ALUMNI ALIVE!
Philmont Staffers Talk About the Ute Park Fire
Newsletter for Alumni and Friends WINTER 2019
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VE VI t, R U ou
S Sc TOEagleg. 10)
W ing ! (P HOtstandewart
N u St ARith O reek E L W C
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
2 Message From the Director
4 Check Out the New Scouting Alumni Directory
6 How These Scouts Pulled Off a Christmas Miracle
7 About Membership in the Order of the Arrow
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Can You See the Difference? Scouts Then and Now
Hear How This Man Researches Bald Eagles
A Message From The Director For over a century, Scouting has thrived and provided a premier program for youth leadership development in our country. Scouting’s journey for continued success and growth has required perseverance and clarity of vision. In recent decades, America’s youth have faced new demands for their time and attention. The family unit has shifted and technology has supplanted baseball mitts in the hands of boys. The future of the next generation is less clear. How will Scouting respond to the challenges facing today’s youth? Will Scouting continue to provide our nation’s future leaders? These questions are on the hearts and minds of all Scouters. The Boy Scouts of America Scouting Alumni & Friends (SAF) exists to help secure the future of Scouting. For years, the SAF has worked with councils and alumni to nurture the culture of Scouting. Connecting alumni’s passions and resources with Scouting is the key to a vibrant future. Fiscal security and an abundance of quality leaders enables local councils to dream big and create innovative ways to engage today’s youth. We continue to invest resources to provide support to help local councils and alumni both connect and reconnect. The SAF is honored to play an active role in the future of Scouting. Check out one way that both alumni and local councils can stay connected. The Scouting Alumni Network—a directory designed to connect Scouting alumni and broadcast the latest news in Scouting—was created with the potential to be more robust over the long term. For instance, it does not just include NESA members, but brings together records from NESA, SAF, and other Scouting–affiliated groups. It also includes updated information from the most recent Eagle Scout directory project. This one database will make it easier for alumni to find each other and keep their records up-to-date, while improving local councils’ ability to engage with people who are committed to advancing the cause of Scouting. During the recent Eagle Scout directory project (now underway), an overwhelming number of Eagle Scouts asked NESA to provide an online option for Eagle Scout alumni to keep their information current. The new Scouting Alumni Network provides Eagle Scouts that ability. In addition, local councils often reach out to the National Service Center for information on alumni who’ve moved into their service areas. With this database, Eagle Scouts will be able to update their information as it changes, and councils will be able to access that information in real time. We have created a tutorial for Scouting alumni to use in conjunction with the Scouting Alumni website (www.scoutingalumni.org) that will help familiarize you with the Scouting Alumni Network. You may view it below or at https://youtu.be/l50HEIphn2o.
Once a Scout, Always a Scout,
Dustin Farris Director, Scouting Alumni and Friends
ALUMNI NEWS How Legacy Society Donations Make a Difference As a supporter of the BSA, you can join Scouting Alumni and Friends at one of four membership levels, ranging from the free Hiker level to the $540/year Trailblazer level. If you want to do even more, you can join the Scouting Alumni and Friends Legacy Society for a one-time gift of $1,000. (The society is open to any currently registered youth or adult Scouter who has been recognized as a James E. West Fellow.) Legacy Society donations go directly to the Scouting Alumni and Friends Endowment, ensuring that your gift will continue making a difference far beyond the current calendar year. But what exactly does the endowment support? One major initiative is the Scouting Alumni and Friends grant program, which offers local councils cash to fund activities and programs that strengthen their alumni outreach. Each year, Scouting Alumni and Friends makes up to eight recruitment grants ($500 each maximum) and up to four innovation grants ($2,000 each maximum). “People may be alumni of the Boy Scouts of America, but we know their real loyalty is to their local troop, camp, council or Order of the Arrow lodge,” says Alumni Director Dustin Farris. “That’s why we’re committed to using dollars we raise nationally to strengthen local alumni-engagement efforts.” In 2018, Old North State Council in Greensboro, N.C., received a $500 recruitment grant and used it to support an alumni event in conjunction with Cherokee Scout Reservation’s 50th anniversary. On the Saturday between camp sessions, alumni were invited to come out for a day of fun and fellowship. Camp staff members gave up their day off to keep the most popular program areas open, and the day ended with a banquet and campfire. According to Scout Executive Ed Martin, the event let attendees relive their youth and reconnect with old friends. “There were plenty of opportunities to find a shade tree and reminisce over an ice cream cone,” he says. The council raised awareness via social media and word of mouth with hopes of attracting 100 people. In the end, double that number attended either the day program or the evening banquet, and more than 150 attended both and stayed through the closing campfire. “We used social media primarily and then relied on a lot of our current friends to reach out to their friends 3
who had been disconnected,” Martin says. “Because of the depth of our Camping Committee, they were able to create a Facebook presence and then share it with people in their own personal networks.” One of the people reached by the council’s grassroots marketing campaign was a former Cherokee Scout Reservation camp director who hadn’t been to the property in over 30 years. According to Martin, who had not met the man before, he’d gotten busy raising a family and running a business and had just drifted away from Scouting. “Nobody’s intending that to happen, but life happens,” Martin says. “We’re trying to do a better job of engaging folks sooner.” But late is better than never. As a result of the alumni event, that old camp director made a substantial donation to the council, spoke at the council’s Eagle reunion breakfast this fall, and wants to get involved with future capital projects. “He wants to be part of our future,” Martin says. “He drank the KoolAid again; he feels like he’s a Scouter all over again.” Martin says the council learned a lot from the alumni event. One key lesson: events at camp are more attractive than nonScouting events — even though Cherokee Scout Reservation is more than an hour’s drive from the council’s headquarters. Another lesson: word of mouth works better than advertising. “That’s what really grew attendance,” he says. “We did a lot of email promotion, but Facebook was primarily our tool to drive attendance.” It helped that the camp was celebrating its golden anniversary, but Martin isn’t waiting for another excuse like that. “We know we can do more, and we need to. We have got to reach out to our alumni to be successful long term here in our council. We’ve got a lot of friends we haven’t tapped into,” he says. For more information on the Scouting Alumni and Friends Legacy Society and the council grant program, visit www. scoutingalumni.org.
Looking Ahead to the New Alumni Directory When life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade — or, in Scouting circles, lemon-flavored bug juice! Scouting Alumni and Friends was given some lemons in 2018 when database vendor Blackbaud announced plans to shut down its Sphere service technology platform, which the BSA’s alumni group has long used, on December 31. “Sphere is sunsetting at the end of the year, and we’ve been working feverishly since the announcement to get a replacement for that,” says Associate Director Ryan Larson. While the BSA could have gone with another Blackbaud product, or with a solution from another vendor, officials decided instead to bring the database in-house, building a new directory that will work hand-in-hand with Scouting’s main database. “The silver lining to this is that we will have greater integration with the existing systems of the BSA,” Larson says. “You will no longer have to remember a Blackbaud username and password. Instead, you’ll be able to use your My.Scouting username, and the system will know who you are and will be able to assign you the correct roles and permissions.” Of course, that’s a bit easier said than done, as any computer programmer can attest. The current database includes some three million records, and the data needed to be scrubbed before being moved. That process, along with the time required to build custom capabilities, means the new directory will roll out in phases, starting in the first quarter of 2019.
But Larson has even bigger plans for down the road. For example, he wants to add an “in-mail” feature like LinkedIn offers to let alumni connect with each other without initially sharing email addresses or other contact information. There will also be the ability to create greater integration with Scoutbook, the BSA’s advancement-tracking app, so alumni can see their entire list of Scouting achievements well into adulthood. Larson praised Vijay Challa, the BSA’s chief technology officer, for his support of the new database system. “He’s totally caught the vision of it,” he says. “He’s really supported what we are trying to do to ensure alumni remain engaged.” Challa, meanwhile, explained why the project was important to his team. “Our goal is to create one record of truth and no longer have multiple records that don’t connect to one another,” he says. “In addition, we have been able to apply what we have learned with the STEM Scouts and the new My.Scouting online registration system to this project and vice versa.” “We’ll continue to add functionality based on what alumni say they want,” Larson says. “No longer will we be limited by what a vendor chooses to provide. That’s a big deal.”
The first priority is to allow councils to download lists of their alumni, lists that can be sorted and manipulated for mailings and outreach. The second priority is to make it easy for alumni to join not just Scouting Alumni and Friends but also their local council alumni groups. “If your council has a camp alumni association, it too could reside on our platform and run its membership there,” Larson said. “An alumnus could pay for his membership through our site, and the fee would flow automatically to the local council.” (That’s a powerful capability for grassroots alumni groups that don’t have the resources to build or buy database solutions.) Integration with the BSA’s main database will also reduce redundancy and incorrect records. Update your address in one place, for example, and it will automatically be updated everywhere else. 4
HAPPENINGS How Scouting Alumni Are Helping Transition LDS Scout Units December 31, 2019 will mark more than the end of a year. It will mark the end of an era. On that date, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — aka the LDS church — will stop chartering Scouting units, something it’s been doing since 1913. (It’s traditionally been the BSA’s largest chartered partner in terms of number of units.) The decision, announced in a joint statement with the BSA this past May, stems from the church’s desire to have a single youth program for the millions of children and youth it serves across the globe, most of whom don’t live in the United States. Not surprisingly, the news initially distressed many in the Scouting community, especially those who are both Scouters and LDS members. One of them was Mark Francis, the BSA’s director of LDS-BSA relations. “I really struggled for some time until I came to realize that Scouting is not going away; it is just no longer going to be partnered through my own church,” he says. “When I came to that realization, it was a burden lifted, and I realized there is a pathway forward, and it’s a great pathway.” It’s also a pathway that BSA alumni can help make smooth. In the months since the announcement, Francis and his colleagues have begun mobilizing an army of LDS Scouters to help LDSsponsored units transition to other chartered organizations as the end of 2019 approaches. (It’s important to note that the joint announcement in May said the church “continues to support the goals and values reflected in the Scout Oath and Scout Law and expresses its profound desire for Scouting’s continuing and growing success in the years ahead.”) Francis’ plan is simple: 1) recruit a Scouting ambassador for each LDS ward (congregation) and encourage him or her to join Scouting Alumni and Friends; 2) have each Scouting ambassador extend invitations to other current and past Scouters in the ward; 3) invite those alumni to take concrete action, whether by signing up as a unit leader, joining a unit committee or serving as a district-level volunteer. Francis’ plan builds on what’s already happening in the Utah National Parks Council, headquartered in Orem, Utah. There, Director of Field Service Clint Lawton is working to recruit a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout ambassador for each of the 1,759 wards in the council, for a total
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of more than 3,500 volunteers. He’s already recruited hundreds. “Right now, I have 700 Scouting ambassadors recruited, signed up and ready to go,” he says. “We’re getting there, but we’re not moving as fast as I’d like.” Lawton and a fellow church member are the ambassadors for their own ward, and they’ve seen how easy the transition to new chartered organizations can be. They’ve lined up a local elementary school as their new chartered organization and have notified parents of the coming change. “We have 97 in the troop and 68 in the pack,” he says. “And almost all of them said, ‘If you guys are the guys, we want to be involved.’” Lawton’s effort also shows the potential for reengaging alumni who’ve left the program. In December, he recruited an ambassador who is an Eagle Scout and has six Eagle Scout sons. The man had served as Scoutmaster in his ward for 13 years but had then been called to be a Sunday school teacher. (LDS members are called to specific roles in the church rather than volunteering.) “He said, ‘I’d love to do Scouting; that was my life,’” Lawton recalls. “It brought him to tears to think he was still needed in Scouting.” According to Bry Davis, vice-president of alumni for the Trapper Trails Council in Ogden, Utah, there are plenty more alumni like that man in LDS congregations. “I estimate 75 to 85 percent of all adult males have been in some adult Scouting position in their tenure in that ward,” he says. “True, not all of them are Scouters and will want to get involved in the program, but many are.” Francis acknowledges that much remains to be done over the next year. “I’m confident that we’ll come out stronger on the other end,” he says. “It make take us a couple of years, but we will be a stronger organization as we move forward.” For more information about the Utah National Parks Council’s Scouting ambassador program, visit www. utahscouts.org/ambassador. To learn about the upcoming Vision 2020 conference at Philmont Scout Ranch, which focuses on the transition of LDS units, visit https:// www.philmontscoutranch.org/PTC/conferencesO/ Vision2020ANewPhilmontOpportunityForLDSFamilies/.
Scouts Perform a Christmas Miracle for Hurricane Victims Three months after Hurricane Florence ravaged the North Carolina coast, Santa Claus showed up early in several hardhit coastal counties. But instead of a bright red suit, the jolly old elf was wearing a Scout uniform. On Saturday, Dec. 15, storm victims in five counties received 1,803 Credit: Doug Brown Christmas gifts, 8,925 school supply items, and 1,437 sets of socks and underwear, all donated by Scouts and Scouters in 10 local BSA councils across the eastern United States. (Local Scouts were on hand to sort and organize the donations.) One parent spoke for many, saying, “My two boys will now have a wonderful Christmas. If it weren’t for this, we would have no Christmas.” The timing couldn’t have been better. Some families had exhausted their FEMA housing allowances and were more focused on putting a roof over their heads than on putting presents under their Christmas trees. Others were finding little reason to celebrate in communities still awash in storm debris. “There are still communities that have debris piled up five feet high all down the road,” says Doug Brown, Scout executive of the East Carolina Council. “Mattresses, chest of drawers, refrigerators, washers, dryers, clothes, insulation, hardwood flooring: you name it and it is just piled up.” But making Christmas happen was just part of what occurred on Dec. 15. The UPS Freight trucks that delivered all the donations also delivered 22,442 library books and 20 cases of copy paper that were donated to damaged schools. A pair of schools that had lost 5,000 books ended up with 8,900 replacements. Schools that had exhausted their supply budgets were able to copy handouts again. (One man told Brown that his wife,
a teacher, had just received an email from her school saying, “We’re out of money for school supplies; if you want to make copies, you need to bring your own paper,”) The mammoth project started even before the floodwaters retreated, when Brown began fielding calls from colleagues asking how they could support local relief efforts. As he talked with local officials, United Way leaders, and school superintendents, he decided to focus on a handful of items that would especially benefit children and families. He then gave each participating council an assignment: library books from Chicago, Christmas presents from Louisville, etc. Councils publicized the project through social media, and thousands of Scouts responded by going door to door or collecting donations at pack meetings and troop courts of honor. (The councils that participated are headquartered in Chicago, Ill.; Louisville, Ky.; Appleton, Wisc.; Nashville, Knoxville and Johnson City, Tenn.; Fort Smith and Little Rock, Ark.; and Raleigh and Kinston, N.C.) Before long, things started to get out of hand. Domtar Corporation in Chicago donated five pallets of paper in honor of workers at their Plymouth, N.C., facility, which was heavily damaged by the storm. SCARCE, a book rescue group in Illinois, donated nearly 11,000 library books, while the Lowe’s Home Improvement distribution center near Nashville donated almost 6,000 more. A Scouter who Brown was meeting with on another topic handed him a check for $1,000 to cover expenses. When he heard there were no expenses — UPS Freight covered shipping costs, and the UPS Store and Bunzl Retail Services donated boxes and pallets — the man told Brown to buy more supplies. So the Scout executive spent the evening before distribution day buying 758 sets of socks and underwear (and five teddy bears). To Brown, the project was simply a large-scale demonstration of what Scouts do every day. “I know people in eastern North Carolina appreciate what Scouting teaches young people: responsibility, empathy, religious values, respect for others,” he says. “Here’s a tangible way they can see those things that we’re teaching Scouts. It just speaks volumes about the value of Scouting.”
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Program More in the Order: Expanding Membership in the OA The Order of the Arrow has long been known as Scouting’s National Honor Society, but a more accurate term might have been Boy Scouting’s National Honor Society. For its entire 103year history, the OA has only admitted youth members who were Boy Scouts, sometimes to the consternation of Venturers and Sea Scouts who wanted to join. The policy also created a situation where adult leaders in those programs (male and female alike) could join the OA while youth members couldn’t, since adults must meet different requirements to be considered for membership. Beginning on February 1 — the day Boy Scouting becomes Scouts BSA — the situation will change. For the first time, Venturers and Sea Scouts will be eligible for membership, as will members of girl troops. While that may sound like a drastic change, it will only take a simple change to the membership requirements. Historically, to be considered for membership, a youth had to be a Boy Scout, hold at least the First Class rank, and have experienced 15 nights of Scout camping within the past two years, including one long-term camp of at least five consecutive nights. Going forward, the camping requirement will remain in place, while the advancement requirement will expand to include the Venturing Discovery Award and the Sea Scout Ordinary rank — rough equivalents of the First Class rank in those programs. In announcing the new policy, the OA emphasized what’s changing and what’s not: “Our commitment to our unchanging mission and purpose remains steadfast, and we are excited to welcome others who share that commitment by extending membership in Scouting’s National Honor Society to participants of all older youth programs. We look forward to having female members in 2019 and know that, like all of our OA members, they will serve as role models and inspirations to others — both within the Boy Scouts of America and beyond.” If you do the math, you may wonder how any girls could rack up enough nights of camping to be eligible for OA membership in 2019. The answer is they actually don’t have to. Candidates who are current Venturers or Sea Scouts will be able to retroactively count camping that takes place before February, meaning they could be eligible for OA membership when unit elections are held in the spring or summer. 7
That’s not the only exception the BSA is making to policies as Scouts BSA rolls out. Older girls (and boys) who join troops in 2019 won’t have enough time to reach the Eagle Scout rank before they turn 18, the deadline for earning the award. Therefore, these members may apply for time extensions. The one-time-only policy applies to youth who are at least 16 years of age but not yet 18 on February 1 and who register with Scouts BSA during 2019. They must request an extension from the National Council, which has sole discretion to grant extensions, and they may not be exempted from any badge requirements. (It’s worth noting that the BSA has long offered time extensions in rare cases, such as when an older Scout suffers a disabling injury or family emergency. In addition, youth members with severe and permanent mental or physical disabilities may continue to work on Scout advancement after they have turned 18.) Despite the changes in the BSA’s programs, one thing is not changing: the BSA’s mission to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law. And the need is great. As Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh noted in a recent blog post, more than 70 million American children are not involved in any character-building youth program. “Our country needs and deserves more young people focused on the values that serve as the bedrock of our movement: duty to God and country, with a desire to help other people at all times,” he wrote. “We remain committed to providing young people with the programs to fulfill that need.”
A Scout Is Resilient: Philmont Staffers and the Ute Park Fire Half an hour into the trek that would complete her training as a Philmont Ranger, Meghan Ciupak and her fellow trainees saw flames over a nearby ridge and realized they needed to turn back. That same day, May 31, 2018, commissary clerk Noah Miller saw the flames from another perspective as he and a friend drove back to Philmont Scout Ranch from a day off in nearby Taos, N.M. Within hours, everyone at Philmont could see the flames of what became known as the Ute Park Fire, as could Scouts and Scouters across the country who would watch the fire’s rapid progress via social media. What those far-flung Scouts and Scouters couldn’t see as
clearly was the massive effort to salvage the summer for the tens of thousands of participants whose Philmont treks would be canceled in the coming days. (Initially, Philmont officials canceled the first half of the season, but were forced to cancel the entire season as the fire grew to more than 36,000 acres, most of them on Philmont property.) The effort demonstrated that the Philmont Ranger’s motto — “Scramble, Be Flexible” — applies to everyone in the Boy Scouts of America. It also showed that “A Scout is resilient” might be a good addendum to the Scout Law. Here are the stories of three Philmont staffers.
Meghan Ciupak Growing up in Oklahoma City with a father and brother who’d both been to Philmont, Meghan Ciupak knew all about the BSA and its iconic New Mexico high adventure base. She joined a Venturing crew at her high school and completed her own Philmont trek with that crew the summer before college. Last spring, she snagged a job as a Ranger, which meant she would be spending the summer preparing crews to head into the backcountry and accompanying them for the first couple of days of their treks. Mother Nature had other plans, however, and Ciupak evacuated to the fairgrounds in nearby Springer with the rest of the 1,100-strong seasonal staff. Staff members continued their training there, while enjoying a “human rodeo” and performances by various backcountry staffs. When it became clear that no crews would be venturing into the backcountry, Philmont officials began working with other high adventure bases and council camps to accommodate displaced crews — and to provide those facilities with extra staff members. Ciupak signed up to serve as a guide with Denver Area Council’s Tahosa High Adventure Base. “They originally had three trek guides, and we added another three,” she says. “And we were out almost every week; I think I had only one week off the whole summer.”
state law. When she wasn’t guiding, she helped drive crews to shooting ranges, climbing venues, and rafting trips, which partially made up for the backcountry programs they were missing at Philmont. “Everybody was very thankful for the Scouting community as a whole,” she says. “Being able to go to those different camps enables everyone to see the greater Scouting mission, where everybody helps each other out.”
Credit: Meghan Ciupak
Ciupak guided crews from Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa and Texas, staying with them for their entire treks, as is required by 8
Noah Miller
Credit: Noah Miller
A Scout and Venturer from Wheaton, Ill., Noah Miller had previously done two Philmont treks — and he’d heard plenty of Philmont stories from his dad, a former Philmont staffer. His staff assignment at Philmont was as a commissary clerk, which would mean supplying crews with food packs, both at base camp and at several backcountry commissaries. Once the fire broke out, h o w e v e r, h e a n d
other commissary staffers ended up feeding the seasonal staff at the Springer fairgrounds. “When the fire started, we were on high alert because we were the one department that could feed the whole entire staff if we had to move,” he says. When the season was canceled, Miller worked several weeks on timber stand improvement — cutting undergrowth to reduce fire risk — and deferred maintenance projects around base camp. He then transferred to Northern Tier, the BSA’s high adventure program in the Boundary Waters along the Minnesota-Canada border. There he fulfilled his original mission as a commissary clerk and became immersed in Northern Tier’s rich culture. (The program began in 1923 with canoe trips organized by the council in Hibbing, Minn.) Miller and other displaced staffers ended up there in large part due to the close working relationships between the various high adventure bases. Northern Tier’s General Manager John Van Dreese once worked at Philmont, while Philmont’s Associate Director of Program Keith Nelson had served in an equivalent position at Northern Tier the two previous seasons.
Alex Klausing Alex Klausing, who had replaced Nelson at Northern Tier (and who has since moved to a position in the Three Fires Council), says Northern Tier actually chartered a bus to transport 44 Philmont staffers the 1,300 miles from Cimarron, N.M., to Ely, Minn. “[When working with the National Council] you have some more resources available at your fingertips and a little bit bigger budgets, so you can absorb some bigger things,” he says. Most of the displaced staffers served as Interpreters, the Northern Tier equivalent of Philmont Rangers. Northern Tier was somewhat short-staffed going into the season, so the influx of staffers was a godsend. Klausing, who has worked for Philmont, Northern Tier, and two local councils, says what happened this summer was indicative of how Scouting operates all the time. “Scouting has taught me to be open and work well with others and things like that,” he says. “I think this experience definitely reinforced that. It was one of those rare cases where you get to see it in its raw form.”
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Credit: Meghan Ciupak
Survival Hacks with
Cr///ek Stewart here! I am extremely excited to be a contributor to Alumni Alive and share some more of my favorite survival hacks! My first hack will help rid you of a blood-thirsty pest in no time. My second will help protect your feet if you find yourself without shoes. Enjoy! And remember, it’s not IF but WHEN.
A Not-So-Straw(e)ful Tick Puller Ticks are nasty critters and the bane of many a woodsman. The best way to rid yourself of ticks is to pinch the head with tweezers and pull upward with steady, even pressure. In the absence of suitable tweezers, you can make a tick puller from a plastic drinking straw. Using a knife or scissors, cut an eye-shaped hole toward the end of the straw large enough to fit over the tick’s body. The outside tip of the eye cut (the side closest to the edge of the straw) should come to a very fine point. Slide the eye cut over the tick and pull from the side, wedging the tick’s head and neck in the corner of this fine-cut point. Steadily pull until the tick detaches, and then wash the affected area with soap and water.
Scrap Rubber Huaraches The Tarahumara people of Mexico are world renowned for their ability to run long distances. What’s even more interesting is that they often run these distances in improvised minimalist sandals called huaraches. You can make huaraches from a piece of cord and scrap rubber. First, trace your foot on the rubber and make a mark between your big toe and second toe where the toe thong will go. Next, cut the traced soles from the rubber and punch a hole on each side just near the back of the arch of your foot. Then, punch another one on your mark for the toe thong. Cut a 6’ length of cord and feed it through the toe thong hole with a knot on the other end to hold it in place. Feed the working end through the outside hole, around your heel, through the other hole, around the string on the top of your foot, and then retrace the lashing to lace the sandal in place.
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Scouts: Then and Now If we look at photos from those two phases of life, the visible changes will be obvious. The non-visible changes — more confidence, better character, stronger leadership skills — are there, too. This life-changing power of Scouting inspired Scouts Then and Now, a Bryan on Scouting (blog.scoutingmagazine.org/) blog series. The premise is simple. He shares two photos of the same Scout or Venturer: once in their early Scouting years, and again in their later Scouting years. We are continuing his project here in AlumniAlive!
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Dane from Iowa
Eddie from Wisconsin
Kyle and Jake from Ohio
Nathan from Nebraska
We are excited to see our alumni and friends as they have progressed in Scouting! If you would like to feature your young Scout, or even yourself, in Bryan on Scouting’s blog, here’s how. Send two photos of your Scout(s) or yourself: one in their early years and one in their later years - and include their name and home state. The photos will be combined as a side-byside, so no need to fret about that. Send the images as attachments in an email to scoutingmag@gmail.com with the subject line “Scouts Then and Now.”
Nathan from Texas
Ryan from Pennsylvania
Pack 204 from Coastal Georgia
Tim, Zach, and Max from Colorado
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Profiles Tim Duffy, Folklorist and Friend to Musicians Tim Duffy got his love for music from his father, who brought home hundreds of new albums each year, everything from Bach to Bob Dylan to B.B. King. He got his love for service from his Scout leaders, who organized quarterly service projects and planned outreach to the poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 1994, Duffy’s two loves came together when Tim Duffy (left) and Captain Luke he and his wife, Denise, Credit: Aaron Greenhood created the Music Maker Relief Foundation. Based in Hillsborough, N.C., the nonprofit organization supports blues and roots-music artists who’ve been all but abandoned by society. His road to Music Maker began after graduating high school in Woodbridge, C.T., when he entered the Appalachian music program at Warren Wilson College. The program required Duffy to spend time every week traveling around the region interviewing folk and blues artists. He quickly learned that many of the artists he met had transcendent talent — and nothing else. “All my friends were dead broke — geniuses, but dead broke,” he says. He carried those experiences with him as he completed his undergraduate degree at Friends World College in Kenya, and his master’s degree in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At UNC, he began searching out all-butforgotten artists. He worked to get them gigs and raised money to help them pay their bills when that wasn’t enough. Folklorists sometimes focus more on the product than the people, but Duffy realized that if you take care of the artists first, their music will be preserved. Music Maker grew gradually. By 2000, both Tim and Denise were able to quit their day jobs and work full time at the organization. Today, Music Maker offers an array of services: 13
the sustenance program, which helps with basic living expenses; the professional development program, which helps artists get their music recorded; and the education program, which connects the public to the artists through concerts and museum exhibits. In its 24 years, Music Maker has made more than 11,000 grants and partnered with 430 artists. More than a million people across America and around the globe have seen Music Maker’s partner artists in concert. One of those artists is bluesman Ironing Board Sam, who was born Samuel Moore in Rock Hill, S.C., in 1939. Sam had regularly headlined with Jimi Hendrix and performed at the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, but was facing obscurity and poverty when Duffy tracked him down in 2000. He was back in Rock Hill, having left New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and was performing at a sports bar. “I immediately moved him to Hillsborough, and we got him an apartment,” Duffy says. “His car was breaking down; we got him a car. He had no teeth; we got him teeth. He had no glasses; we got him glasses.” Perhaps more importantly, Music Maker got Sam new performance clothes and a new keyboard. “These artists love to perform,” Duffy says. “They want a hand up, not a handout.” Through the foundation’s efforts, Sam released three albums, returned to Jazzfest, played the Newport Folk Festival and toured Europe and Australia. A 2015 stroke cut short his second career, but Music Maker continues to support him. In fact, he will make a cameo appearance at Jazzfest next spring, and he’s featured in Duffy’s forthcoming book, Blue Muse: Timothy Duffy’s Southern Photographs, and in a planned exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art. A museum exhibition is light-years away from a Boy Scout meeting, but Duffy sees a connection. One of the skills he most remembers learning is how to tie knots. “That’s all about life, too — how you connect with different people and hold relationships together,” he says.
Bill Bowerman, Bald Eagle Researcher The bald eagle. It’s our national bird and the symbol of the Eagle Scout Award. But it’s also, according to Bill Bowerman, Ph.D., an important sentinel species and key wildlife biomonitor. “Eagles are very sensitive indicators of the health of the environment,” he says. That’s why Bowerman, an Eagle Scout and active Scouting volunteer, has dedicated his career to studying the bird in the wild. Each summer since 1986, he has led teams to Michigan to study young eagles. Traveling to nest sites across the state, the scientists first lower the birds to the ground in bags. They then weigh and measure the birds to determine age and gender, collect a blood sample to test for contaminants like DDT, and pluck a couple of feathers to test for mercury before returning the birds to the nest. They even check the birds’ crops (which can be as large as a grapefruit) to see what they’ve been eating. Over the course of six weeks, they visit 3 to 5 nest sites a day and test up to 150 eagles. When Bowerman was growing up in Munising, Mich., a small town on the shore of Lake Superior, visiting more than 3 to 5 nests in an entire summer might have been difficult. Just a few years after DDT had been banned, eagles were struggling and still on the endangered species list. “In the Upper Peninsula, there were really only three nest sites that were producing young,” Bowerman says. Since then, the bird has made a dramatic recovery and is no longer endangered. When he served on the Northern States Bald Eagle Recovery Team, the goal was to have 1,200 breeding pairs in the 28 states from Maine to Maryland to Missouri to Montana. Today, Michigan alone has over 800 pairs, and Wisconsin and Minnesota have over 2,500 pairs each. Risks remain, however. For example, eagles within 8 kilometers of the Great Lakes show higher levels of PCBs in their tissue and are less productive than birds that nest in more interior regions. Moreover, Bowerman says, “What we’re finding is that the eagles are nesting earlier and earlier each year, most likely an indicator of climate change.”
funding. Eighteen months later, Bowerman’s research was funded, and he was working on his master ’s degree at Northern Michigan University. Two years later, he completed his Ph.D. at Michigan State. When he’s not teaching, doing research, and chairing the University of Maryland’s Department of Environmental Science & Technology, Bowerman serves as vice-president Bill Bowerman of outdoor adventures Credit: University of Maryland for the National Capital Area Council. A chance encounter in that role led to a special connection between his research and the BSA. At one of the council’s “Eagles on the Hill” events, Bowerman met Mike Manyak, M.D., who oversees the NESA World Explorers Program, an ongoing program that sends young Eagle Scouts out on scientific expeditions. Manyak easily convinced Bowerman to host a couple of participants during last summer’s field season, and so Connor Hodges of Scituate, Mass., and Austin Katzer of Plano, Texas, spent two weeks working with Bowerman and his team. “These two young men were amazing,” Bowerman says. “They weren’t afraid of anything.” In fact, Bowerman has already committed to having World Explorer Program participants join his research team next year. “If the quality of the students that applied last year is any indication of what we’ll get next year, I’m all for it,” he says. “They’re great.” And who knows? Perhaps one of those Scouts will follow in Bowerman’s footsteps and continue his research for another three decades.
Bowerman’s work with eagles started when, as an undergraduate at Western Michigan University, he wrote a research proposal. His professor, Richard Brewer, Ph.D., convinced him to go to graduate school and pursue research 14
