As they reach adulthood...

[John-in-KC]

Eamonn has shared stories of OJ.

 

GWD has shared stories of her son, a camp staffer.

 

I've shared a few of my own Eagle.

 

Dan just shared that his boy has crossed into adulthood.

 

Looking back on their trails, what have you seen?(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

[mtm25653]

I've spent most of this summer thinking about this. Both boys are away from home for the whole summer.

 

Last summer, the older one turned 18 while backpacking on the Appalachian Trail with his brother and scout leaders. The other boys who had planned on going on the trip dropped out, and I figured it would either be the best 2 weeks or the worst 2 weeks of their lives, spending the time on the trail without other kids as a buffer. The leaders told me they would walk into camp each afternoon singing songs their dad taught them. They became more than brothers last year, they are good friends.

 

This summer, older son is working in a non-scout camp halfway across the country. He's been gone 9 weeks, with 4 more to go, and I miss him. He calls every week or so, and we talk more than when he is at school 15 miles away. He has struggled some with being responsible for a cabin full of boys, but his scout leadership experiences gave him a toolbox full of strategies for dealing with difficult situations.

 

Younger son (16) is working at a scout camp in another council. He has been home twice, for 12 hours each time, on the way to Philmont and on the way back to camp. One of the first things he said to me, at the airport at midnight, was that he felt really good about the leadership of the troop for the next year. He is Troop Guide - SPL, ASPL, 3 of 4 patrol leaders, plus all the active older boys were on the trip - and they all worked together and formed a strong team during the trek.

 

My boys are gone. They've grown into good young men. And a lot of the credit goes to the many, many scout leaders who have talked to them, listened to them, taught them and showed them by example how to lead and how to serve others.

 

Last year I went to 6 Eagle ceremonies in 4 different troops. I cried at all of them, so proud of the boys who had grown into good young men.

 

Thanks to all of you for what you do for your boys.

[Eamonn]

"Looking back on their trails, what have you seen?"

 

As I have said in the past, I didn't want to cramp OJ's style by being there looking over his shoulder or micromanaging his ever move.

Add to this, he really didn't want me around.

When he joined Cub Scouts, he was no different than most of the other kids that joined.

He was not very well coordinated, seemed to be no brighter or no dumber than any other kid and had the attention span of a very small ant.

I did get to be his Webelos Scout Den Leader for his Webelos years.

That was fun.

Not just because he was my kid, but Lads that age are fun to work with.

Together we tried new activities!!

The joys of looking at the ecosystem of local streams, splish splashing around, taking owl pellets apart and seeing what the owl had for supper, making rockets, trying our hand at archery and BB guns.

When the time came for him to move into the Troop, I kinda knew that "My Baby" was lost.

He joined just in time to attend the Troops winter weekend at Twin Echos camp. It was February, it was cold with lots of snow.

In the Pack he looked so big and was cock of the walk, now he looked so small and the other Scouts looked ginormas!

Still he jumped in a van and was gone.

At his first Summer Camp he seemed from what I heard to spent a lot of time walking too and from the First Aid Center.

Nothing big, just silly things. After one visit having a volley ball injury attended too he was walking back and got stung on the face by a bee, so he just turned around and went back!!

Sadly the SM of the Troop he joined changed jobs and was unable to continue as SM. The replacement wasn't that good and things went down hill really fast.

He got involved with the OA.

Him and a merry little band.

The merry little band turned out to be one of the nicest groups of kids I have ever met. Many have gone on to serve at the Regional level.

I got to spend the 2001 Jamboree with OJ and members of this group, by 2007 one of them was my 3rd ASM and OJ staffing the COPE Tower. A bunch of them went to Philmont. They worked at Summer Camp and only now am I hearing tales of things they got up to, which maybe if I'd heard about them at the time I might have been upset -A Trip to Washington DC on their night off!!

Sometimes it's hard to see your own kid.

I know he is popular.

Everyone seems to know him.

Adults compliment me on how mature and well mannered he is!! (They never see the "Dark Side").

He wants to teach elementary education.

I thought it was due to him wanting to have his summers free.

But the HS had a program where he could go and work in the elementary school, so many days a month. The teachers and the principal who I know well tell me that they have never seen a kid of his age who really does care about little kids as much as he does.

I can't help thinking the time he spent staffing JLTC might have helped prepare him for that.

He is a typical teenager. Right now his new car (New to him -A 2001 Nissan, his graduation present) is eating up all his money. Sub-woofers and tinted glass!!

He did finally decide that he wanted to do what was needed to become an Eagle Scout. I was of course and am of course very proud.

I'm really thankful to Scouting that the program provided him with such a great group of kids to hang out with.

They knew how to have fun, many of the adults knew how to help them know how to have fun and provided opportunities and challenges that kept them busy and active.

They either didn't have time or just weren't interested in drinking alcohol, doing drugs. The next big activity that was coming up didn't leave a lot of extra cash for things like cigarettes -Even with Dad paying half.

I of course can't tell what role Scouts and Scouting has had in making him the young man that he is.

I do know that Scouts and Scouting has made him at times made him think, he has had to make choices. Not just follow rules, but do the right thing because he felt it was the thing to do.

He isn't the "Technical" Scout that his old man is.

Knots are not for him!!

 

"what have you seen?

Over the years I have seen a Lad who smiles a lot, laughs a lot, is willing to make fun of himself and laugh at himself.

He has a great sense of justice. He cares about others. He is becoming almost as good as I am at telling "Scouting War Stories"

The time he has spent (and continues to spend) has been a very happy time.

As parents isn't having happy kids who grow up to be happy adults our goal?

Eamonn.

(Yes I'm proud of my Kid, my Scout and I love him so very dearly.)

 

 

[Troop185]

I too had a lump in my throat when my son, David, "cross over" into Boy Scouts. His 1986 Webelos group, which I was the leader of, was the first group to join the Boy Scouts in March, after the Blue and Gold, instead of at the end of the school year. Webelos was a one year program back then. In Webelos we had had a lot of fun, going on as many field trips as we had regular den meetings.

 

"Do you guys want to work on anymore Webelos activities badges, or do you want to join the Boy Scouts?"

 

"We want to join the Boy Scouts!"

 

And so they join the Boy Scouts and drove everyone crazy with, "Will you sign me off on this?" His group was really into camping and advancement. Every campout had a big Capture the Flag game in the evenings. Their teams were established far before each campout. One team got short way radios to talk to each other. David constructed a radio jammer to cut off their communications. David was always engineering different things. He always had string tie across the top of the inside of his tent so he could pull his flashlight across the tent on a pulley at night.

 

We took our first wilderness trip to Ontario when David was 11. After meeting different characters out in the wilderness, David told me "They always tell you not to talk to strangers. But they are the most interesting people!"

 

When he was 12, he was paddling in the back of a canoe with his buddy on a huge lake in Northern Ontario. This is when I realized he was going to be a success in life. The wind was really blowing in on us. If you stopped paddling, you went backward fast. It started raining, and you could not stop paddling to put on your rain jacket, or you were going backwards. The wind was blowing so hard, the person in the back of the canoe could not hear what the person in the front was saying. David had tears in his eyes from paddling so hard with only an 11 year old helping him, but he never quit. I knew then, he had the perseverance to go with his intelligence. Larter in that summer of his 12 year, David met with the DNR and the Coast Guard to plan his Eagle Project for the following summer.

 

David became a 14 year Eagle. In high school he became a National Merit Scholar and got a full ride to college. David love theater and as a freshmen in college, volunteer to work behind stage. Instead, they hired him as a Master Sound Tech. Two years later, he gave up this job to become the only undergraduate to work with medical students in research and doing operations on rats. He became the Supreme Court Justice of his Student Court. He had a faculty parking sticker, his own office, and knew every girl on campus.

 

David undergraduate degree was in Chemical Eng. He went on to medical school at the University of Michigan where he met his wife. Today, he has a great family, and is an ER doctor. I take all the credit since I taught him First Aid Merit Badge!

[mtm25653]

My son got home Sunday from working at a living history program at scout camp. He also was crew chief for his troop's trip to Philmont. I asked him today if he had a good summer, and he said yes, but not as good as last year. He said hiking on the Appalachian Trail with his brother was even better.