Catherine Pollard Scoutmaster Dies at 88
MILFORD, Conn. (AP) - Catherine Pollard, who became the Boy Scouts of America's first female U.S. scoutmaster after a years-long legal fight, died Wednesday. She was 88.
Pollard, who volunteered with the Scouts in Milford, died in Seminole, Fla., said Shawn Smith of Smith Funeral Home in Milford, which is handling arrangements.
Pollard ran a Milford troop from 1973 to 1975 when no men volunteered. But her application for a leadership position was denied when the Boy Scouts contended a woman was not a good role model for young boys enrolled in Scouting.
The state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities sided with her, but state courts reversed its ruling. The state Supreme Court in 1987 upheld a lower-court ruling that boys need the guidance of men "in the difficult process of maturing to adulthood."
In February 1988 the national Boy Scouts of America did away with all gender restrictions on volunteer positions. Pollard, who was 69 at the time, became a scoutmaster in Milford and praised the Boy Scouts leadership.
"I do think that this is marvelous because there have been women all over the United States, in fact all over the world, that have been doing these things for the Boy Scouts because they could not get a male leader but we could not get recognition for the things we've done," she said.
Lou Salute, the Scout executive at the Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of America, in Milford, said Pollard was the first female scoutmaster in the U.S.
A message seeking comment from the national organization was not immediately returned Thursday.
See an analysis of the Pollard case at B.S.A. discrimination.org. I remember following Catherine's case and the subsequent changes to leadership qualifications. It took us all some time to adjust to the idea of women as Scoutmasters. From the perspective of nearly twenty years thousands of women have proven that they are perfectly capable of making effective, vital and valuable contributions to Scouting. Unfortunately we seem not to have learned from the experience and continue exclude gay or atheist adults from leadership positions. I remember dire predictions that allowing women to step into leadership roles would result in Scouting flying apart at the seams. When the first woman candidate showed up at an O.A. ordeal weekend some of the men staged a walkout (almost all of them came back eventually). In my experience the women who assumed leadership roles in Scout Troops were not militant usurpers, they simply had the same desire to serve as their male counterparts. Why we think that the acceptance of gay or atheist leaders would compromise our movement is beyond me.
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