Girl Scout cookies turn 100 this year

Forget birthday cake; for this celebration, break out the cookies.

Girl Scout cookies, those highly anticipated seasonal snacks sold by girls across the country, are turning 100 this year.

Maura Warner, communications coordinator for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois, said the milestone is a chance to reflect on the legacy of the program, which has changed a lot since a troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked the first cookies as a service project in 1917.

Last year, over a million girls participated in cookie sales. Many of those girls were Iowans; the Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois serves roughly 15,000 girls, including more than 3,000 in Linn and Johnson counties.

In addition to in-person sales and cookie sale tables, girls, since 2014, have been able to create virtual cookie sale websites, which can use to sell to far-flung friends and relatives and can be used to help track sales.

'We want girls to learn where business is at right now. Giving them those online skills is really setting them up for the future,' Warner said.

Setting girls up for the future is really what cookie sales are about, she said. That has been the case for decades, in part thanks to Iowa native and former first lady Lou Henry Hoover, who was involved with the Scouts from the 1920s until she died in 1944.

While her husband Herbert Hoover was president from 1929 until 1933, she led Washington, D.C's, Troop 8, inviting the girls to receptions at the White House. After the Hoover's left the White House, she became president of the Girl Scouts in 1935 and remained active in the organization for years, serving on the board of directors and planning committees.

One of her legacies was finding a way for Girl Scouts to raise funds to support programming and pay membership fees for girls who couldn't afford them.

'In 1926, Lou started really going after fundraising hard ... she really started to see they couldn't depend on donations to help support memberships and camps,' said Elizabeth Dinschell, education specialist of the National Archives and Records Administration at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum in West Branch.

One of Hoover's first efforts was to open Girl Scout-run coffee and waffle houses around Washington, D.C. Girls also began selling food to raise funds — everything from cookies to mince meat pies. In 1929 alone, Hoover's efforts raised half a million dollars.

By 1935, cookie sales had picked up steam and cookies were being produced nationally in a commercial bakery with a uniform recipe.

'Lou was widely regarded as the person who started that commercialized sale of Girl Scout cookies,' Dinschell said. 'But the cookie sales represent an incredibly small portion of her contributions to the Girl Scouts.'

She also led the creation of a five-year organizational plan that helped shape the Scout's direction going forward and helped establish the first Girl Scout camps. This year's special cookie flavor, s'mores, hearkens back to that legacy.

Hoover referenced her own childhood, when her father took her hunting, fishing and hiking, as part of the reason she was involved in the Girl Scouts — she wanted other girls to have those opportunities, Dinschell said.

'She said really believed in the mission statement,' she said. 'It arose from her own and her husband's concern for the American child.'

Dinschell said she thinks one of the Scout's current focuses, promoting STEM education — science, technology, engineering and math — would have pleased Hoover, who was a geologist before she became first lady.

On May 6, the museum will host Hoover STEM Day, where Girl Scouts can earn badges and explore science and technology, including at a geology station in the former first lady's honor.

'Lou was incredibly smart,' Dinschell said. 'She was college educated, and she was very much a leader, and she wanted that for girls, she wanted them to be leaders.'

Warner said that's what Girl Scout cookie sales are designed to do.

'It teaches them really great business skills, and I think if it didn't, this wouldn't continue to be a program of ours,' she said. 'The cookies are really great, but it's the girls who really drive the sales and have a good time.'

 Celebrate Lou Henry Hoover's legacy

- What: Celebrate Lou Henry Hoover's birthday at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum with free Girl Scout cookies all day

- When: March 29

- What: STEM Day at Hoover

- When: 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 6

- Register: hoover.archives.gov

- Where: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, 210 Parkside Drive, West Branch

Buy cookiesgirlscouts.org/en/cookies/all-about-cookies.html

Cookies are available to order now through the end of January. In February, girls will receive cookies to deliver and will be able to order extra boxes for table sales through March 12.

Find cookies for sale at 

l Comments: (319) 398-8434; alison.gowans@thegazette.com