Lenore 'Gundy' Costello has taught since 1945

When Caroline Hitchcock and her former Girl Scout pals started getting married in the late 1960s, they received the casserole dishes, Jell-O molds and fondue sets every modern housewife needed.

Lenore "Gundy" Costello gave them hammers, nails and pliers.

"She wanted us to learn how to take care of ourselves," recalls Hitchcock, of Port Orange. "She was very much ahead of her time."

Now 95, the Girl Scout cheerleader everyone knows simply as "Gundy" is a sharp, merry, agile inspiration to the decades of girls she's known and trained in the ways of the woods and the world. In her 67th year in Scouting, she now serves on the board of the development committee for the recruitment of new members, a grand title that makes her chuckle.

It's a volunteer position. She officially retired from Scouting in 1976, but it didn't exactly take.

Through the years, she has backpacked with girls on the Appalachian Trail, taught countless young women how to pitch tents and sing songs around a campfire, and managed decades' worth of cookie sales.

But along the way, she demonstrated by example the value of a college education, the humor and dedication required for a happy marriage, and the confidence that comes from breaking the mold.

"My job as a leader and as a CEO was to instill in girls the skills that would carry them through life and make them solid citizens," she says from her tidy 1920s-era home overlooking a lake in Lake Alfred. She and her husband, George, moved there in the early 1940s. They had no children other than the scores of girls who hiked into their hearts.

"My girls learned courage and self-confidence," she says.

The world was a different place when she became a Scout leader in 1945, before fears of lawsuits and obsessive worries over safety. She recalls turning eight older Scouts loose in the Polk County wilderness to establish a campsite and fend for themselves for a week.

"I thought these kids needed to take a few risks, learn leadership," she says. "They didn't know it, but I checked on the campsite every night. I never turned on my flashlight so they wouldn't know I was there."

The girls did just fine.

Gundy was born Lenore VanGundia in Sycamore, Ohio, then a small town without a Girl Scout troop. She received her nickname while a student at Heidelberg University in Ohio, and graduated in 1938 with a double major in sociology and biology.

She met her husband when she went to work for the Red Cross and he was on its national staff. George Costello was a Boy Scout leader, and when the couple moved to Polk County, the Girl Scout leadership enticed Gundy to get involved, too.

Through the years, George accompanied her on most trips, and encouraged her to take positions of increasing responsibility in Scouting, including acting as CEO for the local council. He died in 1997 at the age of 88, but had been her most vigorous supporter – most of the time.

"Ever once in a while," Gundy says, "I would come home from a tough day and say, 'That's it! That's my last day!'

"George would say, 'Did you tell them that? No? Well, good, because they might have said OK.' "

Humor comes naturally to Gundy; she throws back her head with abandon when she laughs, which is often. She's been known to play good-hearted jokes at her church, embarrassing the pastor. She frequently is visited by her girls, many now grandmothers, serving them lunches of homemade pimiento cheese and Jell-O salad.

Hitchcock, who was a Brownie at age 8 and continued in Scouting through high school, says Gundy taught her to canoe, backpack, knit and enjoy show tunes. She remains an avid backpacker, and her daughter and granddaughters followed her into Scouting.

But, she says, she learned more than nature skills from Gundy.

"She really taught us to protect the environment, before anyone was doing that," she says. "She passed on to us so much information about diversity and bringing people together.

"She was so much fun, always laughing."

In 1956, Gundy was one of the first women in the United States to travel to another country – in her case, the West Indies -- to teach the basics of camping. She later traveled to Switzerland, Puerto Rico and elsewhere for the American Camping Association to help camps worldwide gain accreditation. She remains friends with the women she met.

She continued teaching new generations of Girl Scouts about camping well into her 80s.

She also was instrumental in opening Camp Wildwood, sometimes going door to door to ask landowners to sell their property in Sumter County, about 75 miles northeast of Tampa. The piney woods, palmettos, live oaks and marshlands of natural Florida have been preserved, but Scouts now enjoy a pool, horseback riding and a climbing wall.

Back in Gundy's day, the climbing was a bit more rustic. In the 1950s, she and George took several troops up Mount Le Conte, in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.

Five years ago, at the age of 90, Gundy decided to make one last trek up the mountain. She took "three nice young people" with her, mainly because she was worried she'd get hurt and require a rescue from strangers, a terrible bother.

"When I made it to the top, a man ran up to me and hugged me and kissed me!" she says. "I said, 'Hmm, this is interesting!' I guess people had heard about the old lady on the mountain."

She says Mount Le Conte was much rougher in the old days; nowadays, there are cables to hold onto.

One thing that had not changed was the beauty of the spot. She took a few quiet moments to think about the others with whom she'd shared the view, her beloved George and all those girls who'd come and gone. She allowed herself a bittersweet moment, but didn't dwell on it too long.