The Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois (GSEIWI) recently lost a longtime volunteer who donated over fifty years of leadership and service to the council.
Rachel Wheeler died earlier this month at 103 years old and was working with her great granddaughters on projects right up to the end. Dora Wheeler, Rachel’s granddaughter, told Our Quad Cities News about the impact her grandmother had on the community.
“My grandma’s amazing lady, wonderful role model we all looked up,” Wheeler said. “I posted her obit on Facebook and so many people just reached out and they were like ‘Oh my gosh, your grandmother was amazing,’ ‘I remember meeting her at council meetings.,’ ‘I remember meeting her at all these places’ and all the things that she did for others along with being an amazing example for me and my sisters and my daughters and my niece.”
“She was just unbelievable,” said Diane Nelson, CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois. “She wholeheartedly supported Girl Scouts with her time, her talent and her treasure. She just made such a great impact on so many young girls’ lives and she was so engaging that she even got other leaders to volunteer, other parents to volunteer, she got them so engaged in Girl Scouts because she was just so passionate about the work that we were doing in Girl Scouts.”
Rachel lived in Cedar Rapids, so she couldn’t lead her granddaughters’ troops, but she gave advice on leadership and inclusion “She always wanted us to make sure everybody was included,” said Dora. “One of her big things was nobody should be set aside finance wise or anything like that. Everybody should have that opportunity to have those all those amazing experiences that Girl Scout give.”
Nelson got to know Rachel better through volunteering and council meetings. “She was not only just this unbelievable volunteer, she was just such an amazing woman. She was even a big donor for Girl Scouts; we literally have buildings named after her at Camp Liberty. We have two buildings called the Rachel Wheeler building and we have a big tree that has her name on it. She helped us to grow our camp so all of our girls had this unbelievable outdoor experience.”
Dora fondly remembers sharing Girl Scout memories with her daughters and grandmother. “She would do sewing and campfire stuff, that’s something that she always talked about with my daughters too. ‘OK, what badge work are you working on, what skills did you learn at camp this week so it’s always neat that she could tie it back to the things that she did. My youngest goes to a week of day camp that our service unit puts on and then she does a week of resident camp. It was always nice when we could have that time in between where she could just talk to my Grandma and it was talking about badge work, talking about building fires or all of those core things that you learn as a Girl Scout, She was trying to show my grandma how to tie a knot and then my grandma at 102 years old taught her how to play euchre.”
“She just always had something positive to say,” said Nelson. “She was just a huge supporter of Girl Scouts in so many different ways. When Rachel Wheeler walked into the room, we all just immediately said, ‘ohh thank you Rachel’s here’ and we would just listen to what she had to say.” Nelson said Rachel’s visitation was a chance to share even more memories. “We went to her visitation, and it was just so nice to sit there and listen to what everybody talked about Rachel and the impact that she’s just made in so many people’s lives.”
“I think my favorite thing in the past few years is she donated to have new horse barn cabins for the horse riders,” said Dora. “My girls were very proud to go out there and see Grandma’s name on the different cabins and my youngest gave her a picture of it and she was just so thrilled. One of the like neckerchiefs that she bought at the trading post has the map of Camp Liberty on it, and so she was showing my grandma, and she was like, ‘ohh so where are my cabins.’ It was always wanting to get everybody involved and explaining to people, ‘this is what Girl Scouts is, this is what we do as Girl Scouts.’ It’s just a neat legacy to pass on to my children.”
