie, already means so much to the future.

"Just because it's focusing on the Girls Scouts doesn't mean we only want it to reach that far," she said. "We don't want it to be just an all-girls movie or just an all-Girl Scouts movie. It's important for everybody to see it. When you don't really think you can do anything, and a lot of kids don't have parents telling them they can.

"Our goal is to have it go at least as far as every Girl Scout council in the Girl Scouts, which is a pretty big goal, but that's our smallest. Another goal would be to get it into a film festival like Sundance. We're working on that."

- Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com Visit his blog at www.sptimes.com/blogs/film

The following women have been interviewed by Girl Scout Troop 1157 for their documentary project with the working title On My Honor. For more information about the project, visit the Web site www.troop1157documentary.org the source for this list.

- Alma Powell, co-chairwoman, America's Promise.

- Carla Hills, former U.S. trade representative.

- Deborah Norville, television host of Inside Edition.

- Marianne Alexander, Public Leadership Education Network.

- Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA research scientist.

- Judith Viorst, author for children and adults.

- Peggy Sanchez Mills, chief executive officer, YWCA USA.

- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

- Tina Sloan Green, president/executive director, Black Women in Sport.

- Judy Woodruff, journalist and former host of Inside Politics.

- U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill.

- Charlene Barshefsky, former U.S. trade representative.

- Virginia Edwards, editor and publisher of Education Week magazine.

- Ellen Marram, former president and CEO, Tropicana.

- Marsha Evans, president and CEO, American Red Cross.

- Val Ackerman, former president, Women's National Basketball Association.

- U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo.

- Hattie Babbitt, Former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

- Rita Braver, national correspondent for CBS News and Sunday Morning.

- Mary Futrell, dean, George Washington University.

- Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y.

- Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.

- Deborah Roberts, ABC News correspondent

- Carol Moseley Braun, former U.S. senator and presidential candidate

[Last modified October 6, 2005, 09:00:06]