Our Founder Sends You a Birthday Message

I always make it a priority to publish something on both March 12th and October 31st, for obvious reasons.  Sometimes I’ll catch the date of Juliette Low’s death, like this one from January 17, 2017.  It ties into the following post.  That entry included a message from the preface of the 1933 Handbook and referenced a 1924 letter.  Along the way, I found the 1924 letter!  It was published in an edition of American Girl that same year.  Here’s the text of the letter:

Dear Girl Scouts:

It seems only yesterday that I sent a message to you on my birthday for birthdays come around very quickly when one is old!  And much has happened since October 31st, 1923.

To me, one of the most important and interesting events of all the year just past is the purchase of our new National Headquarters.  I am like the old woman who lived in the shoe!  And now the shoe has become too small for the many children and we must have a building that will be large enough for us all.

At this birthday time of mine, it has been your custom to have Founder’s Day programs in your troops.  It has been an inspiring thought to me to imagine these troop meetings of yours, Girl Scouts ready to do your share in this splendid Scouting of ours.

This year we have before us a most important task, that of helping to raise money for our own National Headquarters.   Our Committees, our Commissioners, our Officers are busy with plans for this.  But what, you ask, can Girl Scouts do?  A great deal.  You may stand ready to give service when you are called upon.  But most of all you may constantly show the older friends of Scouting how much it means to you to be a Girl Scout.

Our older friends are being asked to buy bricks for our new Headquarters that they, too, may have a real share in our building.  These bricks will cost ten dollars apiece and we are hoping that many of our friends will wish to buy more than one brick.  You may be sure that your Commissioner, your Captain, your father and mother will be far more interested in buying these bricks if they know that you are interested in having them do it.

Yes, our National Campaign Committee needs the help of us all.  And to raise the money which we need we must apply the Scout spirit, that rare and precious quality which enables a Girl Scout to accomplish anything she undertakes to do.

I am thinking of you today and in spirit I am with you.  On Hallowe’en which is my own birthday, I shall be joining in your games with you.  For it cheers me to think that the Founder’s Day of the Girl Scouts and All Hallowe’en which brings us so many charming games are so associated.  For Scouting is a game, too.

I hope that during the coming year we shall all remember the rules of the Scouting game of ours.  They are

To play fair,
To play in your place,
To play for your side and not for yourself.

As to the score, the best thing in a game is the fun and not the result for

“When the Great Recorder comes
To write against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost
But how you played the game.”

Girl Scouts, I salute you.

Your friend and founder,

Originally, I found a reproduction of this letter on GS University, which has since become defunct, unfortunately.  But here are dates to give you some reference regarding the National Headquarters.  The original one was established in Savannah in 1912, but in 1913, it moved to Washington D.C.  It then moved to NYC in 1917.  In 1924, the Brick Campaign started to raise money to build a new building at 670 Lexington Avenue, also in NYC.  You can read more about the brick campaign on Ann Robertson’s blog.

Happy Founder’s Day!