My name is Lillian Horlock IIlig. I live in Houston, Texas. I am 93 years old and I would like to tell you about my experience as a Girl Scout.
When I was twelve years old I became a Girl Scout. I joined Girl Scouts because I wanted to sleep in a tent under a tree. I remember working on all the badges. My mother helped me and encouraged me. It was fun.
When I was fourteen, I was very proud to receive the Golden Eaglet. At age sixteen I became a Girl Scout leader and I continued with the Girl Scouts even after I began college.
On May 24, 1927, when I was a sophomore at Rice Institute, (now Rice University) Houston, Texas I received a letter from the Girl Scout Headquarters in New York. The letter stated: “You were unanimously elected as one of two representatives from Region IX to go to the International Camp for Girl Guides and Girl Scouts which will be held at Geneva Switzerland August 5 to 16.” Mary Alice Griggs of Dallas, Texas,
was also elected. The cost of $450.00 was paid by our parents. I was so excited; I could hardly believe this. I was eighteen years old and had never been out of Houston except to go to Girl Scout camps each summer down on Galveston Bay, which was 40 miles away, and to see my grandmother and grandfather Horlock in Navasota, Texas, which was 75 miles away, so a trip to Switzerland was going to be a very big adventure.
In those days, mothers did not work at careers but stayed home, so my mother was always at home to help me. She helped me pack for my trip to Switzerland. One of the items that we were told to bring was a palliasse. We never had heard of a palliasse before. We found out it was like a big pillow slip in which you stuffed hay for a mattress. I also packed my red plaid blankets to sleep on which we later used in our skits as Indian costumes. I went to the Chamber of Commerce and got products of cotton and oil and also some cactus candy and other Texas products. All the girls on the trip also took clothes and things in memory of their states.
I had a summer job working without pay for the Society Department of the Houston Chronicle. I liked to write so I mustered up lots of nerve and went to the Editor of the Houston Chronicle and asked Mr. Cottingham if he would like for me to write a journal of my trip. He said yes and told me it would pay 15 cents an inch and $1.00 for pictures. My camera was a Kodak box camera and I sent in eight pictures.
When the time arrived to go, my mother and father and brother and friends took me to the train station. I was very excited. It was night. I was alone and on my way to Dallas to meet Mary Alice Griggs, age 15, the other representative from Texas.
The next day, Mary Alice and I boarded the train to New York City, where we would meet the other Girl Scouts from across the country and the 3 scout leaders. Before we embarked on the S.S. Minnekanda I took a picture of the whole group in their GirlScout uniforms. I remember the excitement of meeting all those new faces and being on a big ship.
My cabin on the ship held six girls. The first day we all got sea sick and spent the next day sitting on the deck eating cold apples. During the long voyage across the Atlantic we spent our time getting to know one another, singing songs and performing skits. When we finally arrived in London we immediately started sight-seeing because we were all so excited to be in London. To get better acquainted each girl was put with a different girl every time we changed hotels so it did not take us long to get to know one another.
All during our train travels (there were no airplanes yet!) I pulled out my small typewriter, put it on my lap and wrote my journal about the trip to send to the Houston Chronicle.
After we reached Paris and settled into our hotel and sent out laundry, we took off our uniforms and went to a beauty parlor, had our hair set, then dressed up and went to the opera. I was amazed at the color of the people in the audience. They were all different nationalities.
When we arrived at our camp in Geneva, Switzerland, our group of twenty-seven was divided into three groups, each group having a long tent for eight scouts and one leader and a kitchen with table and chairs beneath a tree with a campfire. The girls on K.P. duty went to the central kitchen and brought our food to us to cook.
The first thing we did was to take our palliasse over to a big haystack and fill it with hay for our mattresses. In the afternoon (at “tea time”) we had hot cocoa, a big piece of french bread and a big piece of chocolate. It tasted grand.
I remember the last campfire. I remember how strange I felt to be saluting a Swiss flag instead of our American flag. On this occasion, the nationalities were mixed up. I stood next to a Girl Scout I could not talk to. We shook hands. Although we could not talk to each other, we enjoyed a silent communication which I think is sometimes more precious than words. The next morning a girl came over to my group with a letter: “To that American girl who was standing beside a Norwegian yesterday night.” I remember how we shook hands and hugged each other in spite of not be able to speak to one another. We swapped pins. I still have the pins I swapped: French, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian.
This weekend my granddaughter, who is 22 years old and a senior at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and a silver pin Girl Scout, told me that when Girl Scouts travel to another city or country, they always take hundreds of “swaps” to exchange with the other Girl Scouts.
It has been 75 years since I went on this trip with the Girl Scouts but I can remember every detail as if it happened yesterday. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life and I hope that each Girl Scout will be able to experience the same excitement in whatever “wider op” they take part in as I did in my experience to Switzerland.