'Always a Girl Scout': The Elles Gantes adult Girl Scouts celebrates 50 years of camping and camaraderie
Not many people can say they've had the same friends for more than 50 years, but that's the case for several women in the Elles Gantes Girl Scouts troop.
The Elles Gantes (pronounced EL-uh-GAN-tays) will celebrate its golden anniversary on May 2. It was founded in 1976 at the suggestion of Portland resident Bobby Cettel, who was 54 at the time. Cettel and five other women, all Girl Scout troop leaders ranging from 30 to their 50s, wanted to experience the camaraderie and outdoor adventures enjoyed by their younger scouts.
"Once a Girl Scout, always a Girl Scout," said Helen Strange, 82, of Portland, who has been an Elles Gantes member for 47 years. "We've all become lifetime members."
A Girl Scout is considered an adult at age 21, said Strange, but that doesn't mean she has to give up her Girl Scouts membership. Girl Scouts can technically be any age. In fact, it's written into the Elles Gantes' bylaws that anyone who joins the group must be an active Girl Scouts member.
The Elles Gantes currently have 39 members on their roster, said Strange, the group's archivist and newsletter editor. The youngest member is 41 and the oldest member, Portland resident Selma Anderson, one of the group's founders, is 102 and will turn 103 in May. There are several mother-daughter members and sibling members. Two of Cettel's granddaughters are members. About half the group lives in Vancouver, half live in Portland and a few even live in California, said Nancy Scott, 65, of Vancouver, an Elles Gantes member of 40 years. Scott's girlhood troop leader, Ginger Swift, was a founding member.
"The collective wisdom of our group is amazing," said Portland resident Laurie Jorgensen, 69, whose mother was founding Elles Gantes member Cettel.
Jorgensen resisted her mother's urging to join the group because it was her "mom's thing," she said. The first meeting she attended was the group's 30th anniversary. Now she's been a member for 20 years but said "it was a mistake not to join earlier" because she relishes the friendship and the varied activities.
Get-togethers happen at members' homes and other locations from Sandy, Ore., to Winlock in Lewis County. The Elles Gantes have one annual business meeting plus monthly outings or activities like picnics, crafting or even, in years past, ski trips to Mount Hood. The troop has Christmas parties, game days, book clubs, quilting groups and hiking outings. In June, they have a "mumus and margaritas" party. In November, the Elles Gantes take the self-guided Clark County Open Studios Tour. The group's April meeting was a scavenger hunt at the Portland home décor store Ikea, Scott said - an outing which brought back memories.
"My first activity with the group was another scavenger hunt at Washington Square. We had to go to different stores and we were given a Polaroid camera and a couple dollars," Scott said. "There were things we had to buy and things we had to find. I must have been about 25. It was so much fun that I just had to keep doing it."
The Elle Gantes also went on plenty of camping trips together, sleeping in tents and roughing it in all kinds of weather. One year, they got snowed out and opted to rent a house instead.
"As we've aged, we decided we don't like sleeping on the ground anymore," Strange said.
The name came about because one of the founding members, Jeanne Durdle, was a "stately woman," said Scott, who drank her tea with a raised pinky. The ladies liked her style and wanted to be known as a troop with panache. The French-inspired word seemed to capture the group's joie de vivre.
"Our mascot is the otter," Scott said. "That's because an otter won't do anything if it isn't fun. That is probably one of the reasons why I joined, to have fun. But as you get to know these women and experience life with them, they become so important."
"Sisterhood" might capture the depth of the relationships within the group, Strange said. It's a group where your interests and expertise are welcomed and supported, Scott said, and "nobody says you have a bad idea."
"There's encouragement, there's love, there's acceptance," Strange said. "I have two sisters that I'm very, very close to. This is another kind of friendship, another kind of sisterhood, that is very important."
Adult Girl Scouts can't earn badges - embroidered decals representing achievements, skills and troop activities - but they can earn "interest patches," said Strange. The Elles Gantes also have a long history of community service projects (drives gathering food, school supplies, Christmas toys and the like) as well as financial and practical support for the Girl Scouts.
The first service project the group undertook was an annual trek to Spirit Lake to close up the Girl Scouts camp for the season. In September, after all the campers were gone, several Elles Gantes members would take a boat across the lake to collect tents, canoes, life jackets and boating equipment. They'd ferry the gear back across the lake to put them in storage for the winter. However, that service project ended in 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted and destroyed the camp and much of the lake.
"We got them all stored that year and came home and the mountain blew up and buried everything," Strange said.
The Elles Gantes have also hosted national Girl Scouts conventions in Portland and organized regional council meetings and cookie luncheons during cookie-selling season. They've supported individual Girl Scouts with trips to international Girl Scouts centers. In fact, the group's first foreign trip was in 1979 to a Girl Scouts center in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
The Elles Gantes members spoke with considerable emotion about their long involvement in the group. The group has brought them joy, solace and an enduring sense of connectedness, not only during their years of young motherhood, Scott said, but also now as they move through their golden years. The Elles Gantes' original charter, jotted down on a napkin during that first meeting in 1976, is framed and kept in the group's archives, Strange said. It's a physical reminder of the bond they all cherish.
"It's the hugs that we get. It's the laughter we share," Strange said. "We always come home feeling good."
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