100 Years. And Counting.

Every spring, all the local Girl Scouts gather for a weekend of camping. A Friday through Sunday of no brothers, no dads, no showers, dirty faces, lots of marshmallows and food cooked over campfires, staying up late snuggled in sleeping bags, laughing with friends, singing silly songs... Girl Scout camping.

Each year, there's a theme. This year is the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts, so our theme was "100 years of Girl Scouts." We had about 90 girls from the three towns in our Service Unit, all mixed together and working together and singing silly songs together... it was a pretty good weekend.

My Cadette troop only has four girls in it. They had their own tent and got absolutely no sleep. I was in the tent next to theirs, so I know. We shared our unit with a Brownie troop from Chatham, and a Daisy troop from Harwich, as well as a Chatham Junior leader and the only two of her girls who like camping. We all did our own things for meals, but shared one campfire where we also shared marshmallows and songs.

My Cadettes are also working with the Harwich Historical Society to put together a summer exhibit for the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts. We interviewed some older Scouts with the help of the local Channel 18 crew, and met with the women at the Historical Society to see how it all gets put together.

Some of the women I spoke with were Girl Scouts back in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. This was back before Title IX, and back before there were a lot of choices for girls' activities. Girl Scouts was a huge part of these women's lives, and some of their stories are fun to listen to.

Some of these girls never went over the Cape Cod Canal until they went with their Girl Scout troops. With Girl Scouts, they traveled to Martha's Vineyard, Boston and even to New York City. Girl Scouts was an inclusive organization from the get-go, so in the old photos you see black girls and white girls working together - in 1940. Even the military wasn't integrated back then. One of my neighbors recalls vividly that her troop had several Portuguese immigrant girls who were treated as equals in Scouts.

None of the women remembered selling cookies. They didn't really recall how it was that they raised the funds to go on the trips they went on, or did the fun activities that they participated in. They just remember the fun. Which is all I can hope for for my own daughter. Remember the fun. And be proud to be part of an organization that has meant so much to so many women for 100 years. And counting.