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Scouting Corner – Year of Celebration

By Thomas McDermott
Scout Executive, Illiowa Council
Boy Scouts of America

Scouts put the OUTING in SCOUTING

We are fast approaching the end of our Year of Celebration. Here in Illowa Council, we have one young man that knows how to really celebrate this year. Zac Greve, an Eagle Scout from Troop 82 in Bettendorf, has earned all available merit badges. That is a total of 129. Congratulations to you Zac!

November is a month to give thanks and to express citizenship. I personally give thanks that I can be involved in a program that teaches good citizenship. The Boy Scouts of America is one of the nation’s largest and most prominent values-based youth development organizations. The BSA provides a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops personal fitness.

Continuing with our countdown to…
100 Things You Didn’t Know About Scouting

20. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt requested the Boy Scouts’ service in collecting 1.8 million items of clothing, household furnishings, foodstuffs, and supplies for victims of the Great Depression.

19. In 1920, the BSA sent 301 Scouts to the inaugural world Scout jamboree in England, where they joined Scouts from 33 other countries. The American Scouts represented all 48 states plus the territory of Hawaii.

18. On February 8, 1910, William D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America. He personally donated $1,000 per month to keep the organization afloat—on the condition that boys of all races and creeds be admitted.

17. At age 12, Seattle Mariners Chairman and CEO Howard Lincoln posed for Norman Rockwell’s painting The Scoutmaster.

16. By the BSA’s centennial in February 2010, more than 1.2 billion Boys’ Life magazines will have been printed.

15. After eating candy when he had promised not to, a repentant Howard Hughes returned his Buckskin Badge to Daniel Carter Beard with a note that read, “With love, from Howard.”

14. The BSA sells 2.3 million merit badges—one for each person in the state of Utah—every year.

13. The Cub Scout sign (the index and middle fingers extended in a V shape) symbolizes the ears of an alert wolf. It replaced the Indian “how” sign, which looked too much like the Nazi salute.

12. Scouts collected more than 65 million containers of food during the first Scouting for Food drive in 1988.

11. Three important Eagle Scouts all have names beginning with “A.” The first Eagle Scout is Arthur Eldred (1912) of Long Island, New York; the 1 millionth Eagle (1982) is Alexander Holsinger of Normal, Illinois; and the 2 millionth Eagle (2009) is Anthony Thomas of Lakeville, Minnesota.