{"id":15334,"date":"2020-11-23T12:16:58","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=15334"},"modified":"2020-11-23T12:16:58","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:16:58","slug":"50-years-ago-boy-scout-eagle-scout-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/23\/50-years-ago-boy-scout-eagle-scout-award\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Years Ago (!?!): Boy Scout Eagle Scout Award"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My mother’s radiant smile was a highlight of that evening<\/p><\/div>\n

Fifty years ago today, I received the Eagle badge in Boy Scouts.\u00a0\u00a0 If I had a dollar for every person in subsequent decades who was shocked or appalled that someone like me could have reached Eagle, I could buy several kegs of the best beer in Maryland. Likewise, it would be fun to know how many girls and women I dated over the decades invoked it as mitigating evidence to their parents: “He’s not all bad, y’know. He was an Eagle Scout.”<\/p>\n

I want to express my appreciation to my father, Ken Bovard, who was Scoutmaster for the first two years I was in Troop 52, and to my mother, Mary Ellen Bovard, whose support and nourishment throughout my Scouting years was invaluable. (All those durn patches to sew on – she had a hundred times more patience than I ever did).\u00a0 I also want to thank the other adult leaders in Troop 52 in Front Royal, Virginia – Wendell Hatcher (who was Scoutmaster when I finished the qualifications for Eagle), and assistant scoutmasters Ken Fortune, Walter Duncan, Jr., “Slim” and “Hoss” Feldhauser,\u00a0 Bob Arnold, and other fine guys. I also want to thank the Methodist Church in Front Royal for sponsoring the troop.<\/p>\n

The highlight of the award ceremony was the three minutes I fruitlessly spent trying to close the Eagle Award necklace around the back of my mother’s neck.\u00a0 I was confounded by the durn locket and finally apologized and just handed it to her.\u00a0 I was starting to bulk up at that point and a friend mentioned that I looked like the cartoon character Baby Huey in that uniform.<\/p>\n

The Scouts have taken some wrong turns in recent years, and the systemic coverup of sexual abuse by adult scout leaders is an outrage.\u00a0 I hope the Scouts can survive the surge of lawsuits and reach higher ground in the coming years.<\/p>\n

As I noted in a 2015 USA Today<\/em><\/strong> oped, “The skills I most enjoyed learning in the Scouts \u2013 building fires, camping in winter, shooting white water rapids in a canoe \u2013 involved getting your hands dirty and surviving bumps and bruises. While attending a National Scout Jamboree in Idaho, I also learned how much I dislike marching in step with thousands of other people. Scouting taught me to view minor hardships simply as transaction costs for great adventures<\/strong>.”\u00a0\u00a0 Scouting got me off my ass and out into the woods – a legacy which continues to shape my life.\u00a0 My experiences traveling with a council-wide troop to a Jamboree in Idaho, where I forged my first press pass, probably sowed some seeds of my skepticism towards officialdom, a development which later spur plenty of publicity to conniving federal agencies and politicians. The lessons I learned in Scouting proved invaluable when I spent a summer hitchhiking and camping around Europe in my early 20s.<\/p>\n

Here are the comments on Scouting I made in my last Father’s Day letter to my father,<\/strong><\/a> after he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001: “I appreciate the time you invested and the sacrifices you made for Troop 52. Being a Boy Scout taught me a lot about the value of flexibility and marching on despite the cold, the rain, and the occasional Dutch Oven lashed to the back of my knapsack. Your high spirits and songs during the most inclement weather set a great example for me and many other boys. Learning how physical hardship could be ignored and overcome is a lesson that is worth more than words can say. The trip to the Idaho Jamboree in 1969 \u2013 which I took with encouragement from you \u2013 was an eye-opener that helped breed a hunger to discover what lay beyond the boundaries of Warren County.”<\/p>\n

Here are the USA Today<\/em> columns I have written about how my experience in Scouting helped shape me, for better or worse:<\/p>\n

USA TODAY OPINION, July 28, 2017<\/a><\/div>\n
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Trump’s Boy Scout speech may have set kids on the right path<\/a><\/h1>\n

President Trump telling Boy Scouts that Washington is a \u201csewer” could actually be an antidote to much of what they are taught on following authority.<\/h2>\n
James Bovard<\/div>\n
Opinion columnist<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

\"\"<\/a>Much of the media was shocked and horrified <\/a>by President Trump\u2019s Boy Scout Jamboree speech on Monday<\/a>. Many commentators are talking as if Trump\u2019s raucous, free-wheeling spiel exposed underage children to political pornography. Instead of railing against Hillary Clinton and boasting of his victory in last year\u2019s election, Trump supposedly should have delivered the usual \u201cour wonderful political system\u201d speech.<\/p>\n

Some people will never forgive Trump for telling Scouts that Washington is a \u201csewer.\u201d Actually, that message could be an antidote to much of what Scouts hear. Trump\u2019s speech, insofar as it spurs doubts about political authority, could be far more salutary than prior presidential Jamboree speeches.<\/p>\n

When I attended the 1969 Scout Jamboree in Idaho<\/a>,\u00a0President Richard Nixon sent us a message praising our idealism<\/a>. But the type of idealism that Nixon and the Scouts often glorified was more likely to produce servility than liberty. Before being accepted into the Jamboree troop, I was interviewed by adult Scout leaders in a nearby town. The most memorable question was: \u201cWhat do you think of the Vietnam situation?\u201d Even 12-year-olds had to be screened for dissident tendencies.<\/p>\n