Thursday, March 20, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
They came from around the valley clutching treasured photos, tattered workbooks and their trademark green sashes.
Though they've faded over time, the merit-badge-emblazoned bands are still a point of pride for many former Girl Scouts in Southern Nevada.
More than 200 of them recently attended a reunion party, sponsored by the local Frontier Girl Scout Council, to celebrate the organization's 85th anniversary.
Similar activities commemorating the milestone have been held this month by councils around the country.
Girl Scouts was founded on March 12, 1912, by Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah, Ga., to let 18 girls discover nature and learn self-reliance and resourcefulness. Today, the organization boasts more than 3.5 million members nationwide.
Chartered in 1943, the Frontier Girl Scout Council serves 8,200 girls in five Nevada counties and Death Valley and Needles, Calif.
The reunion party represented "... what we felt was the very core of Girl Scouting," says Juergen Barbusca, the council's public relations director.
"We wanted women who were in Girl Scouting to come back, reminisce, network, talk about camp, about cookies, about badges and patches and what it meant for them to be Girl Scouts," he says.
Luckily, the memories didn't fade along with the sashes. Nor did the impact that Scouting has had on many of their lives.
In fact, Shae Denin credits her stand-up comedy career to her days as a Scout.
As a child, the Las Vegan was so shy, "The girls in my troop thought I was stuck up because ... I wouldn't talk to anyone.
"My Girl Scout troop leader was the first one to recognize that it was shyness and she kind of drew me out," says the 30-year-old, who performs regularly at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, Calif. "She was the most amazing woman I ever met."
Also, writing and acting in silly skits at camp, Denin says, was good preparation for doing improv comedy routines, such as the Girl Scout-themed monologue she performed at the reunion.
She bragged about the badges she'd earned -- well, sort of. "I'm not sure 'The Hustle' is considered a folk dance."
The first jokes Denin wrote were based on a trip her troop (No. 145, which held meetings at Culley Elementary School) took to Disneyland.
"Really, it was just learning to come out of my shell and finding my way in the world," she says.
All in the family
For Dawn Campbell, Scouting has always been a family affair.
When the 23-year-old started out as a Brownie in the early '80s, her mother, Linda Morgan, served as the troop's leader.
"I remember going out Girl Scout caroling for Christmas," the homemaker recalls. "My mom took us and we went all around the neighborhood and sang."
But the family tradition originated with Dana Wruble, Campbell's aunt. She's been involved with the Scouts for 20 years -- half of them as a kid, the rest as an adult volunteer training troop leaders.
"We went places that I never would have had the opportunity to go to (otherwise)," the 28-year-old librarian says.
Such as an international "Jubilee Roundup" in '86, when she traversed ice caves in Idaho.
"And just camping," Wruble says. "My parents never went camping."
"It's been wonderful for Dana," says Morgan, who recently became a troop leader again. "My sister has inspired me to go back and help."
Troop Baldwin Hills
Pearl Cohen scans the smiling faces in a black-and-white photo and, like a doting mother, proudly announces the accomplishments of each of "my girls."
The snapshot was taken in 1959, when she led a 15-member Brownie troop that met at an elementary school in the Los Angeles suburb of Baldwin Hills.
"She's a lawyer. She's a rabbi," Cohen continues. "There's my daughter," Sharon, now a 44-year-old medical social worker.
"It really was great," the 70-year-old Cohen says. "It was so rewarding to see those happy faces.
But more than making crafts and building campfires, "I taught them how to give back to others," she says.
After teaching the girls to sew doll clothes, she took them to a local hospital, where they presented a child patient with a doll and the outfits.
And when disaster struck their L.A. neighborhood in 1963, by way of a "dam disaster," the troop took to the streets salvaging items from flooded homes.
"They learned a lot in the Scouts that day," Cohen recalls with a chuckle. "I taught them they must always help others, and they did."
Scouting safety
Getting to and from troop meetings was no small task for Lillian McMorris.
The host of "A.M. Southern Nevada," which airs on KVVU Channel 5, grew up in the area around Sirius Avenue and Valley View Boulevard.
Meanwhile, her troop meetings, led by longtime Las Vegan Kate Butler, were held in Rancho Circle.
"At that time, all of the roads (around town) were not paved. It was a chore to get there, but when we got there, we had a lot of fun," she says.
The child of adoptive senior-citizen parents, McMorris says Scouting was "a safe avenue when (her parents) let me get out and go places and do things."
Usually. McMorris recalls how her troop's cookie sales had them ranked No. 1 in the city, earning them a trip to Disneyland. "And my mother, of course, was not going to let me go.
"My leader took the time out to talk to my parents" assuring them everything would be OK, "and I got to go. I always remember that," she says.
That and "the kindness we all learn in Scouting ... just genuinely getting along with others. Those are the things I ponder and look back on."
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