Oct 3, 20236 min read

Utah People

Gina (Chapman) Foucault and Jenny (Brightbill) Rule met at Badger Girls State (BGS) - a week-long camp for young women between their junior and senior years in high school.

Here is the official description of Badger Girls State:

"It is a government and leadership conference where the entire delegation will become a fifty-first state and will function according to the laws of the State of Wisconsin. Each day will focus on the various aspects of state government, God & Country and will include daily prayers. Other days at Girls State will be given to the various activities of government. Girls State is not a recreational program. It is a school of government training for which the girl has been selected by her school and the local Unit. She should come prepared to apply herself diligently to the program as it is scheduled. The citizens are divided into political parties, the Federalists and Nationalists. They develop their own party platforms and formulate their own issues. The girls "learn by doing" as they function on city, county and state levels by electing officials in the manner prescribed by regular election procedures and conducting business on those levels. Every girl is encouraged to participate in some level of the governmental process.

(Underlining by the author....for reasons that will become abundantly clear.)

Neither Jenny nor Gina applied to go to Badger Girls State, but both arrived there in June of 1991. Gina was sent from Whitewater High School; Jenny from Memorial High School. They never quite figured out how they'd been selected. They weren't particularly interested in government or politics. Perhaps friendliness with their high school guidance counselors was the culprit?

By virtue of their last names, Jenny and Gina were placed on the same dormitory floor at Sellery Hall in UW-Madison. This meant they lived in the same city. (In the BGS world, the floor of 52 girls was a "city", two floors combined was a "county", and the whole dorm was the "state".)

Early in the week, Gina and Jenny discovered ther mutual disdain for the regular camp program, and set out to subvert it. (That verb might be too strong. Poke fun at it? Mock it? Playfully make it better? The reader can decide.) It's not that they planned it or talked about it - it just sort of happened.

The girls recognized in each other a certain rebellious spirit and an innate resistance to bullshit. And since most of politics is bullshit, and Badger Girls State is just FAKE politics, the camp leaders were in for a lot of rebellious behavior from these two.

It started in the cafeteria. Jenny and Gina were sitting at a table with 6 or 8 other camp participants. Discussion focused on prom or boyfriends or make-up. This was - to put it delicately - uninteresting to Gina and Jenny. So they tried to change the subject. It didn't work. Talk reverted to boys and prom dresses and hair products. (Did I mention they talked about prom? Lots of these girls were very proud of themselves for having recently attended their first prom.)

So Jenny and Gina started telling little fibs. Silly stories. And they were believed. "Ooh. This could be fun," they read in each other's eyes.

They moved to other tables with the excuse of "making friends." Silly stories became tall tales, mostly about their shared origins.

"We are twins who were separated at birth."

"We are foster kids raised in the same foster home"

"We are conjoined twins who recently underwent surgery to divide us."

"We are orphans from the same orphanage."

They expanded their fun to ... the rest of camp.

The girls began to employ the age-old improv rule of "Yes, and..." . Simply put, they each said "yes" to whatever the other was cooking up, and then added spice to the stew.

One day, all the girls were assigned to one of two political parties and told to talk within their political party to come up with their platform. Gina and Jenny were assigned to opposing parties. That didn't sit well. Gina suggested they skip it and walk down State Street. Jenny responded with "Yes, and... let's jump in the fountain by the University Bookstore while we're there."

One day, they were "encouraged to participate" by the matrons. Girls were expected to choose a leadership position in government and to campaign for said position. Jenny decided to run for county sheriff. Unfortunately her campaign signs were misspelled. "JENNY FOR SHERRIFF" they said. When this was pointed out, she crossed off one of the R's and added "You don't have to be smart to carry a gun".

She won in a landslide.

To celebrate, Gina responded with a classic "Yes, and..." for the ages. She staged a fake robbery from a fake sperm bank, which led to Sheriff Jenny chasing the thief through the dorm hallways with hair dryers blazing! Others were "deputized" and happily joined in. It was chaos and mayhem throughout the county!

As demonstrated in the story above...Gina was especially skilled at making everything more fun. She also had a talent for building community. At an age when many girls were tearing each other down or trying to outshine one another, Gina found ways to bring them together.

A perfect example: she convinced Jenny to help make end-of-week awards for everyone on their floor. Together they went around interviewing people, talking to roommates and friends to learn about every participant. They stayed up late making awards for all 52 girls, and presented them in a secret gathering without the matrons.

On Thursday night, Jenny spotted a prom picture on Gina's desk and started to give her hell about it. But when she looked closer, she realized something wild - she knew the boy! It was Jim Foucault! She couldn't believe it. Jenny knew Jim from Phantom Lake YMCA Camp where she had been a camper and junior counselor for years. She had played cards with Jim and his brothers at camp retreats - they were awesome!

Gina was dubious. The two of them had been bullshitting people all week. To convince her, Jenny started listing off everything she knew about Jim....."No really. I know his brothers Jack and Jeff, they're all fast runners. Their parent are Ken and Barb! They go to Phantom Lake YMCA Camp. The Camp Director is Sir G and the Program Director is Mountain Mike! I swear - I go to Phantom Lake with them!"

Jim accompanied Gina's parents to the closing ceremony at the end of the week and confirmed that he did, in fact, know Jenny.

This very weird coincidence cemented what Jenny and Gina already suspected... this friendship was meant to be. When BGS ended they stayed in touch. The next summer the two of them worked at Phantom Lake, even co-counseling a tent together. Jenny was Gina's maid of honor when she married Jim few years later, and Jim and Gina's daughter, Anna, was the flower girl when Jenny married Mountain Mike.

Thirty plus years later, they are still friends.

In April of 2023, Gina flew to Las Vegas International Airport and was met by Jenny in a Subaru full of camping equipment. They traveled to Zion National Park (NP), Bryce Canyon NP, Capitol Reef NP, Arches NP, Canyonlands NP, Dead Horse Point State Park (SP), Goblin Valley SP, and Kodachrome Basin SP. It was the realization of a dream trip they had been talking about since 1991.

It was just as beautiful as they'd imagined. Gina made friends with everyone on the trail and brought Jenny out of the shell she'd been hiding in since Mike’s death in 2020. Jenny was reminded that she didn't have to be out on the trail alone, and that other hikers were just friends she hadn't met yet.

There was no longer any need to make up stories to tell others. Anyone could tell they were twins separated at birth.

Absolutely true. Every word of it. There are even photos to prove it.