Girl Scouts Visit Dads In Prison

(AP)  The convicts stand in a circle, three fingers pointed skyward, nine faces set in stone, their deep, male voices raised in slow recitation:

"On my honor, I will try,

"To serve God and my country,

"To help people at all times,

"And to live by the Girl Scout Law."

At their sides stand their daughters, their small fingers also raised in the salute of the Girl Scouts club. This is the regular monthly meeting of Troop 884, not in a school, not in a church, but at the Allen Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison rising from the rolling farmlands of northwestern Ohio.

Lugging boxes filled with sandwiches, Hawaiian Punch, potato chips and sashes bearing merit badges, the girls file into a linoleum-floored visiting room on Wednesday afternoon. They range in age from 6 to 12; they are in shorts and purple Girl Scout T-shirts, in tennis shoes and ankle socks, their hair bouncing in pony tails, swept back with headbands, tied with sparkling barrettes.

Their dads, most of them imprisoned for drug trafficking, serving sentences ranging from 36 months to 18 years, hang back for a few heartbeats, adjusting to an abrupt shift in reality. They have just been strip-searched before being allowed to change into identical polo shirts and khaki trousers, rewards for good behavior and participating in this program.

Eight-year-old Paige, a precocious child with crooked teeth and chin-length brown hair, gathers the ends of her big T-shirt, trying to tie a knot so it hangs just so on her tiny waist. Her dad, Ben, who just turned 27 while serving a five-year sentence for selling drugs, appears baffled by how to solve his little girl's fashion dilemma.

He tentatively puts an arm around her shoulders, as if afraid he might break her, and lowers his blue eyes to her hazel ones. "Hi," he says.

And so the meeting begins.

It takes about 30 minutes and copious amounts of sandwiches and chips and bright pink drinks for dads and daughters to catch up and settle in. Then there are cake and cookies and games and merit badge work and projects designed to help parent and child, the latest is a lesson in how to open a small business. Many nail and hair salons are planned.

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