June 23rd, 2008
Wimberley student elected
Girls State governor

by PAT MURDOCK

Amber Harmon of San Marcos was sworn in today as governor of Bluebonnet Girls State at the state capitol in Austin, American Legion Auxiliary Unit 144 officials said.

Harmon, a junior at the Katherine Anne Porter High School in Wimberley, is among 12 young ladies from Hays County that are representing San Marcos Unit 144 at Girls State. Her financial sponsor for Girls State is the Wimberley Lions Club.

Girls State delegates have been participating in the American Legion Auxiliary program since Tuesday, June 17, at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin. The program will conclude Tuesday, June 24. Two citizens from Bluebonnet State will be chosen to represent Texas at Girls Nation later in the summer.

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 basic purpose of the national American Legion Auxiliary program is to educate the young women on the duties, privileges, rights and responsibilities of American citizenship.

Over the years, young women sent to Girls State by San Marcos Unit 144 have had a remarkable record of success in their participations efforts. In 2004, Chelsea Bordovsky of Kyle, then a student at Jack C. Hays High School, was elected governor of Bluebonnet Girls State. After failing to get her party’s state officer nomination, Bordovsky won more than 85 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate. At the time, she was the second student sent by Unit 144 to be elected governor in five years. San Marcos High School student Lauren Rogers was elected governor in 2000. In 1998, Hays graduate Jennifer Hall was elected vice president of Girls Nation.

Each year, San Marcos Unit 144 seeks financial sponsors to make it possible for as many Hays County students to attend Girls State as possible. Unit 144 is the only American Legion Auxiliary Unit in Hays County. Margie Villalpando of San Marcos is the unit’s Girls State Chairman.