Newtown’s Oldest Girl Scout?

By Shannon Hicks

When she was 12 years old, Alice Cornell joined the just-formed Girl Scout troop in her home town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Alice and her younger sister, Louise, were excited to be joining the group, which met once a week for two hours in the hall of St John the Baptist, a Roman Catholic church.

That was in 1937, and about 20 girls represented all of the Girl Scouts in New Bedford.

Alice and her husband Robert have been living in Newtown for over three decades now, and next week Alice, who celebrated her 76th birthday in January, will be honored as Newtown’s Oldest Girl Scout. Mrs Cornell answered a request sent out by Newtown’s Girl Scout leaders recently, who were looking for the youngest and oldest Girl Scout in town to join them in honoring Girl Scout Week.

(The youngest Girl Scout remains to be seen. Organizers are waiting to hear from parents who have a baby girl — the youngest prospective Newtown Girl Scout — closest to March 12, the date observed as the birth date of Girl Scouting in America.)

Newtown’s Scouts of all ages will join with their sisters and friends around the world when they observe Girl Scout Week 2001, March 11 to 17.

On March 12, Girl Scouts will celebrate 89 years of the organization’s founding in Savannah, Ga., by Juliette Gordon Low. What began as a small group girls has expanded to today’s more than 3.6 million members around the world. Girl Scouts will also honor the Girl Scout Sabbath on March 10 and Girl Scout Sunday, which kicks of Girl Scout Week.

As of March 1997, Newtown alone was home to 50 Girl Scout troops, representing over 550 registered Scouts. Newtown has troops that run from the youngest Daisies (kindergarteners) to their older counterparts the Brownies (grades 1-3), Juniors (grades 4-6), Cadettes (grades 6-8) and Seniors (high school).

To formally recognize the upcoming week-long celebration of the world’s oldest organization dedicated to girls, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal will welcome a few Girl Scouts — traditionally one girl from each of Scouting’s five levels attends the annual ceremony — along with Mrs Cornell next week to Edmond Town Hall. On Tuesday afternoon, Mrs Cornell will be presented with a special proclamation declaring her Newtown’s Oldest Girl Scout.

Each year, Scouts celebrate the beginning of the Girl Scout Movement in the United States, which began on March 12, 1912. That was the day Juliette Gordon Low invited 24 girls to join her at the Louise Porter Home in Savannah for tea and to talk about Scouting for Girls. Two troops (which were first called “patrols”) were formed at that meeting; Daisy Gordon, Mrs Low’s niece, was the first registered member.

When Mrs Cornell joined the Girl Scout program during the late 1930s, the girls simply referred to themselves as Girl Scouts. The leaders, said Mrs Cornell, were called Captains, and their helpers were Lieutenants. It was not until 1938 that the program began offering itself in three age-geared levels — Brownies, Intermediates and Seniors. Mrs Cornell was an active Scout for four years.

“You walked to meetings at that time,” Mrs Cornell recalled recently. “It was probably a half-mile between our house and the church, and you walked it. There was no bussing, no car pooling, believe me.” She described how the girls would meet up with friends along the way, with the group growing larger each time it stopped at someone’s home.

“We were all kids from the neighborhood, though. You weren’t walking alone. We always felt safe,” she continued.

Scouting helped Mrs Cornell make new friends, with whom she spent time working on what she called “simple projects.” The girls learned also how to tie knots (“Just don’t ask me to tie any of those knots today,” she laughs), earned badges on kitchen and sewing skills, and participated in campfire events. There were no overnight trips at that point, though.

“Oh no,” Mrs Cornell said. “We would take day trips, but we never went anywhere overnight. We made wonderful s’mores during our campfire events, not like what you buy in the store today. We would toast marshmallows and put them on a plain graham cracker. Then you would add a piece of chocolate, and the heat from the marshmallow would melt the chocolate… It was delicious!”

Speaking of delicious snacks, Girl Scout cookies have been around since Mrs Cornell’s time with the Scouts. Girl Scout cookies have come a long way since the simple sugar cookies sold at neighborhood bake sales in the 1920s. Mrs Cornell remembers working on her cookies for the sales.

“There were only two cookies available when I was a Scout,” she said. “Vanilla or chocolate, and they were both shaped like the Trefoil [the three-sided emblem of the Girl Scouts]. And as I recall, the boxes were priced under $1.”

She’s right, of course: When Juliette Gordon Low’s first Girl Scouts began baking and selling cookies, the girls baked sugar cookies at home, packaged them in wax bags, and sold them locally for 25 to 30 cents per dozen. The purpose of the cookie sale was to help girls build self-reliance while raising money for troop-related activities.

Today of course, Girl Scout cookies are big business. Two companies handle the demands of baking millions of cookies in 11 different varieties, sold by the box across the country. There are Peanut Butter Patties (or Tagalongs, as they are known in some parts of the country), the ever-popular Thin Mints, Peanut Butter Sandwiches (or Do-Si-Dos), Upside-Downs (“oatmeal treats” with sweet sugar frosting on one side), Animal Treasures (shortbread cookies with fudge backs and endangered animals embossed on the front), Caramel deLites (or Samoas, which are vanilla cookies covered in caramel, sprinkled with coconut and laced with dark cocoa stripes, Lemon Pastry Cremes (a reduced fat cookie with lemon crème and lightly glazed pastry) and Shortbread (or Trefoils).

In some areas, there are also Aloha Chips (a new variety, these are vanilla cookies with macadamia nuts and white fudge chips), Apple Cinnamons (another reduced fat option, these are cookies shaped like apples and sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar) and Lemon Drops (lemon flavored cookies with lemon chips).

Even the cost of cookies since Mrs Cornell’s time as a Scout has changed. Girl Scout cookies are sold for different prices in different areas of the country. Each of the country’s 318 local councils has the right to set its own price, with boxes currently selling for anywhere from $2.50 to $3.50 per box. More than two million girls are expected to participate in cookie sale activities this year.

Last year, Girl Scouting’s national leader recognized the continuing goals of Girl Scouting.

“As we enter the 21st Century, the timeless values of Girl Scouting ring as true today as they did in 1912 — courage, strength, service and leadership,” national executive director Marsha Johnson Evans said in March 2000. “Now as we celebrate the anniversary of the Girl Scouts’ founding, we renew our commitment to helping today’s girls become tomorrow’s leaders.”

Girl Scouting has helped produce leaders throughout its history. A recent Louis Harris study confirms that Girl Scouting has had an important influence on many of today’s women leaders. Two-thirds of the women of professional achievement surveyed reported that they were once Girl Scouts.

The study also showed that the Girl Scout organization had a positive impact on most adult women’s lives including their ability to work with others and make friends, to develop moral values and self-confidence and to serve as volunteers.

Newtown’s Oldest Girl Scout feels the same way about Girl Scouting today as she did over five decades ago.

“I still think Girl Scouting is very good,” Mrs Cornell said. “It’s important for girls.

“Many things have changed, but Girl Scouts is a good source for values to be instilled in children and anything we can do for that score is always good.”