Newsletter for Scouting

Alumni association Affiliates

alumnialive!

What’s Inside

Director’s Message ........................2

Alumni News ........................................4

Happenings .............................................6

Program ..................................................8

Profiles ......................................................10

spring2015

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The Boy Scouts of America has come a long way in 105 years. Keeping our promise to the youth of America has necessitated a careful balance between maintaining our time-tested values and remaining relevant by teaching skills that will prepare young people to be good citizens and strong leaders in the 21st century.

There have been some changes over the years in Scouting. New merit badges have been added, and some have been dropped. There have been several handbooks produced and some changes with the uniform. For most of us, the memories of our formative years tie us to some Scouting program. The memory of a campout, working on a rank requirement, or getting advice from a Scout leader has stuck with us throughout our lives. However long ago the memories were made or whatever form they took, our kinship with Scouting is often linked to one of the BSA’s well-established affinity groups.

Affinity groups include NESA, Alpha Phi Omega, Order of the Arrow, Philmont Staff Association, Sea Scouts, and Sea Base Alumni and Friends. While each of these groups has its own central focus, there is no unifying body that synchronizes the talent and momentum borne out of these otherwise discrete organizations. To date, the single unifying element of these groups has been support of the BSA and its

A Message From the Director

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programs, yet little collaboration has taken place between them. Recognizing the natural overlap that exists, the Scouting Alumni Association, which seeks to serve as a coordinating (not a controlling) body, would like to establish communication and identify synergies among the various BSA affinity groups.

To further that end, the SAA is exploring a construct in which BSA affinity groups can collaborate, share resources, and contribute more effectively to the BSA and its various constituents. To begin this process, we have organized a roundtable discussion at the BSA’s National Annual Meeting in May. We will keep you updated on our progress.

Pathfinder affiliates of the Scouting Alumni Association now receive Scouting magazine as an added benefit!

Dustin FarrisDirector, Scouting Alumni Association

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First Council Alumni of the Year Awards Are PresentedWhat do you give the Scouting alumnus who has everything? That is a question faced by BSA local councils across the country, where lifelong volunteers have received every award for which they are eligible, including the Silver Beaver, the highest award a local council can confer.

To help councils recognize Scouting alumni who continue to serve Scouting and their communities, the Scouting Alumni Association created the Council Alumnus of the Year Award. Recently, councils at either end of the country presented the first of these awards. The Minsi Trails Council honored Sonny Laudenslager of Orefield, Pennsylvania, a volunteer with more than 70 years of service to Scouting, while the Pacific Harbors Council recognized Ed Zeiger of Puyallup, Washington, whose service to youth in Scouting and education spans more than half a century.

Here’s a brief recap of these volunteers’ anything-but-brief service:

• One of his council’s longest-tenured volunteers, Sonny Laudenslager gave up the chance to become an Eagle Scout when he was asked to help fill in for his Scoutmaster, who was often called out of town for work. He has been a leader ever since at the unit, district, and council levels. Today, he serves with Pack and Troop 60 and as a member of the Minsi Trails Council Executive Board. He has been just as involved in his church, Jordan Lutheran Church, and the local Lions Club, all while running his family’s heating and air-conditioning company. “Anybody who’s been a Scouter for more than a year or two in Minsi Trails Council knows who Sonny Laudenslager is,” says Arnold Traupman, who chairs the council’s Alumni Committee.

• For Ed Zeiger, serving young people has been both his vocation and his avocation. He retired from the Puyallup School District after 42 years as a teacher and principal and today volunteers at Zeiger Elementary School, which was named in his honor in 1997. Within Scouting, Zeiger has served as Scoutmaster of Troop 174 for 52 years, mentoring hundreds of boys, hiking thousands of miles, and spending hundreds of nights camping. He has also been active in youth sports, the Kiwanis Club, and Puyallup First Presbyterian Church. “He’s touched the lives of hundreds of boys and has dedicated his life to youth, their education, and development,” says Mike Movius, chairman of the Pacific Harbors Council’s Alumni Committee. “When the committee heard about his work, it was a no-brainer.”

alumni news

Ed Zeiger

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While the Alumnus of the Year Award is primarily designed to recognize deserving alumni, Movius says it offers another benefit. “It is our belief that by focusing on current members and their friends and associates, we can do double duty: education and recruitment,” he says. “It takes a lot of effort to get the word out, but when we honor people like Ed Zeiger, it becomes clear that the BSA and the SAA are a quality investment.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge with the award is deciding who to give it to. Traupman’s committee has already selected its 2015 recipient—another volunteer with more than 70 years of service. And that’s just the beginning. “We probably know who we’re going to give the third and fourth and fifth to just based on the Silver Beaver list,” he says.

To be eligible for the Council Alumnus of the Year Award, an individual must be a BSA alumnus—which means he or she has been positively and personally impacted by the BSA in some way—and must meet the current membership standards of the BSA. Nominees must have achieved distinction in their careers or avocations, contributed significantly to their communities through Scouting or organizations, and contributed significantly to the advancement of Scouting at the local level over a sustained period.

Each local council sets its own selection process and deadlines. However, a maximum of one recipient may be honored per council per year. Honorees receive a certificate, lapel pin, medallion, alumni square knot (for the BSA uniform), and device to affix to the square knot. The award features an acorn, a reminder that mighty oaks grow from little acorns and that Scouts and Scouters plant trees under which they may never sit.

Sonny Laudenslager

SKU 621404

34074 2015 Printing

Council President Scout Executive

In Recognition of Outstanding Council Contributions to the Boy Scouts of America

Alumni Program

The Council Alumnus of the Year Award Is Hereby Presented To

34074.indd 1 3/27/15 2:55 PM

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Summit Staff Association Now Accepting MembersThe BSA’s newest high-adventure base, the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia, is home to world-class adventure sports, a national-level summer camp program, and—effective this year—Scouting’s newest alumni group.

The Summit Bechtel Reserve Staff Association (SBRSA), which launched earlier this year, is open to all Summit staff members, including the thousands of Scouters who served on the staff of the 2013 National Scout Jamboree, the Summit’s first official event. Those who join by December 31, 2015, will be designated as charter members. Those who join by April 30, 2015, will be eligible to vote in the group’s first regional elections.

Basic memberships are good for one year—from May 1 to April 30—but those who join now will remain members through April 2016. Individual memberships are $30 for one year and $50 for two years; family, life, and seasonal-staff memberships are also available. (Details are at http://sbrstaff.org.)

BY the way, the BSA’s other high-adventure bases have their own alumni groups:

• Philmont Staff Association: http://www.philstaff.com

• Sea Base Alumni and Friends Association: http://www.sbafa.org

• Charles L. Sommers Alumni Association (Northern Tier): http://www.holry.org

Unlike the SBRSA, which is chartered by the BSA, these are independent nonprofit organizations. Each, however, works closely with its affiliated base to support and promote its programs.

Happenings

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Volunteer Vacation: Coming Back to Pay It ForwardFifteen years ago, the movie Pay It Forward popularized the idea that the best way to repay a favor is to do a favor for someone else—to pay the favor forward, in other words. But, as Scouting alumnus Peter Johnson demonstrated last fall, it’s actually possible to pay a favor back and forward at the same time.

In September, the Minnesota Eagle Scout and his son, Alex (also an Eagle Scout), spent a week at Philmont Scout Ranch, where they worked on a new trail as part of a Volunteer Vacation sponsored by the American Hiking Society. It was their first Volunteer Vacation but not their first trip to the iconic New Mexico camp.

“I was fortunate to climb Mt. Baldy and sit on the top of the Tooth of Time in the summer of 1976,” Johnson says. “When my son got into Scouting, I thought it would be great to go back to Philmont, so in 2008 I got to come back with my son; we

did trek 29. We also came back in 2011 and did trek 32.” (If that weren’t enough, Johnson’s daughter, Sarah, worked on Philmont’s seasonal staff from 2009 to 2014 and served as her dad and brother’s Ranger on their 2011 trek.)

During their Volunteer Vacation, the Johnsons helped build a trail between Deer Lake Mesa and Harlan Camp in Philmont’s central country, a project that involved such tasks as building switchbacks and rock walls. The crew worked hard, but they also got to enjoy Philmont’s scenic beauty, both at the work site and in their time off. “We hiked to Window Rock to see the sunrise,” Johnson says. “We also got to climb the Tooth of Time on the last day.”

Why did the Johnsons participate in the Volunteer Vacation? “When I heard about the trip, I thought it would be a great way to go back and give back by volunteering,” Johnson says. “We volunteer locally, but this was a priceless experience at a place we both have great memories.”

If you’d like to make great memories of your own, check out this fall’s Volunteer Vacation at Philmont, which will be held September 19-26. A crew of 24 volunteers will be continuing construction of the Deer Lake Mesa trail the Johnsons worked on. For complete details, visit https://www.americanhiking.org/events/philmont/.

“If you have ever thought of going back to Philmont, this is a great way to come back and give back at the same time,” Johnson says.

Peter Johnson

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Scouting Wire Brings BSA Information to One PlaceOnce upon a time, people thought nothing of waiting until tomorrow to get the latest news from a newspaper. Or relying on just three television networks for their evening dose of news. Or reading about important topics in bimonthly—or even quarterly—magazines.

Today, of course, anyone with a cable-TV account or an Internet connection can get the information they need right now and from an endless array of sources. But wading through all those sources can make people long for the simplicity of yesteryear.

While the BSA can’t bring order to media chaos, it is making it easier for Scouting volunteers and employees alike to find the information they need in just one place. Through the new Scouting Wire website (http://scoutingwire.org), the latest Scouting news is available with just a mouse click or two.

Scouting Wire aggregates information from across the BSA in eight important areas—activities, finance, fundraising, high adventure, leadership, marketing, training, and recruiting—and lets visitors filter the information based on their needs. Click on High Adventure, and you’ll learn about the 2017 National Scout Jamboree and a Scoutmaster’s experience at Northern Tier. Choose Marketing, and you’ll discover how to maximize the potential of your council’s Facebook page.

While it’s rich in content, Scouting Wire doesn’t replace the BSA’s other websites, blogs, and social media pages. You’ll find links to all those resources, as well as topic-specific links in each section of the site. Visitors can sign up for a weekly digest of news and updates and even submit their own stories for possible inclusion in future communications.

Whether you’re an active Scouting volunteer or just want to keep up with news from the world of Scouting, give Scouting Wire a try. We guarantee you’ll learn something new—and it won’t even require a trip to the mailbox.

Program

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‘A’ Is for Adventure: New Cub Scouting Program Launches in JuneImagine building a robotic hand out of paper. Or creating a kinetic “explosion” of craft sticks. Or having a virtual meeting with a Cub Scout from another country. Or tackling an energy problem closer to home.

Those are just a few of the activities Cub Scouts will soon be doing in the revised Cub Scouting program. The new program, which goes into effect on June 1, keeps the traditional rank structure (Tiger, Wolf, Bear, Webelos, and Arrow of Light) but features all new requirements for each rank, including those listed above.

For boys, the program will be fun because the requirements focus more on active learning and exploration than before. Boys will complete adventures, not achievements, on the road to advancement. (An adventure is a collection of activities built around a common theme.)

For parents and leaders, the new program will be much easier to administer because the path to each rank will be similar. Currently, leaders have to deal with three different schemes, one for Tiger, one for Wolf and Bear, and one for Webelos and Arrow of Light.

While the program takes effect June 1, there are special transition options for rising fifth-graders, who are in the middle of the Webelos program, and packs affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where boys move up on a different schedule than other packs.

For extensive information on the new program, including complete requirements and samplers of the new Cub Scout handbooks and den leader guides, visit http://www.scouting.org/programupdates.

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Peter McLoughlin: Seattle Seahawks PresidentThe Scout camp Peter McLoughlin attended each summer in the early 1970s served such bad food that the undersized Scout would usually only peck at his food. “I didn’t eat very much there, so I became known as Bird,” he recalls.

Despite his hunger pangs, McLoughlin earned enough merit badges at camp and back home in Princeton, New Jersey, to become a special kind of bird: an Eagle Scout. Last year, he became a very special kind of bird indeed: a Distinguished Eagle Scout. (He was nominated by the Chief Seattle Council, where he serves on the executive board.) For the past six years, he has kept the avian theme going by serving as president of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and First & Goal Inc.

But the Harvard-educated executive is no birdbrain. He oversees all of the Seahawks’ business and financial operations, directs the management of CenturyLink Field and two other properties, and serves as the club’s chief representative to the NFL. If that weren’t enough, he also serves as CEO of Vulcan Sports and Entertainment, which puts him in charge of business operations for the Portland Trail Blazers and Moda Center and makes him that club’s representative at NBA owners meetings.

The Seahawks are best known around the country for recent Super Bowl appearances, but McLoughlin can take pride in many less-visible successes as well. These include a 99 percent season-ticket renewal rate, a 77 percent increase in local television ratings since 2011 (the largest in the NFL), and top rankings in NFL fan surveys. Seattle is well known for its fan base, the 12th Man, which McLoughlin has strengthened through programs like quarterly meetings he and other executives hold with season-ticket holders to get their ideas on enhancing the fan experience.

McLoughlin has also helped make CenturyLink Field one of the NFL’s greenest stadiums, with 3,700 solar panels, low-electricity lighting, and a system to recycle or compost 80 percent of waste generated during games. In an interview with Scouting magazine’s Bryan Wendell, McLoughlin said those changes stem partly from his time in Scouting. “When you camp as a Scout, you’re taught to clean up your trash, clean up your campsite, don’t leave anything behind, make sure the fire that you cooked on and warmed yourself with is fully out,” he said. “Taking care of the environment you’re living in or camping in is really important.”

On receiving the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award last year, McLoughlin offered this advice to the current crop of Eagle Scouts in the Chief Seattle Council: “To earn the award of Eagle Scout, you have to have worked hard and shown a lot of perseverance, a lot of stick-to-itiveness,” he said. “Those characteristics will serve you well throughout your life, and you can apply that to whatever you choose to do. One of the great things about being an American is that you can choose to do whatever you want. You just have to work hard to get there.”

Judging by his experience, he’s right.

profiles

Peter McLoughlin (left)

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Marc Nutter and John Adams: Cycling for Conservation Scouts who hike at Philmont Scout Ranch nearly always fall in love with the land and accept their responsibility to care for the environment. That’s due in part to Philmont’s Conservation Department, which leads every backcountry camper in a three-hour service project.

This year, two former Conservation Department staff members, Marc Nutter and John Adams, have been taking their show on the road—literally. The Scouting alumni have been cycling across the continental United States in a

project they call Cycling for Conservation (C4C for short). They left Bangor, Maine, on September 14, 2014, and reached Taos, New Mexico, in early March, tracing the country’s eastern and southern borders most of the way. “We’ve been trying to ride the seasons all the way around,” Nutter says.

Nutter is continuing on to the west coast—and then back to the Atlantic—while Adams has left the road to serve as Nutter’s Colorado-based coordinator. “We found that it’s pretty difficult to spend the time to make the contacts ahead of time to set up the conservation service projects,” Nutter says. “He’s going to do some of the legwork for me while he’s stationary up in Gunnison.”

The service projects Nutter mentions are a key focus of C4C. Throughout the trip, the friends have worked to connect people along their route with their own backyards, ultimately

inspiring them to become active in conservation. One way to do that has been to team up with local Scout councils and other organizations on conservation projects. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, they worked with a local Scout troop to install structures called Zuni bowls that reduce erosion. In the Blue Ridge Council in South Carolina, they offered some of their trail-building expertise to a trail project at Camp Old Indian.

As is often the case, Nutter and Adams have received more than they’ve given. People across the country have fed them, sheltered them, and talked with them about local conservation issues. One woman, overhearing them say they’d run out of breakfast food, hurried to a store and returned with two bags of bagels. “This country’s full of a lot of great people who go out of their way to help,” Nutter says. “People want to help you; they really do.”

That’s a message the friends have shared with Scout troops they’ve visited along the road. They’ve also shared other important messages—stay in Scouts, follow your passion, you can do whatever you want—that have added impact when delivered by Scouting alumni on a cross-country bike trip.

After resting and overhauling his bike in Taos, Nutter is now heading west along Interstate 40. Once he reaches California, he’ll head up the Pacific Coast before eventually turning his wheels east. His goal is to reach the Atlantic Ocean in September. He encourages other Scouting alumni to follow his progress online at www.cycling4conservation.org and to connect with him if he’s in their neighborhood.

Those who are cyclists might even want to hit the road with him for a day or so. “This is certainly a beautiful country,” he says. “To be able to see it on a bicycle is something I’m really thankful for the opportunity to do.”