By ROGER EASTER
Past Commander, Adjutant, Historian, Hubmaster, Honorary Life Member
ERATH COUNTY (August 21, 2017) – Bluebonnet Girls State delegate, Odalys Salizar (L), receives certificate of achievement from Auxiliary Unit 240 Past President, Johnnie Ratliff (R), following her presentation at a joint program of the American Legion Post 240 and American Legion Auxiliary Unit 240 meeting on Tuesday, August 15, 2017. In keeping with its annual, Boys and Girls State Night August meeting tradition, Post & Unit 240, invited Odalys, and family, to attend and report on her Girls State experience.
Odalys, a senior at Stephenville High School, is in the National Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society, and a member of the tennis team. She plans to attend college and major in pre-law and psychology. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fidel Salizar, and the sister of Ivan Salizar, who graduated from Tarleton State University and is a financial advisor in Stephenville.
She was nominated for Girls State by SHS counselors, selected and sponsored, by Auxiliary Unit 240 to attend the week-long program held at Texas Lutheran College in Seguin, Texas.
Bluebonnet Girls’ State, an American Legion program similar to Lone Star Boys’ State, was instituted as part of the Americanism program of the American Legion Auxiliary in 1940 to counter certain imported un-American activities identified by the American Legion before World War II. The program’s intent is to train high-school-age girls in becoming better citizens, with emphasis on American democratic principles and the American system of government. Program objectives also include teaching participants to live together as a self-governing group and informing them about the duties, privileges, rights, and responsibilities of American citizenship. Meetings were held at Baylor University in 1941 and 1942 but were then canceled until the end of World War II. They began again in 1946 and continued annually into the mid-1990s at Texas Lutheran College. Participants set up fictitious cities and a state, electing officials to govern each. Bluebonnet Girls’ State is overseen by the Girls’ State Committee, its policy-making body.
Two girls each year are selected as members of Girls’ Nation, held in Washington, D.C.
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