Soon after Melissa Contri gave birth to twin daughters 11 years ago, she looked up at her mother, who was in the delivery room, and said, "Mom, in five years they can be in Girl Scouts!"
And why not? After all, Melissa had been a Scout, and her mother, Lynn Contri, was her troop leader. Lynn herself was a Scout when she was a girl.
Sure enough, when Megan and Maureen Contri-Schmid were old enough, they became Scouts, and their grandmother Lynn and mother Melissa are leaders of their Villa Park-based troop.
A century after Juliette Gordon Low gathered 18 girls in Georgia on March 12, 1912, to start an organization that would encourage girls to learn outdoor skills and active citizenship, more than 50 million American women — like those in the Contri family — have counted Girl Scouts as part of their childhood.
But while some Scouting traditions have survived for generations, today's Scouts are constantly evolving, their leaders say.
The girls used to stitch their uniforms together themselves, bake their legendary cookies in their own kitchens and earn badges for skills such as telegraphing and being a "matron housekeeper." Now they instead don a Girl Scout T-shirt, sell cookies by shooting out an email and are just as likely to earn badges for Web design and online etiquette as for sewing or archery.
"What Girls Scouts has done is to keep up with modern times," said Maria Wynne, CEO for Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana, the largest council in the country.
In the same way that Low sought to open doors to new opportunities, Scouts leaders today aim to encourage young girls to consider career paths that remained overwhelmingly male-dominated, Wynne said.
The organization recently completed a study about girls' attitudes toward science, technology, engineering and math and will focus on providing mentors and experiences to encourage girls to explore those areas, she said.
Modern Scouts can enter robotics competitions, analyze body image issues in popular media and earn financial literacy badges, Wynne said.
"We always want to remain tied to the heartbeat of the issues that will have an impact on girls," she said.
Kierra Franklin, 16, a junior at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, has stuck with Girl Scouts long after many of her friends have given it up. Girl Scouts attracted her as a small girl with its crafts and camping trips. Now, the aspiring engineer has had the chance to attend Camp CEO, where she met with two dozen female business leaders.
"Girl Scouts has become a part of me," Franklin said. "After my friends left, I stayed. I think I recognized the opportunities. … Girl Scouts are ambitious, fearless and ready to change the world."
This month, troops across the country have planned balloon releases, promise circles and singalongs to commemorate the 100th anniversary of an organization that is linked in the mind of many women today with friendships, camp-outs and Girl Scout songs.
Rosemarie Courtney, of Darien, joined Girl Scouts in 1950 at age 10, and looking back, said she thinks Girl Scouts encouraged confidence in girls in a way that was often missing in her era.
She obtained the "curved bar" — Scouting's highest honor at the time — and remembers her leader urging her to one day give back. She eventually led a troop as a young, married woman. Now, a lifelong member, she works as a volunteer curator for the Scouts and recently helped young Brownies from her parish earn a badge.
As volunteer curator for the Chicago council, Courtney has helped several local museums with anniversary exhibits, including the DuPage County Historical Society in Wheaton. More than 50 troops will visit to see old uniform dresses, learn about what it took to earn traditional badges and watch a promotional reel from 1919 that shows Scouts in uniform marching, building camps and swimming.
Sara Arnas, the museum's curator, said she likes to share tidbits from the original Girl Scouts handbook with the current Scouts who visit, who can't believe that Scouts used to read about how to "tie a burglar with eight inches of cord" or how to judge cuts of meat.
For some families, the story of Scouting's evolution through the decades can be told through their own memories.
Lynn Contri joined Girl Scouts in 1963 and remembers becoming so skilled in the outdoors that when she camped with her family, she and her sister could pitch the tent faster than either of her parents.
"Back then, cookie sales would begin on Saturday at 9 a.m., and at the dot of 9, the doors on our block would open, and six or seven girls would come running out to sell," Contri said.
It felt natural then, when she became a leader of her daughters' troops and spent the bulk of the summer with girls as the day camp director at Camp Greene Wood in Woodridge, the same camp she remembers from her own girlhood.
