Girl Scout collects items for hospitalized military members

  • Published
  • By Mike Wallace
  • Skywrighter staff
ENGLEWOOD, Ohio --  Courtney Hromada started in the Girl Scouts of America as a "Daisy," a scout between 5 and 6 years old and one level below Brownie. Today the 17-year-old daughter of Donna and Rodney Hromada, who works at the 88th Mission Support Group, is a senior at Northmont High School in Englewood and is still a Girl Scout. With the completion of her community service project, she'll earn the Girl Scout Gold Award, the equivalent to a Boy Scout earning the Eagle Scout rank.

Her community service project involves collecting items for military members hospitalized in Kuwait and raising postage funds to send them. So far she's assembled more than a dozen boxes containing donated children's books, toiletries, "flip-flop" shower shoes, blank DVDs, CDs, telephone cards and other items.

Courtney explained that patients could use the DVDs to make videotape themselves reading children's books. They then could send the DVDs and books home to their families where their children could watch them read to them and follow along with the books.

Courtney also enlisted the aid of elementary school children from Englewood schools and churches to write "Thank You" cards to send to the troops as well.

The Gold Award project is one that must be carefully planned, approved and carried out through the auspices of a Girl Scout council. In Courtney's case, the overseeing organization is the Girl Scout Buckeye Trails Council of Dayton.

Although very busy working toward the Gold Award, Courtney has other interests as well. She attends high school on weekday mornings and Sinclair Community College during afternoons. She's already earned 30 college credits and said she hopes to enter either Ohio State or Miami Universities soon.

Courtney said that her father, who is a retired Air Force master sergeant, got the idea for collecting and sending materials from the Air Force Sergeants Association.

"He found out that patients in Kuwait needed books and other items, and I wanted to help," she said.

Mr. Hromada has been the base supply lead quality assurance person since March. He said he spent most of his career in logistics and supply and was stationed at Wright-Patterson in the 1980s in the former Air Force Orientation Group. He and his wife moved here after his retirement last year to be near family members in Ohio.

"I was deployed some time ago to Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, and Courtney remembered this," he said.

Mr. Hromada said his daughter began scouting in Washington, D.C. when he was stationed at Andrews AFB, Md.

He added that there were preliminary steps leading to the Gold Award. One was the Silver Award, which he explained involved community service as well.
For that award, he said that his daughter coordinated a free car seat inspection with the automobile club in Dayton that also gave away free car seats.

Courtney has a brother, Shawn, who is 16, and is an Eagle Scout. In a moment of sibling competitiveness, she said that in planning for and working toward the Gold Award, she liked "to think I did more work than he did."