Flagpole dedication at Porter County EMA is all in the family

While dozens of county officials and workers gathered to celebrate new flagpoles in an honor garden dedicated to emergency services personnel and the military at the Porter County Emergency Management Agency headquarters Wednesday afternoon, it was a family affair on multiple levels.

And appropriately enough, the flagpoles were dedicated on Flag Day.

Recent Valparaiso High School graduate and 12-year Girl Scout Olivia Lozano, of Valparaiso, planned and ran the project to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. Only about 5% of the girls who do scouting through high school earn the award — just a couple hundred nationwide per year.

Former Porter County EMA Director Phil Griffith is Lozano’s grandfather. He had seen the flagpoles organized at the MAAC Foundation by an Eagle Scout and suggested Lozano do the same for the EMA for her big project.

It was the culmination of a youth scouting career she’s had going since the first grade. Lozano met with current EMA Director Lance Bella to present the idea to the county and with the help of her high school architecture teacher Tarik El-Naggar, a plan was designed for the 20-square-foot garden.

The Porter County Highway Department donated the time of Julie Hogg and Nick Foreman to dig the foundation and the MacMillan Family Foundation donated the brick and sand needed, while the Porter County Board of Commissioners donated the crushed stone. Construction took about two weeks with EMA Deputy Director Mark Carlo, Commander Jeff Furst and Responder John Clapp laying out, cutting, and setting the bricks with the help of Lozano’s friends and family.

“I love it. It’s really nice,” Phil Griffith said. “I handed bricks over. She put them in place. If I got down on my hands and knees I’d have to have a tow truck get me back up.”

The finished garden has two 25-foot tall flagpoles flying the American and state of Indiana flags. A new white aluminum EMA sign will be added in the near future to mark the headquarters at 1995 S. Indiana 2 in Valparaiso.

Lozano said the project took “actually not as long as I thought, but still a fair amount of hours.”

The family story runs deeper still. The women in Olivia’s family have been Girl Scouts for four generations. Olivia’s mom Jeffrin Lozano has been her troop leader since she began scouting and her grandmother Linda Griffith helped lead her troop, Troop 30148 of the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, as well.

“They encourage the girls through Girl Scouts to pick the projects that play to their strengths,” Jeffrin Lozano said. “Whatever interests them, that they’re good at.”

Linda Griffith’s mother was also a troop leader. “Actually, my mother gave me her Girl Scout pin because she was the troop leader for my younger sister,” she said, “so for Girl Scout things I wear that pin.”

Olivia is off to major in mechanical engineering and technical theater this fall at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, Ohio. But it’s hardly the end of her scouting career.

She has completed the activities to bridge to adult scouting and plans to stay involved over the years. Already this summer she and her grandmother served as co-leaders to 12 third-graders at the Valparaiso Girl Scouts day camp.

Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.