SecDef Praises Scouting

[afscout]

Good to see some good comments about scouting coming from our Gov't leaders

 

 

Dallas Morning News

March 4, 2011

 

Defense Chief Gates Praises Boy Scouts As Valuable In A Chaotic World

 

By Mark Norris, Staff writer

 

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Boy Scouts of America was a force for good in today's chaotic world during a speech at the Friends of Scouting banquet Thursday night in Dallas.

 

"There is no finer program preparing boys for leadership," Gates said.

 

Gates was introduced by former President George W. Bush, his former boss.

 

"I love Scouting," Bush said during his brief introductory remarks. "I think it's one of the great mentor programs in the country."

 

Gates mixed levity with the serious during his speech in front of a packed ballroom at the Hilton Anatole hotel.

 

He recalled the time he accompanied his son on a father/son campout while he was director of the CIA.

 

"The edge was taken off the wilderness experience when 100 yards away from camp were three black vans with security equipment," he said to laughs from the crowd.

 

He also described how earning his Eagle Scout badge at age 15 was the only thing that he felt distinguished him during his early years.

 

It's that feeling of accomplishment and sense of worth that Gates said he likes about Scouting.

 

"A boy who joins Scouting is on the right track," he said.

 

Gates said with more young Americans increasingly out of shape and turning into couch potatoes, Scouting serves an added benefit of getting kids outdoors.

 

But ultimately, he said, the Boy Scouts is about self-improvement.

 

"The Scouting experience is the first major step... toward becoming a good man," Gates said.

 

[Eamonn]

Nice words.

I'd love to see a speech like this to a group who weren't already deeply involved in Scouting.

 

I'd love to hear what Bush had to say about:

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined,"

Maybe the bread rolls might have gone airborne?

Ea.

[Kahuna]

Gates is always promoting Scouting. When he was Director of Central Intelligence, there were Scouting posters all over the building at Langley.

[Buffalo Skipper]

I would like to have a unit FOS where a former president of the United States introduced the guest speaker. Not bad for high profile and good representation for you unit.

 

And I thought we did well to have our County Commissioner and School Board Representative at our Pack's B&G two weeks ago...

[mikecummings157]

Secretary Gates gave a great talk at the Opening of the National Jamoboree last year too. Even the boys thought so!

[SMT224]

I agree Buffalo, but not at an ECOH... ;-)

[clemlaw]

>>>>>when 100 yards away from camp were three black vans with security equipment

[OwntheNight]

A lot of my Scouter friends were at that dinner last night and had nothing but great things to say about the evening and the President and SecDef. Still my favorite was a FB post from our former DE who got close enough to 43 to "High Five" him while he got all sorts of WTH looks from everybody around him.

 

I believe the Speech that Sec Gates gave was similar to the one he gave during Jambo, he definitely told that story about the 3 vans before.

[Miki101]

FYI...the Gates speech was done at the Circle 10 Council FOS banquet, not a unit event. They raised $2.1 mil. Not bad...

[afscout]

Here's the full speech that Sec. Gates gave. Sent by Julie Arrighetti (Webelos Den leader, Pack 1943). It's a good read.

----------------------------

Circle Ten Council Friends of Scouting

As Prepared for Delivery by Robert M. Gates, Dallas, Texas, Thursday, March 03, 2011

 

Good evening! Thank you President Bush, for that kind introduction. On a personal note, I would like to thank you again for granting me the opportunity to serve as Secretary of Defense. It is true that I have been known to grouse from time to time about coming back to Washington, D.C. Yet working everyday with our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines has been the greatest honor of my life. I always appreciated your steadfast confidence and support.

It is an honor to be here tonight. I thank you all for your hard work and continuing support of the Circle 10 Council, and for this opportunity to share a few of my thoughts about scouting, an organization that has so much personal meaning to me.

Scouting has been a big part of my life and my family's life. Of course my family's life and our kid's lives have been a bit unusual, in no small part because I have had armed body guards for so much of my professional career.

These circumstances affected my son's scouting experience. Such as the time when I was CIA Director and his troop went on a father and son wilderness camping trip near Chesapeake Bay in January. My son and I went. But I think the edge was taken off the wilderness adventure for everyone because 100 yards from our encampment were three large black vans, a satellite dish, and a number of armed security guards surrounding the campsite. Not to mention that one if the activities that weekend was for the scouts to learn how to shoot skeet. Just what my security detail wanted the Director of the CIA in the midst of a bunch of 12-14 year olds using shotguns for the first time.

I speak to you tonight, as a leader from one generation, talking to those who are helping develop the leaders of the next generation. Young leaders on whom much will depend.

Fifty-three years ago, when I received my Eagle, I was like many young scouts. I was a 15 year old kid attending high school. I wasn't a straight "A" student, nor was I a particularly good athlete. Although I was involved in school activities, I wasn't really a student leader. This was all true in college as well. And, when I went to Washington DC to begin working for the CIA at age 22, I could fit everything I owned into the back seat of my car. I had no connections and I didn't know a soul.

The only thing I had done in my life to that point that led me to think that I could make a difference, that I could be a leader, was to earn my Eagle Scout Badge. It was the only thing I had done that distinguished me from so many other high school kids. It was the first thing I had done that told me I might be different because I had worked harder, was more determined, more goal-oriented, more persistent than most others. Earning my Eagle gave me the self confidence to believe, for the first time in my life, that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to.

I suspect that for many scouts, earning their scout ranks, up to and including the Eagle, this is likely the first thing they will have done on their own that marks them as someone special, someone with unique qualities of mind and heart. Like so many scouts before them, some will become captains of industry, important businessmen; others will be builders and engineers; some may cure diseases; some may design revolutionary software; be an astronaut; some may become generals or admirals. Some may even head CIA or be the secretary of defense or president of a great university or a President of the United States. But, for most, their scouting experience is the first major step toward the most important goal of all: becoming a good man, a man of integrity and decency, a man of moral courage, a man unafraid of hard work, a man of strong character the kind of person who built this country and made it into the greatest democracy and the greatest economic powerhouse in the history of the world. A scout is marked for life as an example of what a boy and man can be and should be. They are role models.

The fate of our nation in the years to come and, I believe, the future of the world itself, depends on the kind of people we modern Americans will prove to be. And, above all, the kind of citizens our young people will be.

I believe that today, as for the past 100 years, there is no finer program for preparing boys for citizenship and leadership than the Boy Scouts of America. I have served eight presidents. I have traveled the world and had many extraordinary experiences. I have met many remarkable people. But, at this point in my life, I can tell you that my scouting experiences, scoutmasters, camping trips, Philmont adventures, the 1957 national jamboree at Valley Forge, and many more all had an equally huge influence in shaping my life.

Today, more than 50 years after I was a scout, I can remember the names and faces of all my scoutmasters, and many of the other adult volunteers.

I remember 60 year old Oscar Lamb taking ten of us teenagers to Philmont and hiking every blistered step with us. I remember Forrest Beckett teaching us kids in Kansas how to cook in winter on a fire of dried cow chips, imparting a distinctive flavor to already nearly inedible food. They and a handful of other volunteers along with my father my role models as a boy taught me about the scout oath and law, about teamwork, about real courage, and about leadership.

Much has changed in the 50 years since I was a scout, not all of it for the better, especially for kids. One thing, however, that has remained the same over the years is the positive influence of scouting on boys and young men, and the ability of so many of them to surprise and inspire us with their determination, their character, their skills, and their moral and physical courage.

Good homes and good parents produce strong boys, but scouting tempers the steel. For a successful scouting program is built on action, on hard work along with food, fun and, above all, on challenge. And, I suggest to you, there are too few institutions in America today that have uncompromising high standards and that are built upon demanding challenges.

We live in an America today where the young are increasingly physically unfit and society as a whole languishes in ignoble moral ease. An America where in public and private life we see daily what the famous news columnist Walter Lippman once called "the disaster of the character of men...the catastrophe of the soul."

But not in scouting. At a time when many American young people are turning into couch potatoes, and too often much worse, scouting continues to challenge boys and young men, preparing them for leadership.

First, scouting prepares young men for leadership by helping them learn to meet challenges. Scouting continues still to thrust boys and young men into the wilderness to prove themselves, to learn confidence and self-reliance, to learn about themselves, about nature, and about powers greater than themselves to learn about the power of the soul. It gives them a spirit of adventure and prepares them for life's challenges.

Second, scouting prepares boys and young men for leadership by teaching them the importance of service to others. The scouting movement shows dramatically that service public service still beckons the best among us to do battle with complacency, neglect, ignorance, and the emptiness of the spirit that are the common enemies of social peace and justice. Adults who support scouting are generously investing in our collective future in Walter Lippman's words, you are "planting trees we may never get to sit under." Those of every age in this place tonight along with the other adults and the more than 100 million boys and young men who have been involved in scouting over the past 100 years prove that Americans are still prepared to devote themselves to their communities and to their fellow citizens. And this caring beyond self is fundamental to scouting; it is fundamental to democracy; it is fundamental to civilization itself.

Third, and finally, scouting prepares boys and young men to live lives based on unchanging values values such as trustworthiness, loyalty, honesty, kindness, and the respect and dignity due each and every person. We in scouting believe that personal virtues self-reliance, self-control, honor, integrity, and morality are absolute and timeless.

There are in too many places too few people with scouting values, people who say, "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty" and mean it. From Wall Street to Washington to our home towns, in all our lives there are people who seek after riches or the many kinds of power without regard to what is right or true or decent. And yet millions of scouts, their parents, community leaders, boys and scout leaders demonstrate daily that scouting offers an alternative: that a life based on principles, on personal integrity and honor on scouting values can be exciting, adventurous, fulfilling, and uplifting for an individual, for a community and for a nation.

I am here tonight because I believe in the extraordinary power of scouting to be a force for good in a community and in the lives of its boys and young men. I am here because I believe that every boy that joins the scouts is a boy on the right track. I share with you a vision of a community of involved, committed adults who provide a chance for every boy to have friends his own age with whom he can camp and learn and laugh, led by caring adults who set an example not just of skills, but of character, of the joy of service and the joy of life. Adults who are leaders and who teach boys to be leaders

Many scouts are members of the Order of the Arrow. At the end of the Order's initiation ceremony, Uncas, the son of the chief of the Delawares, says to his father, "If we would remain a nation, we must stand by one another. Let us both urge on our kindred firm devotion to our brethren and our cause. Ourselves forgetting, let us catch the higher vision. Let us find the greater beauty in the life of cheerful service."

In challenging boys to learn skills, to master challenges, to strive to live up to high principles and moral values, to find the greater beauty in a life of cheerful service, to build strong character, scouting tempers them into strong leaders for tomorrow.

The legacy of scouting is a new generation of worthy leaders for America in the 21st century. These millions of young men and boys will be strong leaders thanks to scouting. Strong leaders of character, of faith, of skill; courageous defenders of the weak and the helpless, believers in the brotherhood of man. And with such leaders, America will continue to be the beacon of hope and decency and justice for the rest of the world.

Thank you. God bless you and God bless America.