AUBURN - This year will mark 65 years that Ruth Probst has been involved with the Girl Scouts.

On Sunday afternoon, Probst, dressed appropriately enough in her 1960 Girl Scout leader uniform and hat, replete with numerous pins, was at the Ward W. O'Hara Agricultural Museum as part of the museum's Girl Scout Day.

“My daughter got me involved,” Probst said. “And I was a Brownie leader for 25 years. I still go to the meetings twice a year in the fall and in the spring and they will be giving me my 65-year pin pretty soon.”

On a display table, Probst spread out information detailing the history of the Girl Scouts, from scout manuals dating back as far as 1920, to detailed printouts on pins and awards to uniforms and their evolution over the past 80 years.

Probst also had a variety of news clippings, detailing projects and features on the accomplishments on various scouts over the years, as well as member roles dating back to her time as a Brownie leader and before.

For Probst, the preservation of this history has been an important project.

“I've been collecting all of this for years,” Probst said. “I've got more, I should've brought it, but I've got things that go back the beginning of the Girl Scouts and I've been collecting it all down through the years.”

And ever the resourceful scout, Probst also demonstrated how to make a sit-upon, by folding and weaving together newspapers to create a seat cushion.

Donna Danylec, service unit manager for the Girl Scouts in the Auburn area and Cathy Capeling, product sales manager for Cayuga County, said they worked in conjunction with Tim Quill, director of the museum to get this first Girl Scout Day together.

“Tim called and said that he was doing something with the Boy Scouts,” Danylec said. “And he asked if we would be interested, it just sounded like it would be a fun idea.”

Danylec explained the Girl Scouts are broken up into regional groups across the county and that while they are an active group, there is not much in the way of summer activities.

“We get started again in the fall,” Capeling said. “We don't meet in the summer, so we thought this was the perfect opportunity to invite all the girls in all of Cayuga County to get together and start getting ready for the fall.”

Along with Probst, Danylec and Capeling also planned to celebrate a bit of the history of the Girl Scouts in the Auburn area, setting out a display table of older badges and handbooks and pictures.

“There is going to be a new handbook this year,” Danylec said. “And there is going to be some new programming. So we thought it might be fun to look back and see how things have changed and how they have stayed the same. We're always looking for new ideas and different things to do with the girls and this seemed like it would be a lot of fun.”

Danylec and Capeling also planned some games and a staple of any scout meeting, s'mores.

And with the start of the scout season rapidly approaching, they also used the day to register returning and new scouts.

Quill said this weekend's scout events were a way for the museum to reach out to the community and raise awareness about itself.

“We want to try to get the community more aware of what we have here,” Quill said. “I don't think people realize how big the museum is here and we'd like to see this be a place that people use for meetings and community events and see people get more use out of it and we thought the scouts and youth organizations would be a great way to reach out to people to do that.”

Quill also hoped that along the way, especially with the scouts, that visitors are able to learn something as they enjoy themselves.

“I hope that they (scouts) can learn a little bit more about what life was like,” Quill said. “I hope this helps them get an appreciation for what life was like in a different age and they can learn about what life was like in the 1800s and early 1900s.”