Firelands Council of Boy Scouts Let Girls Join Explorers – April 1971

Remember a couple of years ago when the Boy Scouts of America decided to let girls join, in an effort to bolster its sagging membership? It was pretty controversial at the time, although I haven’t read anything recently about how it’s been going.

Anyway, I was fairly surprised to see that fifty years ago, the Firelands Council of the Boy Scouts of America allowed seventy-five girls to join and take part in the Explorer Scout program.

Above is the article from the April 22, 1971 Journal. It’s nice to see that U. S. Steel was involved with the program.

It all seems to make sense, seeing as the Explorer concept was focused on vocational opportunities – and getting young people to think about it at an early age is always a good thing.

Note that the cartoon printed with the story is by our pal Gene Patrick, who seems to have been pretty busy back at the Journal in those days. Although he was on hiatus from his Passing Scene comic strip, he was providing a lot of great photographs – and the occasional cartoon – to accompany Journal articles.