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A Girl Scout for life

Courage, confidence and character. That's what this 89-year-old is said to embody, because she made a permanent pledge.

By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published July 21, 2006

	[Times photo: Mike Pease]
	Clifford "Skipper" Richardson points out an old-time Girl Scout emblem on a quilt made from Scouting curtains once used in the clubhouse behind her Temple Terrace home. Tampa's longest-serving Girl Scout joined in 1930, graduated from the Hyde Park troop in 1939, become a leader of the first troop in Temple Terrace and still teaches.

"You should be a Girl Guide," she told Richardson, referring to Canada's equivalent to a Girl Scout.

She took off her Girl Guide pin and attached it to Richardson's shirt. She wore it proudly.

It was 1927. Calvin Coolidge was in the White House that year, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs and Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in history in the Spirit of St. Louis.

Richardson would go on to help establish the second Girl Scout troop in the state: Magnolia Troop 1, out of Hyde Park.

Today, she is Tampa's longest-serving Girl Scout. At 89, Richardson still teaches the art of tying knots and volunteers with a disabled troop from Temple Terrace.

She sleeps with a Scouting quilt and remembers a time when girls baked their own cookies, served lookout shifts for the Army and earned badges for a perfectly made bed.

"She embodies everything we want in a Girl Scout: courage, confidence and character," said Zoe McKenzie, field executive for the Girl Scouts of Suncoast Council. "She's just an ongoing inspiration."

Richardson's Girl Scout-green jacket is covered with pins and patches, like a suitcase stamped with passports from around the world.

Her pioneering journey in Scouting began in 1930, 18 years after Juliette Gordon Low gathered 18 girls to register the first troop of American Girl Guides (later called Girl Scouts). Richardson's first pin was the Tenderfoot, which she got for memorizing the Girl Scout law and promise.

She was a Girl Scout before there were boxed Girl Scout cookies. Richardson, like Scouts across the country in the 1920s and '30s, baked them at home using simple sugar cookie recipes and trefoil-shaped cookie cutters. (She still has her cookie cutter. )

They wrapped the treats in wax paper bags, sealed them with stickers, and sold them door to door for 25 to 35 cents per dozen.

Her favorite Scouting activity was camping.

The girls would spend a week at a time at such campsites as Camp Fowler in Lutz (which no longer exists) and Camp Dorothy Thomas in Riverview.

"We learned about different trees, the things we could eat, like taking palm fronds and pulling them out and chopping them up like celery," she recalled. "The different berries on bushes, which ones we could eat ... "

They didn't sleep in cabins or have use of any public restrooms in the wilderness.

"We were campers. We loved to camp," Richardson said. "They don't have anybody doing camping much anymore. They don't know what a latrine is. They don't know how to dig a hole in the ground."

To earn their cooking badge, they had to prepare items like ham and potato salad. They also cooked outside, creating meals of scrambled eggs and bacon. For dinner, it was hamburgers and hot dogs heated over coals.

To get the child nurse badge, the girls had to bathe a baby, take a temperature by placing a thermometer under the tongue, create slings, bandage an ankle and create splints.

To earn a housekeeping badge, they had to master domestic chores.

"We learned how to clean up, how to make a bed and make it up right," she said.

"You had to get everything clean. I'd go in with a white glove (she sweeps her finger down the length of her coffee table) and if there was dust, if they didn't do a good enough job, they'd have to go back and do it all over again."

When she graduated from the Magnolia troop in 1939, Richardson became a leader of the first troop in Temple Terrace.

She took her charges through all the stages of Girl Scouting - Daisy to Brownie to Junior to Cadette to Senior - and even conducted a nontraditional Girl Scout activity helping the Army.

During World War II, she and her senior Scouts served as spotters at a lookout tower at MacDill Army Air Base, now MacDill Air Force Base, and at Hillsborough State Park to assist in the war effort.

"That was interesting," she said. "We had never done anything like that before, but we did whatever we could to help."

She also started a mariner troop, which is how she got her nickname, "Skipper." Her husband, who had been a Boy Scout, became involved in her activities, even joining the girls on camp outings. Bass Richardson, who worked for a truck dealership, built a 600-square-foot clubhouse in the back of their Temple Terrace home that became the site for troop meetings. Skipper Richardson put up curtains with a Girl Scout theme. Their daughter and later two granddaughters also became Girl Scouts.

"We were a Girl Scout family," Richardson said. "Everyone became involved."

Richardson, a stay-at-home mom, also made time for church. She is the last surviving founder of Temple Terrace Community Church.

Through the years she lost her husband to congestive heart failure and a daughter to cancer. She also outlived three siblings.

"She is the strongest woman I have ever known," said granddaughter Shannon Alfonso, 33, of Vero Beach. "She's buried her whole family, but she still smiles every day and laughs. She dearly adores her family. No matter what comes at her, she just keeps smiling and has a nice word for everybody. She's genuinely happy."

Last year, in honor of 75 years of service, Girl Scout friends presented Richardson with a handmade quilt using the Scout curtain fabric that once decorated the windows in her clubhouse.

It depicts old-time illustrations of the Girl Scouts who camped, earned badges and dedicated hour upon hour to service projects.

They continue that mission today, with a more modern twist.

Today, there are more than 3.6-million Girl Scouts worldwide and more than 18,000 in Hillsborough County. They sell Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Trefoils for $3.50 a box. They earn badges in audiovisual production, desktop publishing and hundreds of other tasks.

"Back then, we had to have at least 24 girls to make a troop. Today, you just need two girls to make a troop," Richardson said. "Juliette Low would turn over in her grave if she knew that."

Tampa's longest serving Girl Scout today lives at John Knox Village, a retirement complex near the University of South Florida.

She uses a walker to move around more easily. She treasures mementos from her years of Scouting, including pins, patches and the Girl Scout quilt. The old uniforms she donated to the council.

Still a passionate gardener, she has transformed the lawn behind her apartment into a paradise of flowers.

She plays the kazoo in the John Knox Village Rhythm Band, which puts on about four concerts a year.

"She's a role model to adults as well," said McKenzie, of the Scouting council.

"She shows that Girl Scouting is a lifelong thing and continues to be fun, and the main focus is you give back. That's really what she exemplifies."

[Last modified July 20, 2006, 11:57:45]