June 11th, 2009
Nine county girls head for Bluebonnet Girls State

SUBMITTED REPORT

Nine young women from five Hays County high schools are preparing for their emersion in the 2009 session of Bluebonnet Girls State, an American Legion Auxiliary government-in-action program.

The Hays County teens will be among some 500 who check in Sunday, June 14 at Seguin’s Texas Lutheran University. All participants will have just completed their junior year of high school. The program will conclude Saturday, June 20.

Representing San Marcos American Legion Auxiliary Unit 144 are San Marcos High School students Grace Baen, sponsored by CenturyTel; Irene Morse, sponsored by Frost Bank; Mariel R. Swinney, sponsored by San Marcos Attorney Tom Garner; Jack C. Hays High School student Bonnika Ashley, sponsored by Texas Lehigh Cement; Lehman High School’s Meera Day, sponsored by Seton Medical Center Hays; Wimberley High School students Eliza Jordan and Tess Allen, both sponsored by the Wimberley Lions Club; and Dripping Springs High School’s Katie Adams, sponsored by the Dripping Springs Breakfast Lions Club, and Paloma Perez, sponsored by Pioneer Bank.

Texas Bluebonnet Girls State is a mythical 51st state where, for a week, participants organize their own city, county and state governments. They elect their own officials. They learn the duties of the various city, county and state offices. They introduce and debate their own bills in a mock legislature. The program concludes with a visit to the State Capitol building in Austin where they are given an opportunity to sight-see and meet state officials. The purpose of Girls State is to educate young women in the duties, privileges, rights and responsibilities of American citizenship.

San Marcos’ Unit 144 is the only American Legion Auxiliary unit in Hays County, and it has compiled a pretty good success record for choosing Girls State delegates with four unit delegates elected governor in the past 11 years. Last year, Amber “Kera” Harmon of San Marcos, a senior at the Katherine Anne Porter School in Wimberley, was elected governor. Harmon will be attending Girls State this year as a junior counselor.

Chelsea Bordovsky of Kyle, then a student at Jack C. Hays High School, was elected governor in 2004. Bordovsky won more than 85 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate after failing to get her party’s nomination.. San Marcos High School student Lauren Rogers was elected governor in 2000 and, in 1998, Hays graduate Jennifer Hall advanced to Girls Nation where she was elected vice president.

— PAT MURDOCK