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Brooke Mazur, an Alpharetta, Georgia resident, and a Covenant Christian Academy senior, will graduate from Girls’ State on Friday, June 19th, 2009. The Georgia Girls State program is held at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.

American Legion Auxiliary Girls State is a nonpartisan program that teaches young women responsible citizenship and love for God and country. Since the inception of the Girls State program in 1937 nearly one million young people have had the opportunity to learn first-hand how their state and local government works. High school girls who have completed their junior year spend an intensive week of study, working together as self-governing citizens at auxiliary-sponsored Girls State programs in every state across the country.

The opportunity to attend Girls State is particularly meaningful to Brooke. Brooke has a family heritage drawing from both sides of the War Between the States and members of her family have served in every war in the history of the United States. She is a great-granddaughter of Patrick McManus, a member of Company G, 26th Iowa Infantry Regiment, Union Army. He survived a gunshot wound sustained at Ft. Hindman, Arkansas in January 1863, and a grazing head wound at the Battle of Kennesaw in June of 1864. In October of 1864 he was captured while guarding a wagon train in Cassville, Georgia and held prisoner at Camp Lawton, a Confederate prison camp. He was released after several transfers and paroles and was able to march with his unit in Washington, D.C. at the end of the war. He died in October 1911.

After the graduation ceremonies at Girls State, Brooke and her family will travel to Millen, Georgia to tour the former Camp Lawton, which is now Magnolia Springs State Park. She and her parents, Brendan and Kirsten Mazur, will be accompanied by several other family members who represent three generations of descendants of Patrick McManus.

Brooke has made application to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY after her graduation next year from Covenant Christian Academy in Cumming. She and her family recently visited the Academy where Robert Zauche, a 2007 Covenant Christian Academy graduate, is currently in his third year of training.