They Cooked Their Way to Europe

On July 29 fifteen excited girls from our area will take off from Lambert Field for Europe on money they earned themselves.

The group is the Senior Girl Scouts Troop 2886, sponsored by Grace Methodist Church. What is remarkable about them is that half of the $583 each girl had to have for the trip was acquired by cooking and serving meals at the church. The rest of the money was hoarded together over a period of two years of baby-sitting and other youthful enterprises.

The girls themselves are an interesting lot whom their leader, Betty Klinefelter of 6165 Kingsbury, declares to be “the greatest bunch of girls in the world.” They’re a good mix: black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, ages 14 to 18, and from quite a spread of family income. But for three years they’ve been working together as a team, planning, cooking and serving dinners for up to 250 people.

Now they have their passports and only a few more dinners to go before tooling out to the airport. Then it’s through six countries in a Fiat bus in charge of a courier and their two adult leaders, Mrs. Oscar Klinefelter and Mrs. Graydon Ballard.

In even “the greatest bunch” such feats do not just happen among the young — or anybody else, for that matter. Back of them is always some one with endless enthusiasm and a good store of both practical and leadership skills. In this case the spark plug is Betty Klinefelter, who has been a volunteer but close to full-time youth worker at the church for years. (At present she works in the nursery school. A real dynamo, this neighbor of ours. Several years ago she was honored by St. Roch’s Parish as the Good Neighbor of the Year.)

The travel project came about gradually. It began when the girls were cadet scouts and took a little trip to visit the State Fair at Sedalia. It continued in the summer of 1967 when they went to the Exposition in Montreal, taking along their sleeping bags for bedding down on church floors en route and in a Girl Guides Camp while in Montreal.

In the summer of 1969 the girls decided to use the money they had earned to charter a bus for a tour of Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, again sleeping on church floors. The three days in Washington, one in Philadelphia, and three in New York plus time in the bus cost each girl the sum total of $50.

After that they were ready for Europe, but it took two years to get the money together. Now, even before they leave for Europe, the girls are asking, “What shall we do next?”

The catering project came about in this way. Partly because it has good kitchen and dining room facilities and a central location, Grace Church has always been one in which many meals are served not only to membership groups but also to general Methodist groups and others with a religious base. In fact, so many meals are served there that the women of the church wanted out from under some of the burden. One of the groups which were being forced either to cook for themselves or have their meal catered was the Wesleyan Service Guild, composed of business and professional women. So three years ago, just when Betty and her girls were casting about for a “service project,” the Guild asked them if they would like to cater a dinner and earn some money for their Troop treasury. They would.

The meal was such a success that the Guild asked them to take on its monthly dinner meetings, and the project was launched. Everyone liked the meals the girls served under Betty’s and Mrs. Ballard’s supervision. Everybody enjoyed watching the business-like youngsters flit around serving the food. Before long the Troop was in steady business. Then followed Expo 67, the East Coast bus tour, and now Europe. The Girl Scout Council has rules that troops must have a purpose for money-making. What better purpose than travel? There is another rule that no more than half of the amount required for a project can be earned by the troop, the rest of it to be earned by individual Scouts themselves.

The European jaunt will be great, no doubt, but in the long run the principal value of the project is not likely to be the travel. The girls have been having an intense learning experience in food buying and preparation and at the same time acquiring some marketable skills. Two of them recently got jobs at St. Mary’s Hospital in the food handling department because of the troop experience. Some of the others have catered meals on their own in order to earn part of the amount they must get together individually.

And beyond that they’ve been picking up all sorts of valuable know-how. Right at the beginning Betty inspired them to cut costs by cutting out deliveries and convenience foods. So they’re probably the only girls in St. Louis who can market on Produce Row or wholesale grocery stores. One of the fathers, whose own father is a hotel chef, taught them such thrifty tricks as making biscuits by weight and how to make rolls for 200 people and time said rolls to come out of the oven at exactly the right minute. They’ve learned to make pies “from scratch” and that a meal is made if it includes good “home-baked” bread and pies. For the larger crowds, parents of the girls come in to help, but on the small ones, the girls and their two leaders manage alone. The leaders’ feet may wear out, but the girls have a ball.

Troop members who will make the trip are: Becky Ballard, Joyce Barnard, Karen Barnard, Mary Bertrand, Barbara Boyd, Leslie Doyle, Susan Feldman, Denise Fleming, Karen Hymen, Christine Kelly, Daphne Macklin, Sue Miller, Sandy Nelson, Susan Stech, and Debbie Stobaugh.

Originally published in The Paper, May 1971.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times1971_05.pdf, printed page 3.