Janice Nutting can still smell the Camp Wayaka pine trees. She can still remember, more than 50 years later, how special her brown-and-green Girl Scout uniform felt when she wore it to school and how neighbors welcomed her door-to-door cookie sales in spring.

She remembers learning to be strong and responsible, learning to be a leader.

State Sen. Peggy Rotundo learned those same Scout lessons, even though a decade separates the two women. So did retired teacher Karen Ellis, even though she sold Jell-O door-to-door in Auburn, Indiana, instead of Thin Mints in Auburn, Maine. Alexis White, a Leeds high-schooler — and veteran Scout — is learning those lessons now.

Worldwide, 50 million women have been Girl Scouts. No matter where they were or when, they shared campfires and s’mores, badge projects and community service. As they grew up, Scouting changed the girls’ lives.

In some cases, the girls changed the world.

Today the Girl Scouts turns 95.

From rifleshot to aerospace

Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low started the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Ga. A young widow who loved art, animals, travel and the outdoors, she was looking for something do to with her life. In 1911, according to the Girl Scouts Web site, Low met Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides in Britain. Low decided American girls needed something similar.

On March 12, 1912, she held the first Girl Scouts meeting with 18 girls. By 1920, there were 70,000 Scouts across the country.

Maine got its first troops in 1917.

Those first girls learned about conservation, sold war bonds for World War I and worked in hospitals. They could earn just over two dozen badges, including dairy maid and rifleshot.

Over the next several decades, millions of girls joined the Girl Scouts, including Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice, Christa McAuliffe, a teacher turned astronaut, and Susan Collins, now a Maine U.S. senator.

With help from adult volunteers, the girls — aged 5 to 17 — launched civil rights, environmental clean-up and anti-violence programs. They learned about computers, business and aerospace, subjects traditionally geared toward boys.

“It helped me see that girls could go on and become leaders,” said state Sen. Peggy Rotundo, who joined the Scouts at 6 as a Brownie and stayed for years.

At Girl Scout summer camps, girls got their first taste of independence and self-reliance. Many won free weeks at camp by selling cookies door-to-door, with those sales holding lessons of their own: self-assurance, responsibility, communication, persistence.

“For my first cookie sale I mistakenly rang the garage door bell, ran home and was called back by the neighborhood stockbroker, who bought 12 boxes and offered me my first paying job — feeding his caged dogs,” writes Barbara Kern, who became a Girl Scout when she was 7 or 8. “Continuing, I won first prize for selling the most cookies that year.”

For some girls, their Scout years weren’t wholly positive.

Frances DeFillip, 81, still remembers visiting a fellow Scout’s home for a meeting. That night, just hours after the troop left, the girl’s mother bludgeoned the daughter to death, DeFillip said.

Still, she said, “That was just one of those things we had to cope with. I think it made us stronger.”

The future

Ninety-five years after it was founded, much of the Girl Scouts has stayed the same. Girls go camping. They earn badges and volunteer in the community. They learn about themselves, about their talents, about life.

But things are also changing. Soon the Girl Scouts will start a new program — with buzz words “discover,” “connect” and “take action” — to ensure consistency among all troops. Age groups will be broken up, and a new level (“Ambassadors”) will be added for the oldest girls. Leadership skills will be touted more.

In Maine, the biggest change will happen this fall. The state’s two Girl Scout councils, Abnaki in the north and Kennebec in the south, will merge. As the Girl Scouts of Maine, the single council will serve about 14,500 girls a year, with the potential to add more.

They’re all major changes for an organization that started so long ago that women didn’t even have the right to vote. But the Girl Scouts say they’re ready and, like their great-grandmothers before them, today’s girls will benefit.

“I think Girl Scots will continue to evolve. I think it will continue to grow,” said France Shea, spokeswoman for the Kennebec Council. “Girl Scouts will always be a place where girls discover, connect and take action.”

ltice@sunjournal.com

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