Eagles
and Arrows
From a rustic narrow valley in southern Ohio to a cool dark evening
sitting on a Pennsylvania hillside with thousands of others listening to the president of
the United States, who was only a couple of hundred yards away, I had many experiences as
a boy scout which became permanent influences on what I would become and what I would do
for the rest of my life.
My first contact with the boy scouts was during the late 1950's in the
valley of Camp Creek, Ohio, after my tenth birthday. The only youth
organizations available in the isolated valley were 4H for the girls and a boy scout troop
for the boys. I was too young to officially be a boy scout, but the older young men
taught me and another ten year old young man the requirements for the Tenderfoot rank and
some of the requirements for the Second Class and First Class ranks. Camp Creek was
a community out in the middle of nowhere. Young men could earn the first three
ranks, but it was very difficult for them to advance to the higher ranks due to the lack
of availability of merit badge councilors.
During the summer before my eleventh birthday, my family moved to Paducah,
Kentucky. Several of the young men in my neighborhood were members of a boy scout
troop sponsored by a Methodist church a few miles away and I was invited to join the
troop. It was official ..... I got my uniform and, before long, passed the tests for
and was presented with my Tenderfoot badge. I collected coat hangers door to door in
my neighborhood to earn money for my first summer camp during the summer of 1960 at the
new boy scout camp on Kentucky Lake. I was a member of that troop during the sixth
and seventh grades. My training in Camp Creek paid off handsomely and before the
summer at the end of my seventh grade year, I was a Star Scout with eight merit
badges.
The Methodist church decided to stop sponsoring a boy scout troop at
the end of the school year and our neighborhood group found another troop sponsored by a
Baptist church a little bit closer to home. The scoutmaster was a city police
officer and lived in our neighborhood. Although I was only in the troop
a short time, I attended another summer camp, earned five more merit badges, and became a
Life Scout at the age of twelve before starting the eighth grade.
The Baptist church decided
to stop sponsoring a boy scout troop a few months after I joined it. However, our
innovative scoutmaster kept his ear to the ground and found a new sponsor for our
troop. The Paducah Junior Chamber of Commerce had recently built a large meeting
hall adjacent to the city park. They decided to sponsor a boy scout troop and we
were chosen to be their troop. I was a member of that troop for five years from my
eighth to twelfth grades. Our sponsor provided us with a place to meet and all of
the equipment that we needed. Our troop had open enrollment and soon grew to
eight patrols. At that point, a waiting list was started. We had several
assistant scoutmasters and the scoutmaster and most of the assistants had military
backgrounds. After the end of my junior year of high school I had earned ten more
merit badges and I was certified as an Eagle Scout. I was elected to the Order of
the Arrow by the members of my troop and became a Brotherhood member of the organization
and was a member of the Indian dance team. I rose through the offices of the troop
to become a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster while my scoutmaster rose through the ranks of
his career to become an Assistant Chief of Police of our city.
Some of the rich folks had summer homes on the lake. I had a
boy scout camp on the lake. About a year or two before I joined the boy scouts, the
old Four Rivers Council opened a camp on the shore of Kentucky Lake. It was on a
small bay which was protected from the main lake by a long narrow island. I attended
two one week summer camps and numerous one and two night campouts at the camp.
During the summers of 1960 and 1961, I attended the one week camps as a member of a
troop. Then, during the summers of 1962, 1963, and 1965, I was chosen to be a member
of the camp staff. That meant an all expense paid six week encampment at the camp.
The first year I was a member of the camp development crew and was something like
an outdoor janitor. We were the buildings and grounds people and collected the
garbage left over from the meals which the campers prepared at the campsites. The
second and third years I was a member of the commissary crew. We alternated between
two functions. One function was to distribute the uncooked food and instructions to
the patrols at the campsites and the other function was to prepare the the meals for the
other thirty or forty members of the camp staff. I was paid $2 per week the first
year, $5 a week the second year, and $10 a week the third year.....just a little bit of
spending money. During the summer of 1964, I attended the national jamboree and my
only time spent at the camp was in a pre-jamboree camp with the jamboree troop.
