Happy 100 Hundred Years of Service
By Anne Driscoll
Feb. 8, 2009
From Harrison Ford to Neil Armstrong to Barack Obama, some of America’s most well-known celebrities and well-respected leaders have worn a Scout uniform. As the Boy Scouts celebrate 100 years, Tonic takes a look at the history — and values — of an organization that shapes our nation for the better.
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone pledged to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent?
In the past 100 years since the Boy Scouts of America was founded, 112 million boys have raised their right hand to live up to those homespun standards and uphold the Scout Law, earning merit badges and volunteering for service projects ranging from food collection to conservation.
And a significant number of scouts have grown into conscientious adults who continue to contribute in ways, large and small, to the social good.
A century ago today, former president Theodore Roosevelt helped found the Boy Scouts of America and served as its first and only Chief Scout Citizen.
Since then there have been 18 other US presidents involved with scouting in some capacity, including Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy, each of whom spent at least some of their childhood in a Scouts uniform.
No other US youth organization has served as many boys and none can boast such a long roster of luminaries who have, later in life, made such significant impact in politics, public service, commerce, sports, science and entertainment, to name a few.
Today, there are 3 million youth Scout members guided by another 1.1 million adult members involved in volunteer and community service projects, crafting boyhood memories and building a foundation for the men they will become.
Over the years, many notables have attributed their achievements to their association with scouting. Jimmy Stewart, who was a US Air Force Brigadier General, as well as a movie star, was quoted as saying he wouldn’t trade his experiences in Scouting for anything. And just this month, Ed Begley told Tonic that his green roots can be traced to a love of nature that sprouted when he was a scout.
Other well-known actors have been scouts, too, like Ashton Kutcher, Richard Gere and Henry Fonda. Harrison Ford taught Reptile Study as a Life Scout and made movie history when he played the fictional Life Scout Indiana Jones. Jerry Mathers, known as “The Beaver” in that boy-next-door ’60s TV show Leave it to Beaver was a Cub Scout in California.
In 2007, he recalled his audition to a reporter in Parade Magazine, saying, “I had just joined the Cub Scouts, and I had my first Cub Scout meeting and didn’t want to miss it. My mom told me to wear my uniform to the audition and she would drive me to Cub Scouts right after it. I went in and the producers said, ‘Why are you so fidgety, Jerry?’
And I said, ‘I don’t want to be here because I have a Cub Scout meeting.’ My mom said that probably wasn’t the best thing to tell them! That night the producers called and said I had the part. And the reason they picked me was that they’d rather have a child that wanted to go to a Cub Scout meeting than to be an actor.”
Athletes on every field, court or track have been scouts including Bruce Jenner in track and field, Mark Spitz in swimming, Bill Bradley in basketball, and Steve Young in football. Baseball great Hank Aaron, for example, was quoted as saying that the greatest positive influence in his life was his involvement in scouting.
And scouting has launched other high achievers whether they reach the literal heavens (astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn), the highest bench of law (US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer) or the heights of commerce (Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton).
Surprisingly long before he was making margaritas or singing about them, Jimmy Buffett was earning merit badges. Walter Cronkite practiced reciting the Boy Scout pledge years before he was delivering the nation’s nightly news. Bill Gates was doing volunteer service work as a Life Scout well before he made billions with Microsoft and then created a foundation to give much of it away to charity.
Director Michael Moore first began his filmmaking career with his Eagle Scout project in 1970 as a high school sophomore when he photographed polluted areas in his hometown of Davison. Similarly, Steven Spielberg was an Eagle Scout who made a movie of his Scout troop while working on his photography merit badge.
He ultimately helped to design the requirements for the Cinematography Merit Badge for Eagle Scouts.
The Boy Scouts of America, which was incorporated on February 8, 1910 and chartered by Congress in 1916, has never wavered from its original purpose, which is to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, promote citizenship and develop personal fitness. But since its inception, the organization has grown and changed.
It now offers a Tiger Cub program for boys in first grade and offers various levels of scouting programs all the way to Ventures for young men up to age 20. And since Arthur Eldred was recognized as the very first Eagle Scout in 1912 and Anthony Thomas of Lakeville, Minn., became the 2 millionth Eagles in 2009, an average of 5 percent of all Boy Scouts earn that most revered highest rank in scouting, including 52,025 since 2008.
In the coming months, there are a number of celebrations planned to observe the centennial of scouting. The most ambitious is scheduled for July 31 at 8 p.m. EST when — for the first time in the history of the Boy Scouts of America — the entire scouting community is encouraged to take part in a special nationwide broadcast, A Shining Light Across America, that will air festivities at the 100th Anniversary National Scout Jamboree in Fort AP Hill, Va., to communities across the country via satellite and a webcast.
Whether it’s today, on July 31, or at any other point during this centennial year of Scouting, we here at Tonic hope you’ll take a moment to think about, thank, and support the Boy Scouts in your own community.
After all, your support of their efforts today will help shape the men they will all become tomorrow.
Source: Tonic
Editor’s Note: Logo courtesy of Boy Scouts of America and photo by a la Corey via Flicker
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