Research project

[Zahnada]

I need some help. My school offers some excellent research grants and fellowships for innovative research. Such research should be done on topics that interest the researcher and I figured that Boy Scouts would be the perfect topic for me.

 

I want my research to take me to England to study the origins of the scouting movement. My main interest in scouts is the leadership aspect. I am hoping to perform some possible comparison between leadership camps in England and the United States and maybe how the differences reflect the two cultures.

 

As you can see, this idea has not been brainstormed much and I was hoping that this forum could help me with that. Does anyone have any good ideas for interesting research on scouting and leadership that might have implications outside the organization? Are there any research questions not necessarily related to those topics that you might want answered? Any ideas at all?

 

As I said, this is the initial phase of my grant proposal (as I just thought of this skeleton of an idea today). Anything you say that will help me focus will be appreciated.

[SCOUTER-Terry]

Zahnada -- what part of the country are you located in?

 

It's interesting that you would suggest this. Over the past several months, I have been mulling around the idea of recruiting a research assistant to help me complete a biography on William Hillcourt. As many readers of this forum may know, when I was 19 I spent three years living and traveling with Green Bar Bill... and collaborated with him on tapes and writings for an autobiography. That experience was cut all too short by his untimely death at 92 years old (I'll never cease to be amazed at just how magnificent it is to "unexpectedly" die at 92 after such a full life).

 

Bill was a great hero of Scouting, and no aspect of Scouting's history went untouched by him. Ten years after his death, I'm probably now capable of doing what I set out to do together with him. It is the regret of my life that I was too young and our time together was too short for me to have asked all the questions I should have asked. Which is not to say that I didn't learn volumes... I have thousands of pages of notes and tape recordings... I just wish I had it to do all over again, as the experience could be far more rich now.

 

The story of Bill Hillcourt's life is best told as the story of the life of Scouting. Not so much the biography of one man, but the tale of Scouting from it's earliest days as seen through the eyes of Hillcourt... if that were the story told, it would be comprehensive and engaging. Hillcourt was a thread through the fabric of Scouting history.

 

Many people have encouraged me over the years to complete this project. I've always know that someday I would. The time draws near for me to recommit.

 

I'm now based in Chicago, and my work keeps me very busy. To start the project with momentum, I recognize I'll need help. While most of our dialogue and time together is fresh, and ten years ago seems like yesterday, I recognize that the real project requires far more research than has been done to date.

 

Perhaps we should talk a bit?

 

TERRY HOWERTON