April 2026 – The Parnassus Pen

O.J. Simpson and His White Bronco Upstaged this High School Civics Banquet

This photo was taken on June 17, 1994, while the police chased O.J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco.

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.

The Wedding Dress Post

My youngest sister, O., is planning her autumn wedding.

Last month, she invited all of us Gaffron sisters and several of her fiance’s family members to shop for dresses with her. We sisters had a “Girl’s Weekend” which included pool time at a hotel. In fact, another hotel guess commented to me that it looked as if we were having a “Girl’s Weekend.”

O. did say “yes to the dress” that weekend. Almost everyone that loves her will need to wait until this autumn to see the “big reveal” for this dress. So let me tell you about a dress from another autumn wedding.

I present to you “The Dress” that my mother, Shirley, sewed for her wedding to my father in the autumn of 1974. Mom met my dad several weeks before her 16th birthday. Dad gave her roses for her Sweet 16 because his mother told him that it would be a nice thing for him to do. They married several weeks before Mom’s 20th birthday. Dad had just graduated from college and he had just started his first teaching job.

Both of my parents are no longer with us. I can tell you about how young they were and show you photos of how cute they were without getting myself into trouble.

The summer before the wedding, Dad took what little money he had and he went shopping someplace in Westmoreland County near where he grew up. He needed a suit for his new teaching job, and he needed a suit for his wedding. He only had enough money to purchase one of these suits. The salesman at the suit store approached him. Dad introduced himself and explained the purpose of his shopping trip. The salesman said, “What did you say your name is again?” Dad repeated his name. The salesman said, “I’m the owner of this store. My last name is also Gaffron. I’m your dad’s cousin. Tell you what. If you buy one suit, then I’ll throw in a second suit as a wedding gift from my branch of the family.”

At least that was how Dad told the story. I have no idea how much of this is actually true. Any questions would just destroy the “magic.”

Anyway, back to The Dress. Mom sewed it on the same sewing machine that she used to sew all of the clothes that she made for our family. (My sister blogged a little bit here about the “Little House on the Prairie” outfits that Mom made us.) The leftover material from the sleeves ended up in her fabric scrap collection. I used some of these fabric scraps to make accessories for my Barbie when I married Barbie off to Ken. I still have some remaining scraps for an as-yet unknown future project.

Here’s a full length portrait of my mom wearing The Dress. My dad is also in this portrait. He is wearing the suit that his “surprise cousin” allegedly gifted him on behalf of a mystery branch of the Gaffron family.

I took Mom’s dress, her veil, and her wedding album back to my house when we prepared to sell the house in Berlin. My sister O. modeled The Dress (Mom’s dress, that is) and The Veil in front of my Christmas tree last December. It fit her!

My mom’s name was Shirley. O’s middle name is also Shirley. So now we have two brides with Shirley in their names.

Let me tell you about yet another bride named Shirley. This Shirley was my maternal grandmother’s only sister. She passed away before my mom was born. Here is a photo of Shirley on her wedding day, standing with Grandma.

Shirley didn’t have any children of her own. So, I get to be the one to tell you blog readers about her. Here is what I know about this Shirley: my grandma missed her very much. A few years before Grandma passed away at the age of 90, she and I sat down with all of her photo albums. Grandma showed me many photos of her with her sister Shirley.

It is my understanding that this Shirley got married in the early 1950’s. I don’t know anything about her dress or about the dress that my grandma wore in this photo.

Even though my mom made her own wedding dress, I know a tiny bit about wedding dress shopping in the 1970’s. My late mother-in-law, Fran, married my father-in-law, Dennis, in 1974. They actually got married just a few weeks before my own parents got married. My in-laws and my own parents all belonged to the baby boomer generation. (My parents disliked the term “baby boomer.”) Fran told me that so many women shopped for wedding dresses in the 1970’s that the Pittsburgh department stores had dedicated wedding dress sections. Fran found her wedding dress in one such department store. Fran said “Yes to the Dress” because the embroidery included one of her favorite flowers.

In the very late 1970’s or the very early 1980’s, Mom brought me to her own sister’s wedding shower. It was held at somebody’s apartment in Pittsburgh. I ghosted the event (otherwise known as a “French exit” or an “Irish goodbye”) in order to check out the building’s elevator. I was still riding in the elevator when Mom found me. I wasn’t a big fan of weddings back then. But I enjoy them now.

Voluntold; The Story of the Time that My Dad Volunteered My Mom for a Project

This is my second grade soccer photo.

If anybody reading this blog identifies themself in this photo and they object to it, please reach out and I will put a big ‘ol Eat N’ Park Smiley Face or something over your mug. Most of this post is actually going to be about the team banner shown in this photo.

For the first few years after we moved to Berlin, I played AYSO soccer. A lot of my classmates also played AYSO soccer. The team in this photo was just one of many teams of kids my age who went to school in Berlin. Our AYSO teams were all co-ed. I later graduated from high school with many of the kids in this photo. The exceptions were the kids who were my age but were in other grades, and the kid who moved in junior high. (The birthday cut-off for teams for AYSO soccer was slightly different than the birthday cut-off for our school district.)

Berlin’s varsity soccer program started after I left high school. Our town didn’t have any “permanent” soccer facilities when I was a kid. The “soccer fields” that I played on during my short soccer career all became other things. For instance, most of our elementary school soccer games were held on a farmer’s then-fallow cornfield. A few years later, it became a planted cornfield. There was another, smaller “soccer field” in town where the kindergarten kids practiced and played their AYSO soccer games. We also played pick-up soccer with the neighborhood kids on the “kindergarten soccer field.” When I was in high school, the parents of one of those neighborhood kids custom built their Forever Home on the lot that was formerly the “kindergarten soccer field.”

(Disclaimer: I think that one of my childhood soccer fields was a fallow cornfield. I could be wrong about this. Maybe it was a wheatfield? I saw farms from my backyard. Our house was on the very edge of town. We certainly smelled them. My entire eighth grade class was required to take Vocational Agriculture. A lot of my classmates lived on farms and I didn’t. I mis-remember a lot of things, so I could be wrong about the corn.)

My soccer career started in March of second grade, a few months after we moved into “Joe’s House.” I am pretty sure that my soccer career was my dad’s idea.

Now it’s time to talk about something else that was my dad’s idea.

Dad took me to my soccer team’s introductory meeting, held in the school cafeteria. This was where we learned the rules, and voted on a team name. (“Firebolts” won the vote for team name.) This was also the meeting where the coach asked for a volunteer to make the team banner. Our team’s official sponsor was Keidel’s Hardware. Both the team name and the team banner needed to include Keidel’s. Spoiler: my dad volunteered my mom to make the team banner! And she wasn’t there! She was at home with their other two young kids.

I do remember how all of this went down. We came home from the soccer meeting. My dad said to my mom something like, “I volunteered you to make the banner since you like to sew!” My mom wasn’t as excited as my dad was.

Less than two months later, my parents purchased their house in Berlin. My mom repainted the living room while we were at school. My parents moved all of our stuff out of “Joe’s House” and into “Our House.” I celebrated my First Communion at our new Catholic parish the same month that we moved into Chez Gaffron. Mom found out during my First Communion rehearsal that every mom there except for her had planned a family party to celebrate their child’s First Communion. (Mom’s own parents didn’t “do” First Communion parties. Dad’s family were Protestants. Mom didn’t realize that First Communion parties were a thing. She threw one together for me. Our extended family showed up so that they could see my parents’ new house. I got a cake and presents, and it wasn’t even my birthday yet.)

My first soccer game happened a week after we moved and a week or so before my First Communion.

I understand why Mom didn’t realize that when she dropped me off for the warmup before my first soccer game, that she was also supposed to drop off the banner. There was a lot going on in our family. Also, Mom didn’t want to make the banner in the first place.

The coach and the “team mother,” or whatever they called the woman who organized everything, said to me, “Jenny, where is the banner that your mom made?”

I didn’t know. (I think that she was at my younger sister’s soccer game, which was probably held at the exact same time, at the “Kindergarten Soccer Field” that I mentioned above.)

They asked me for my parents’ new phone number. I didn’t know that either. We had only moved a week earlier.

Someone tracked my mom down (probably at my sister’s soccer game) and asked her to bring the banner to my soccer game.

Mom showed up at my soccer game with the banner and explained, “I haven’t finished it yet.”

I don’t think that Mom ever finished the team banner for Keidel’s Firebolts. The top of the banner looks sort of “unpopulated” in our team photo. However, the bottom of the banner has a cool-looking thunderbolt. You just can’t see it because kids are standing in front of it in this photo. So maybe that was her artistic vision for it. Mom was very talented in multiple textile arts, although we never said it like that. We just said, “Mom is good at sewing,” or “Mom is good at needlepoint,” or “Mom is good at crochet,” or “Mom just taught herself how to knit a sweater from watching YouTube videos,” or “Mom owns a lot of yarn.”

Mom also sewed her own wedding dress. I plan to post a photo of it soon. Unlike the soccer banner for Keidel’s Firebolts, Mom decided on her own to make her wedding dress. We still have it and cherish it very much, just as I cherish the memories of my parents during our first spring in Berlin.