1. A Gold Award Feature
By: Kim Dunne, Media Manager
It was 1958 and Gail Sergio needed to complete one more badge in order to earn the Curved Bar. It was
the homemaker badge.
“My mother was on my case and my troop leader was on my case,” Gail recalls. “I wasn’t interested in
cooking and homemaking. If I could cook I was going to do it outside, at camp, and over a campfire.”
She eventually did finish the requirements to earn the badge and earned the Curved Bar, the equivalent to
what the Girl Scout Gold Award is now. The Curved Bar was what girls earned from 1940 to 1963 and as
Gail explains, it was more of a ranked award and earned by girls in 7th
and 8th
grades,or Intermediate Girl
Scouts. There were no highest awards for Senior Girl Scouts (or girls ages 14 through 18) because the
focus was on service to all areas of the community.
Gail still has her handbooks from when she was an Intermediate Girl Scout and a Senior Girl Scout. The
handbooks explain what needs to be done to earn the Curved Bar and it started in fourth grade when you
earned the rank of Tenderfoot. After you received the Tenderfoot Rank, you would work towards the
Second Class Rank and then the First Class Rank. After you received all three ranks you could then work
towards the Curved Bar requirements which was earning four badges in one of the following groups:
Arts, Citizenship, Homemaking, or Out-of-Doors.
“All of the ranks taught you life skills. They were activities to develop the individual’s knowledge and
abilities so that you could be ready to take care of your home and family and give service to others in the
community,” Gail explained. “At this time most girls were expected to find a husband, have children and
join the PTA. There was no Title IX and no interscholastic sports for most. Juliette Low expected girls to
be able to take care of themselves and others, and this is what the program did.”
Fast forward to today where Gail, from Oxford in Chenango County, worked for 45 years with troops,
just retiring last May. She now serves on the Gold Award committee and holds Gold Award trainings and
will do new leader trainings and interviews.
The Curved Bar was all about badges. The Girl Scout Gold Award is all about journeys and a project that
affects lasting change. Gail sees the changes in the Girl Scout awards as a progression that was needed.
“The world wasn’t as big as it is now. In the Gold Award you have to demonstrate that you understand
how your project fits into a more global look at things where as for the Curved Bar, our world was much
smaller, community-oriented and not wide-spread,” Gail says. “The basic fundamentals of Girl Scouts,
the Promise and the Law,have not changed. The expectations and the area’s that girls and women can
develop in, and be successfulin, has to change.”
Gail says that if it wasn’t for her experience earning the Curved Bar and participating in Girl Scouts, she
wouldn’t have been able to experience some amazing opportunities.
“It really was the most important thing in my life, besides my parents. It gave me opportunities to do
things that I wouldn’t ordinarily have had the opportunity to do. I attended an International Round-Up
when I was 16 and that was by far the most amazing experience I’ve ever had. That and being able to be a
Girl Scout counselor, that’s where I developed all my leadership skills.”

2. What started as the Golden Eaglet of Merit in 1916 by Juliette Low in hopes that girls would learn to be
proficient in a variety of tasks has evolved to the Girl Scout Gold Award,which requires girls to
demonstrate their leadership abilities and take on a project that is sustainable in the community.
“The Gold Award is awarded to girls in a different era. Although women have a ways to go before they
will be treated as realequals to men they have moved far away from the world I grew up in,” Gail says.
“You can Skype with someone around the world, the Internet is there for all you need to know, and
women are in the work place designing their own startups, running for President, and affecting lasting
change. Juliette Low would be proud.”