Girl Scout Sweatshirt

Hailey Hudzinski

Catalog Number: 1990.004.08

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

La Crosse area Girl Scouts will sell cookies door to door — and at local establishments — during the next several weeks.

If you were buying Girl Scout cookies back in 1953, you would have been purchasing a sandwich-type cookie — with the option of four flavored fillings — at a cost of just 40 cents a box.

We recently came across a Camp Ehawee sweatshirt in the collections of the La Crosse Historical Society that made us curious about local Girl Scout history and the development of Camp Ehawee north of Mindoro.

Phoebe Sorenson, who donated this sweatshirt to the historical society in 1990, was in the Girl Scouts for several years. She also served on the Riverland Council board.

The history of the Girl Scouts in the U.S. dates to March 12, 1912, when Juliette Low created the first troop in Savannah, Ga., for her daughter and friends. The first Girl Scout troop in La Crosse was created in 1919, when Mrs. J.E. McConnell began a troop for her own daughter.

The first cookie sale in La Crosse, however, did not take place for a dozen years after the first local troop was created. A local bakery made the cookies for the Girl Scouts in 1931, and they were then packaged and delivered by the Girl Scouts themselves. That first year, La Crosse Girl Scouts sold 4,834 dozen cookies.

All of the money earned by local Girl Scouts through cookie sales stays with the local council and troops. Girl Scouts are then able to choose how to use their earnings. Girl Scouts have the opportunity to go on trips with their troop, experience the outdoors at camp, fund a local project to improve their community and even donate to a cause of their choosing.

In the early 1950s, local Girl Scouts had a specific goal for their funds: to earn enough money to build a local camp. They relied on cookie sales and funds from rummage sales to pay for the project.

The local Scout council bought the land in northern La Crosse County in 1951. That same year, the Girl Scouts conducted a naming competition. Jacqualine Kramer won the contest with the name Camp Ehawee, meaning Camp of the Laughing Maidens.

Although the land already had been purchased, the Girl Scouts still needed to raise enough money to begin development and build facilities. La Crosse Girl Scouts were so dedicated to their goal of having a developed camp that they sold 12,951 boxes of cookies in 1952 — the largest number in local history at the time. The La Crosse Tribune printed an article on May 16, 1952, stating the Girl Scouts were “building their camp with cookies.”

Even though La Crosse Girl Scouts this year won’t be concerned with building a new camp, they are as invested in community improvement now as they were in 1917.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on February 10, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

1920s Football Referee Uniform

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Ben Hudrilik

Catalog Number: 1987.062.03

Before the 1920s, football officials dressed much differently than they do today. A New York Times article from 2013 reports that football referees wore a beret, bow tie and white dress shirt. They also used horns, not flags, to signal penalties.

This look could cause on-field confusion, because football players often wore white uniforms, too, and they could not easily distinguish a teammate from an official.

The striped uniform we see today was introduced about 1920 after an Arizona quarterback mistook referee Lloyd Olds for one of his teammates and threw him the football. This mistake drove Olds and friend Greg Moe, who owned a sporting goods store, to design a black-and-white-striped uniform that would stand out.

Football fans hated this new look at first, but it stuck around because of its distinctive style. Many people tried to change the uniform in a variety of ways — such as adding red stripes when color televisions became popular — but none of them could dethrone Olds’ design. This design later was adopted by other sports, including hockey, basketball and soccer.

The uniform for football referees has changed little over the years. According to ESPN, the most recent change came in 2006 when NFL referees selected new uniforms to accommodate a wider variety of weather. This also was when wider white stripes and thinner black stripes were introduced.

This uniform was donated by Leon Miller, who attended, taught and coached at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for more than 40 years. He was widely praised for his officiating work, and he served as associate director of the university’s Physical Education Department.

Fans will be able to see the almost-century-old referee uniform still on the field at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Minneapolis.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on February 3, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.

Ann Kenyon’s Red Cross Uniform

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

Ivy King

Catalog Number: 1991.013.01

The Red Cross uniform pictured here was worn by Ann Kenyon during World War I, while she worked at the La Crosse Red Cross headquarters. Kenyon was a native of Winona, Minn., but she moved to La Crosse after marrying William Kenyon. She was born Dec. 26, 1874, which would have made her 43 when the United States entered the war in 1917.

Copyright La Crosse County Historical Society

La Crosse’s Red Cross chapter started in December 1915 after President William Howard Taft visited the city. Taft attended a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting, and there he helped create a strategy to form a local chapter, which officially began in 1916. One of Taft’s friends from college, George Burton, became the chairman of the La Crosse chapter.

After the United States entered the war, the Red Cross became a huge institution, nearly overnight. With the help of the Red Cross, the United States sent a series of commissions to Europe to administer help to the Allied military troops and civilians in need. Through the Red Cross, women knitted winter clothing for soldiers and wrapped a vast number of surgical dressings. The Red Cross also helped civilians on the home front during WWI, including responding to natural disasters and aiding many after the influenza pandemic hit the United States in 1918.

Nearing the end of the war, the La Crosse chapter had more than 12,400 members and 6,757 Junior Red Cross members, and nationally almost one-third of Americans either served as a volunteer or a donor to the Red Cross.

This white cotton uniform, with a red cross patch that reads “La Crosse,” is representative of other uniforms of the period and illustrates La Crosse’s involvement during the war. It would have been worn over either a nurse’s uniform or street clothes while working in the Red Cross office.

Dr. Edward Evans, first chief of staff at St. Francis Hospital, served six months overseas in the Red Cross. He also was the first director of the Young Women’s Christian Association during that same era. The local chapter of the YWCA was founded in 1903 and was housed in the top two floors of the Coren Building, 420 Main St.

Today the building houses a street-level business, The Wedding Tree, and the top floor is a beautifully restored event venue, The Court Above Main. The hardwood floor still shows the markings of the basketball court from the days when it was a YWCA gymnasium. You also can see the door to Evans’ office, which still has his name stenciled on it, incorporated into the front of the small serving bar.

This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on January 27, 2018.

This object can be viewed in our online collections database by clicking here.