Category: Bobwhite’s Blog

A Scout unit can be compared to a bird in flight.

A healthy bird flies high, soaring with wings open and catching updrafts and downdrafts. It might dip a bit here and there, but it catches another thermal and continues to soar.

A newborn bird flaps its tiny wings mightily, desperately trying to catch air. It might perch itself on the edge of the nest, take a leap of faith and go “thud” on the ground. Mother bird might pick it up and place it back in the nest for another try. If a predator doesn’t get to it, it will keep flapping until it finally struggles airborne enough to get back up to a tree branch. With enough wingflap, it will eventually learn to sustain flight. Continue reading “Flap your wings!”

This week we’re kicking off the big recruiting push. I’ve been involved in a number of activities:

• Helping a fledgling pack we started last year get their recruiting drive underway, plan some activities and try to get more parents involved. They limped along last year with about ten boys and a bit of turnover, but we are hoping to make a better push this year with some solid recruiting efforts and a quicker start to their activities.
• Working with two other packs helping to coordinate their Join Scouting Nights. We’ll be entertaining the boys, talking to the parents, and hopefully turning in a lot of applications. These two packs have established leadership and good programs planned, and my involvement should largely be helping on the administrative side.
• Promoting the October district camporee and November troop meet & greet nights to the Webelos Scouts in the packs I work with. Recruiting is only one side of the coin; retention is the other, and we have to keep both sides in view (that’s a tough task!). Statistics show that we lose nearly half the boys we recruit into Cub Scouting each year. Showing them how Boy Scouts kicks the fun up several notches is a great way to hang on to them.

Now that my sons’ Boy Scouting days are over, it seems like I’m starting again back at the beginning. It seems similar to what they say about having grandchildren – you get to have fun all over again, but with someone else’s kids!

I was on the expressway driving to work the other day when I noticed a kitchen table lying upside-down on the shoulder of the road. A hundred feet or so later, a man was walking toward the table, and what must have been his car was parked several hundred feet down the shoulder. My guess is that the table had been lashed to the roof of his car and came loose while he was driving. Continue reading “Save a table. Save a life.”

Ten years ago tomorrow, I got up before the light of dawn, got in my car that I had packed the night before, and drove an hour and a half to a conference retreat camp for what was at the time an unknown journey.

Many of my fellow Scouters had been urging me for some time to attend, so I planned for the two Fridays off, renewed my medical record and registered. Now the first weekend of my Wood Badge course was beginning.

Upon arrival at the camp, I took a deep breath Continue reading “Ten Years a Bobwhite”