At last! The day arrived! Yesterday, 16 February 2012, was the official release date of my Juliette Gordon Low:  The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts. It is unimaginably exciting to hold in your hands the culmination of  years of hard work. You faithful blog readers have been with me for around one hundred posts since I began this blog in 2010, on 22 June (the date of my parents’ anniversary) and it is impossible to overstate how important your support has been to me as a writer. So, while I did write this in the book’s Acknowledgements, I’d like to restate it here: thank you to all of you who have been reading, commenting, emailing, and cheering me on. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

As I was doing the research for my Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts, I paid close attention to the relationship between Juliette’s parents, Nellie and Willie Gordon. Juliette’s own marriage was rocky–in fact, marrying William Mackay Low was the worst decision of her life. I wrestled with how that happened. Was her parents’ marriage a cautionary tale? Was Daisy’ father–her main model for a husband–a terrible spouse? Was he cruel? Was he cold and distant? Was he indifferent to Nellie?

Definitely not!

Not long after Juliette Gordon Low brought the Girl Scouts to the United States, she created this badge:

It was based on the trefoil used by Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts, and because of that, it clearly linked her Girl Scouts to the larger Scouting family.

On 22 November 1913, she applied for a patent, and it was granted to her on 10 February 1914. Here is her application:

Page One of Juliette Low's Patent

Page two of Juliette Low's Patent

And all was well until 1921.

Juliette Gordon Low called Lou Henry Hoover “an oak in a flower pot.” Some of you astute readers will know that this evocative phrase is Emily Bronte’s, from her 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. Bronte suggested that an oak could never thrive in the “shallow soil” of the flower pot.

“When I think,” Juliette wrote of Lou Hoover, “what splendid, definite work she has done for Scouts–The funds she has collected, the practical common sense she has shown, I realize what big things she can do, and I regret that she should be planted in the small circle of the Executive Committee like an oak in a flower pot.” (1)

Today’s blog is meant to provide a context for understanding Juliette Gordon Low’s two best friends, Abby Lippitt Hunter and Mary Gale Carter Clarke. You will meet these good women in just less than one month, when Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts is published. One thing that is different about my book is the emphasis I place on women’s friendships in Juliette “Daisy” Low’s life, especially her life-long friendship with Abby and Mary. The bond of loving-kindness that held the three together despite distance, time, and radically dissimilar life paths served as a constant source of inspiration for Daisy. The closeness of their friendship and the fun times she shared with them when she was young surely played a role in her decision to commit to Girl Guiding.