You gotta have a cake! I am more interested in the bigger ideas of Scouting rather than writing about my own Troop or my individual experiences. Bear with me today as I share what’s been going on recently. Short of two years ago I delivered this letter to our Troop Committee: Tuesday, October 09, 2012 To The Committee Troop 24 April 2014 marks my 30th year as Scoutmaster and I have come to the decision that September 1, 2014 will be the date of my retirement....
In 30 plus years of Scouting this past Saturday was particularly meaningful. My wife and I were invited to the wedding of one of the men she calls ‘our boys’. Andy worked with me on camp staff and worked for me when I was a camp director nearly twenty years ago. There’s something to the friendships we forged as camp staff members that remains lasting and important. Andy asked me to be one of the readers at his wedding....
When we found the spear point and the potsherd under a sheltering wall of rock the dig began. A archeologist’s expert hand peeled back layers of time connecting us to those we never met but knew as we know ourselves. Down below the soil of a millennium we found the fire-blackened circle of stones, the charcoal and fragments of bones. Someone sat here centuries ago warming themselves against the cold....
No matter how hard I tried I could not get Ken to an Eagle court of honor. Ken Ryan was Scoutmaster of Troop 12 across town for thirty years and decided to retire the year I became Scoutmaster. By that time troop 12 had ten or twelve older Scouts and little other adult help, so Ken sent his remaining Scouts over to our troop. Ken maintained his registration with our troop and visited a troop meeting once or twice a year until he died a couple of years ago....
As Mark Twain said “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.” Like most volunteer Scouters I am not a Scoutmaster to earn awards and I didn’t want to look like I was – so for years I never wore my square knots. When I bought a new centennial uniform shirt I sewed on my square knots. Frankly wearing them feels a little sanctimonious....