So this is what a Girl Scout uniform looked like in 1969. It wasn’t exactly a user-friendly outfit. The fabric was stiff and rough, and the whole contraption was sort of awkward to wear.
Thankfully, the uniforms my daughters wore in the 1990s and the new millennium were more relaxed than what I wore. My girls could wear Girl Scout-issued t-shirts and stretch pants as uniforms.
My mother took this photo of me in early 1969 during my first year as a Junior Girl Scout when I was in the fourth grade. I joined the Girl Scouts as a Brownie when I was in the second grade.
Obviously, the Girl Scout program has seen many changes since the day this photo was taken. I didn’t join until the second grade because there was no Daisy Girl Scout program for kindergarteners then like there is today. First-grade Brownies didn’t exist, either.
I don’t remember my troop number, but I know that we were part of the Foothills Girl Scout Council. I just looked it up on the Internet and see that it no longer exists. In 2009, the Foothills Council merged with several other councils between the Thousand Islands and northern Pennsylvania into something called NYPENN Pathways. It comprises 18,000 girls in 26 counties.
I’m not sure that I like that. Bigger isn’t always better. We lose something when organizations or companies became drastically larger.
The same thing happened in Pennsylvania with Hemlock Girl Scout Council, which served my daughters. In 2007, it merged with three other councils into Girls Scouts in the Heart of Pennsylvania. Even the name is a mouthful.
Another thing that was different in the 1960s is that my Girl Scout troop met at my school, Fort Stanwix Elementary, at the end of the school day. We wore our uniforms to school on meeting days, too. From what I’ve heard, Scouts don’t do that any more. My daughters’ Scout troops always met at the neighborhood church and they never wore their uniforms to school.
Unfortunately, I ended up quitting the Girl Scouts the following year, when I was in the fifth grade. Spending time after school with the same people who picked on me during the school day wasn’t fun.
I hope those folks became nicer when they grew up.