This weekend is Thinking Day, when scouts and guides all over the world think about each other, and the worldwide scouting movement. It is also the mutual birthday, February 22nd, of Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of Boy Scouting and Girl Guiding. Yes, they had the same birthday!
As a young girl, I was a Girl Scout and have many happy memories of Thinking Day activities. One year, as an adult Girl Scout leader, our family stayed at Pax Lodge in London and attended the Thinking Day ceremonies at Westminster Abbey. You can read all about that trip at my Thinking Day blog post from 2011 at this link: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/02/february-22-thinking-day.html
As both a Girl Scout and as an adult leader I collected badges. Some were official badges earned toward ranks in scouting. Some were just for fun from activities, camporees, and swaps As a girl I earned the "First Class", which is the equivalent to today's Girl Scout Gold Award or Boy Scout's Eagle Scout rank. Below I'll post the photos of my old badges and my daughter's badges, which I have saved in my hope chest.
My sash from Cadette Girl Scout Troop 920 in Holden, Massachusetts
As an adult leader I collected unofficial badges through swaps
or gifts from the girls in the troop. I sewed them onto this
shirt to wear to meetings and camporees.
My daughter earned many, many badges and pins as a Girl Scout.
She swapped many international badges while at Pax Lodge and at Girl Scout camp.
These fun badges, not earned, were sewn onto the back of her vest.
You can see some from Australia, England, Italy, and Japan.
She earned so many badges that these from her last year of scouting
didn't fit on her vest. We've saved them in my hope chest along with her vest.
These are leftover badges I never sewed onto my shirt, but had saved for swaps.
Does anyone want to swap some badges!
As a Cadette Girl Scout in Massachusetts I had a pen pal who was a
Girl Guide in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. She sent me lots of swaps and badges,
and I've still saved them after all these years.
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The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/02/scouting-thinking-day-february-22nd.html
Copyright (c) 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
A wonderful post Heather! Very colorful post too with all those patches and badges. Both my sons are Eagle Scouts as I reminded them and other Eagles in our Troop -- they are rare birds (only about 7% of Boy Scouts make it to Eagle), but rarer still is the Girl Scout Gold Award (formerly "First Class" as you noted). Scouting has been a part of our family experience for three generations now and we too have boxes of memorabilia.
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading your original post about Thinking Day via the link provided above. Another engaging post about Scouting that I recommend readers of this post also take the time to read.
ReplyDeleteI believe I have mentioned to you and posted on The Prism, that I actually met Lady Baden-Powell, Betty Clay's mother and wife of Lord Baden-Powell, at the 1969 Boy Scout National Jamboree in Idaho. She died not quite eight years later in 1977 having outlived her husband and her only son. As you mention, she and Lord Baden-Powell share the exact same birth day (Feb. 22nd), but not the same birth year. She was 32 years younger than he was! She was born Feb. 22, 1889 and he was born Feb. 22nd 1857.