MILFORD, Conn. (AP) – A woman whose 14-year legal battle helped open the doors for women to become scoutmasters and other leaders within the Boy Scouts of America has died.
Catherine Pollard died Wednesday in Seminole, Fla., at age 88, said Shawn Smith of Smith Funeral Home in Milford, which is handling arrangements.
Smith said Pollard’s family was coming to Milford from Florida Thursday to make funeral preparations.
Pollard’s battle with the organization began after her application for a leadership position was denied by the Boy Scouts in 1974 and 1976.
She was rejected by the scouts even though she had run a Milford troop from 1973 to 1975 when no men volunteered. The Boy Scouts contended that a woman was not a good role model for young boys enrolled in scouting.
Pollard successfully challenged the action before the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, but that ruling was later reversed in state courts.
The state Supreme Court in July 1987 upheld a lower-court ruling that boys need the guidance of men “in the difficult process of maturing to adulthood.”
But in February 1988 the national Boy Scouts of America did away with all gender restrictions on volunteer positions, abandoning its 78-year-old policy that banned women from six leadership roles.
At the time of the 1988 change, Pollard had praise for the Boy Scouts leadership.
“I think that it is a great thing that happened and I think it’s about time, after trying hard for 14 years, to get this stupid situation straightened out,” Pollard said.
“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.
Pollard, who was 69 at the time, officially became Milford’s first female scoutmaster in 1988.
Lou Salute, the scout executive at the Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of America, located in Milford, said nobody currently there knew Pollard personally.
“All I know about her is she was the first woman scoutmaster in the country,” Salute said.
A message seeking comment and confirmation of Pollard’s role in the history of the BSA was left at the national headquarters of the organization Thursday.
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