
The American Legion Auxilliary (it was called the American Legion Ladies Auxillary when I was a kid) chose me to represent my school at Keystone Girls State in 1994. The Berlin chapter usually just sent one girl, but in 1994 they sent two girls. I think that the American Legion (no Ladies in that name) was supposed to send a boy from my high school to Keystone Boys State as well. No boys applied, thus they funded two girls.
Girls State and Boys State are one-week programs held on college campuses in almost every state to teach rising high school seniors about civics and citizenship, American-Legion style. The programs held in Pennsylvania have “Keystone” at the beginning of their names because Pennsylvania is the Keystone State.
At the end of the week, we held “State Elections.” We elected one girl as “Governor” of Keystone Girls State. This lucky girl received a trip to Washington, D.C. to attend Girls Nation along with the girls elected as “Governors” of the other Girls States. Boys State also holds elections. They send delegates to Boys Nation. However, they are set up differently. (Note: I haven’t seen this documentary, but apparently it touches on the differences.)
My parents strongly encouraged me to sign up for anything that would “look good on a college scholarship application.” I wasn’t down with sports or STEM. I really enjoyed my Social Studies and History classes. So, I threw my hat in the ring for this fine opportunity. Two of my younger sisters also attended Keystone Girls State the summers before their own senior years of high school.
Per this Wikipedia page, “In 2020, the New York Post published an article citing Boys Nation and Boys State as summer camps that groom future presidents and governors.”
If a program attracts thousands of kids with enough of an interest in politics for them to give up part of their summer vacations to do politics, then it makes sense to me that some of those kids eventually achieve success in politics.
If you listen to the podcast “The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds,” then check out the first few minutes of “Episode 456- Scott Walker.” Future Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker attended Badger Boys State. (Wisconsin is the Badger State.) Walker then got sent to represent Wisconsin at Boys Nation in Washington, D.C. There, he met Ronald Reagan. The Dollop referred to the program as a “Model UN ripoff.”
I don’t know anything about Model UN (Model United Nations) because my school didn’t offer an option to attend Model UN. I bet that the types of kids who attend Model UN are the same types of kids who attend Girls State and Boys State, though. They most likely have parents who encourage them to sign up for anything that could increase their chances of getting into a good college and / or receive money to fund their attendance at that good college.
We lived in a college dorm for a week at Shippensburg University. When we checked in, we received housing assignments that corresponded with our “city” assignment. We also received an assignment to one of two political parties. Each city had an equal number of citizens from each of these parties. The parties were NOT related to any existing political party in the United States. They just happened to have the same primary colors.
We lived on the same floor and in the same section of that floor with every other citizen of our “city.” The authority figure who lived on our floor as a sort-of Camp Counselor / RA was Mrs. Heeter. So, the name of our “city” was “Heeter City.” The photo at the top of this blog post are the citizens of Heeter City. On the first evening, we gathered for a Heeter City town hall.
The activities during that week were stuff that you would expect from a civics camp run by the American Legion. We had flag raising and flag-lowering ceremonies every day. We had lectures on flag ettiquette. We had “General Assembly” sessions where people gave speeches and held debates. We practiced parliamentary procedure.
The dress code was professional attire. My first office job after college was for a financial services company owned by the chair of that county’s Repubican Party committee. The dress code for that job was the same as the dress code for Keystone Girls State in 1994.
We knew about the dress code ahead of time because the American Legion or the American Legion Ladies Auxilliery sent us a list of what to pack. In addition to the office clothes, they asked us to bring a dress for the end-of-the week banquet. I think that they referred to it as an “Inauguration Ball” for the winners of all of the state elections.
A lot of the girls brought the dresses that they wore to their high school proms that spring. That’s why the photo at the top of this post includes a lot of girls wearing prom dresses. Obviously not everyone had a junior prom dress. The citizens of Heeter City posed for this photo at the banquet / Inauguration Ball. I am standing in the top row with most of the other tall girls, fourth from the left. I am wearing the blue prom dress that my mom sewed for me. A girl who was good at art volunteered to draw our city’s official “sign.” (Nobody voluntold her to draw it.)
We moved into the dorm at Shippensburg University on Sunday, June 12, 1994. On the opposite side of the U.S. on this same day, a woman named Nicole Brown Simpson and a man named Ronald Goldman were murdered at Nicole’s residence. Wikipedia told me that it was evening on the West Coast when this happened. We had already met our fellow citizens of Heeter City and we were probably asleep in our new beds. My new roommate had already had a heated conversation with her boyfriend on the landline phone in our room.
I had never heard the names Nicole Brown Simpson or Ronald Goldman before. Nicole’s former husband was retired football player and movie star O.J. Simpson. I had no idea who O.J. Simpson was, even though I had probably watched the first Naked Gun movie by 1994 and O.J. Simpson was one of the actors in that movie. He had also appeared in an orange juice commercial that I had seen.
Our dorm had a television in the lounge. Early in that week, I watched a teaser for the tabloid show Hard Copy. It called out the double murders of the former wife of a football player-turned-movie star, and also of her male friend. I didn’t watch the actual show because I was busy doing politics with other strivers.
By the middle of the week, both of the political parties at Keystone Girls State held state primaries. These were the elections which decided which candidates from each party would run for the Keystone Girls State general election on Friday. One of the citizens from Heeter City won her party primary to run for State Treasurer, and one of the citizens from Heeter City won her party primary to run for State Governor!
By that point in time, we had already been lectured at General Assembly because one day at the flag raising ceremony, somebody had responded to the American flag with a formal military hand salute. This was not appropriate because we were not veterans or wearing military uniforms. One day they let us wear shorts to General Assembly because of the hot June weather. This relaxation of the dress code was revoked the next day because people started to prop their feet on the seats in front of them. Hopefully a professional dress code would encourage people to sit professionally.
Somebody gave a speech in General Assembly that maintained that “nobody should get a free lunch.” Another citizen of Girls State advised that she was offended because her family qualified for free lunch at her school. The original speech-giver clarified that she only mean it as a colloquialism, and no offense was intended.
My roommate at Heeter City fought with her boyfriend over our room’s phone every night. She insisted to him that she wasn’t talking to men at GIRLS STATE.
We held our general elections on Friday, June 17, 1994.
Our Heeter City citizen who won her primary for State Treasurer also won her general election! She was now the Treasurer of Keystone Girls State! The position didn’t have any actual responsibilities. She got to wear a cool-looking sash for the group photo and the Inauguration Ball. In the above photo, she sits to the left of Mrs. Heeter.
Our Heeter City citizen who won her primary for Governor lost in the general election. In my opinion, this was the only race in Girls State worth “winning.” The winner got to attend Girls Nation in the US Capitol. They might possibly meet President Clinton, since he attended Boys Nation when he was in high school. Such a bummer that she made it all this way, just to lose on the final night. She didn’t even get a cool-looking sash to wear. She is sitting, sash-less, to the right of Mrs. Heeter.
I watched Mrs. Heeter try to cheer her up as the Inauguration Ball emcee announced the general election winners. Losing elections is just a part of politics.
One of the other citizens of Heeter City (not my roommate) announced that she had called her boyfriend in between the photo-taking and dinner. He told her that some famous person that I had never heard of – some football player – was leading the police on a chase down a highway in L.A. This girl’s boyfriend was watching it unfold live on television when she called him.
A bunch of the girls at my table decided to cut out of dinner early and go watch the news coverage of the police chasing O.J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco.
Very few people stuck around after they finished their dinners. When I returned to the dorm, citizens of the various cities sat around watching the coverage of the Bronco chase.
We all went home on Saturday morning. I may have exchanged a letter or two with one of the other citizens of Heeter City, but that all fell off pretty fast. I lost touch with every person that I met there. My high school classmate who also attended Girls State was assigned to a different city, so we didn’t know any of the same people from this.
O.J. Simpson was charged with two accounts of first degree murder for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted on October 3, 1995. On that day, I was a freshman at St. Vincent College. The school had a six-week long freshman orientation process. The afternoon of October 3 was the freshman class’s mandatory assembly on drug and alcohol use. (Yes, I am aware that this was already more than a month into the semester.) A bunch of the freshmen skipped the drug and alcohol assembly in order to watch the verdict in the murder trial. I attended this assembly. We were in the question-and-answer portion of it. Some kid confused the Dean of Students by asking her a bunch of questions about the results of drug and alcohol usage while operating farm equipment. Then, this other kid raised his hand, stood up, and announced that the jury had just acquitted O.J. Simpson. This guy had worn headphones to the assembly so that he could listen to the verdict on a radio. The Dean of Students announced the verdict over her microphone at the podium. This pretty much ended our drug and alcohol assembly.
I hope that the citizen who got elected as Governor had a good experience at Girls Nation. I am sure that the citizen of Heeter City who didn’t get elected found success doing other things. To my knowledge, none of my fellow citizens from Keystone Girls State have become Presidents. Maybe our time just hasn’t arrived yet.







































