This year’s Girls Service League at Lake Highlands High School is special – not only for its membership of more than 300, but more notable for the service and special projects the organization has participated in all year long.
Membership in the club requires more than a smile and attendance at a meeting once in a while. These young women give something back to their community.
Each member is required to participate in one service project each month. A typical project takes two to four hours and covers a wide variety of service opportunities, from cooking dinner at the Ronald McDonald House to visiting Alzheimer’s patients at a local nursing center.
Last summer, when president Sarah Helfert and co-chairmen Valerie Brown and Sara Rener got together to discuss the 1992-1993 year, they wanted to find a special project for their group.
During the brainstorming session, they came up with the idea of building a house for a needy family.
The wheels of progress were immediately set in motion, and the League soon contacted a national organization called Dallas Habitat for Humanity, the same organization that former president Jimmy Carter has been involved with for years.
Habitat builds houses in poor neighborhoods where such renovation is badly needed.
A building site was selected and the Girls Service League quickly raised $20,000 during the fall semester to make the project feasible.
Additional funds from Bank One and other sources brought the total to $42,000. Habitat broke ground on the Service League-sponsored home on Jan. 23.
That was the easy part.
During the weeks that followed, from 10 to 20 students and teachers gathered each Thursday and Friday afternoon at the building site, along with a full day on Saturday, to work in the cold, rain and wind of winter. The experience was one they’re not likely to forget.
“It’s really a lot of fun to work with all your best friends, even in the mud,” Rener says.
“We’ve learned a lot about working together for a good cause. We also know now that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
The foundation was laid by a professional building crew, but nearly all of the remaining construction has been handled by a variety of Lake Highlands students, some of whom admittedly didn’t know which end of the hammer to use when hitting their first nails.
Helfert admits with a laugh there were a few swollen fingers during the early hammering stages.
The recipient of the finished house will be Betty Lee, a single mother of five children, ages seven to 22. Four of the children will be living with Lee in the 1,100-square-foot home at 5711 Bryan Parkway in East Dallas.
The roof panels have been the toughest and heaviest assignment so far, Rener says. Several football players were recruited to help lift the panels, each of which weighed several hundred pounds.
Additional building chores have included carrying lumber for four days, helping with porches and windows, and the usual assortment of house-building odds and ends.
With a little luck and good weather, the girls will present the new house to the Lee family on April 24 in a dedication ceremony.
There have been other projects, too. During the fall, the group held its annual Barn Dance. More than 500 students attended the two-stepping tradition at the Reunion Ranch near Terrell.
A mother-daughter tea also is scheduled for the spring, and the group awards $9,000 in college scholarships annually to deserving members.
But it’s giving back to the community for which the group is most known. Helfert estimates that members will put in more than 2,500 hours of volunteer work this year.
Certainly, building a house from scratch for a needy family will make this a unique and special year.
“It’s nice to see young people get involved with things that are not self-serving, says Kathy Williams, who has served as a sponsor for four years.
“These girls are willing to give up their time with no reward to themselves. I had some reservations initially about them taking on a project this big, but they proved me wrong.”
