By SARA GREENE
Leader staff writer
The Ouachita Council of Girl Scouts is inviting girls from families evacuated as a result of Hurricane Katrina to join the Girl Scouts free of charge. The Ouachita Council of Girl Scouts will pay all registration fees.
The Girl Scouts’ Juliette Low Service Unit serves scouts in Cabot, Austin, Ward, Beebe, McRae and DesArc areas and wants to help by placing girls in existing troops to make friends.
For more information, contact the Ouachita Council at (501) 758-1020 or call Beverly Keathley, manager of the Juliette Low Service Unit, at 843-8873 or by e-mail at beverlykeathley@yahoo.com.
Six members of Girl Scout Troop 635 of Beebe toured the William J. Clinton Presidential Li-brary and Museum in Little Rock recently. The troop is for Girl Scouts ages 10, 11 and 12.
The presidential library, 1200 President Clinton Ave., includes an archival research facility and a museum. It is responsible for preserving and processing the official presidential records, audiovisual materials and artifacts of the Clinton administration.
Clinton was at the library when the troop visited. He made time to shake hands and pose for photographs with the scouts.
“The scouts really enjoyed the day,” said Mary Beth Hendricks who shares the leadership of the troop with Becky Blair. Hendricks has been involved with scouts since her daughter was a Daisy Scout in kindergarten. She became active in scout leadership last year.
“I enjoy the interaction with the girls,” Hendricks said. Her daughter is now a Junior Scout. Next year, her daughter will be a Cadet.
The tour of the library fulfilled a history-badge requirement as well as encouraging good citizenship in the scouts, says Hendricks.
The scouts took turns sitting in chairs in the Cabinet Room, looking up historical facts on the various touch-screen computers. The computer screens allow visitors to simply touch the screen for information.
For example, the scouts used the computers to find out what President Clinton was doing on the day they were born. The troop stopped at the Old Mill in North Little Rock where they had a picnic lunch and afternoon tour.
The Old Mill, located at Fairway Ave. and Lakeshore Drive in North Little Rock, is a historic re-creation of an 1880’s water-powered gristmill.
Currently, Troop 635 is planning a trip to the Juliette Gordon Low birthplace in Savannah, Ga., where the Girl Scouts organization was first founded.
The troop is also planning a visit to the Little Rock Central High School national historic site and museum later in the year.
The museum, at 2125 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Dr. in Little Rock, opened in September 1997 to mark the 40th anniversary of the high school’s desegregation, when nine African-American students en-tered the school under federal troop protection.
