SPL576

Is someone freezing access to this forum? I spent about three hours today attempting to share it with a visiting Scouter. Each time I entered the search criteria (either SPL576 or Green Bar Bill Hillcourt), I was dumped off the site. It is starting to look as if Green Bar Bill is now officially a "non-person" when a search for his name dumps you off the site. I'm in the process of teaching a Patrol Leader Training Course using all Green Bar Bill's materials. The Scouts are going wild over it. No theory...just plain hands on application.

I just checked the requirements for the Scouting Heritage MB. I guess Waite Phillips is in there because he donated the Philmont properties to the BSA. How they could omit the person who co-authored the Scout Field Book from 1944 to 1959, wrote all the Scout Leadership Books (Handbook for Patrol Leaders and Scoutmaster's Handbooks) during the Golden Age of Scouting (up until the Great Debacle of 1972) and who developed the entire Patrol Method during Scouting's Golden Age is beyond me. How fortunate some of us are to have such great memories of Green Bar Bill.

I'm guessing that you are referring to the Great Debacle of 1972 when the Program was turned over to a Madison Avenue Consulting Firm to make Scouting amenable to inner city kids. That turned out to be an unmitigated disaster! Green Bar Bill fought bitterly over that nonsense and was "retired". They had to bring him back from Retirement around 1979 to redo the handbook and stop the bleeding as Scouts left by the tens of thousands. Even though he was able to put some "outing" back into "Scouting", the big brass never forgot his "telling it like it is" and it shows in that he is never mentioned in any of the exhibits in the National Museum.

I recently visited the National Boy Scout Museum in Irving, Texas. Imagine my puzzlement when I realized that there was not a single mention of Green Bar Bill in the entire museum. The (Retired Professional) docent originally seemed to have never heard of Green Bar Bill Hillcourt until I pointed out that he had written all the leadership manuals for the Scouts up until around 1972, had co-authored the original Scout Field Books (the brown covered ones) with Chief Scout James E. West, etc. Then he reluctantly admitted that Green Bar Bill had lost favor in the eyes of the National Professionals and was therefore excluded from being placed in The National Boy Scout Museum. What a loss!