Wall of Dolls

It was a young girl's dream--a whole room full of dolls. And, not just any dolls. No, the walls in that room were lined with shelf after shelf, each one filled with breakable, keepsake dolls, beautifully dressed, rarely touched except to be dusted, never played with, but obviously treasured.

I'm talking about Mary Thurber's dolls.  

Miss Thurber was my Girl Scout leader during my late elementary and Junior High years. She lived, with her mother, in a small, yellow house just a block or so away from the Episcopal church where our Girl Scout troop met every week. Miss Thurber had some sort of health problem that made walking difficult, so that she sometimes had to resort to using a wheelchair. I still don't know how she made it up and down those steep stairs that led to our basement meeting room in the church.

Mary Thurber was a dedicated, creative scout leader. I remember singing folk songs at every meeting, and trying out new recipes in the church kitchen, and making ice candles to give as Christmas presents. We went Christmas caroling, and camping in tents at Crystal Springs. Miss Thurber was known for telling the scariest ghost stories when we had overnight slumber parties at the Girl Scout cabin in the City Park. Miss Thurber certainly didn't let her physical limitations get in the way of her commitment to the girls in her troop. In fact, I never really considered her to be handicapped in any way.

Once in a while, Miss Thurber invited some of the girls to her house for a committee meeting, or to work on a particular craft. And, while we were there, she would ask if we wanted to see her dolls.

The doll room used to be a bedroom; it opened right off the over-furnished living room in that tiny, crowded house. I don't remember any furnishings in the doll room, though, just those shelves and shelves of gorgeous, ceramic fashion dolls. There must have been hundreds of dolls lining the walls of that room, each one more exquisitely dressed than the next. I must have stood there with my mouth open, in awe of that breathtaking collection of dolls.

Mary Thurber died not too many years later. I haven't thought of her in years. But now, I remember her as a person who loved her collection of dolls-- almost as much as she cared about the girls in her troop. In spite of her limitations, or perhaps because of them, Mary Thurber was a person who made a difference in the lives of the girls she knew.  Like each of her dolls, she was one of a kind.