with

Mike Bellah

Parents and teachers are not there to do it for you in adult life; if you want the job done, you had better depend on yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting lost is not something that only happens in the wilderness or in one's youth. I still look to friends when I'm unsure which trail to take in life.

 

 

 

 

 

Troop 66 still lives because, for many of us, everything we ever needed to know in life we learned in Boy Scouts.

Everything I Ever Needed to Know in Life I Learned in Boy Scouts

Everything I ever needed to know in life I learned in Boy Scouts. Well, almost everything. My six years in the Tower Patrol of Canyon, Texas' Troop 66 did teach me important life lessons. Following are three of them.

Become self-reliant

As a Tenderfoot (a novice scout) I once brought an ice-chest filled with bottled Cokes along on an overnight campout. When I couldn't lug both it and my other gear the five miles from the dropping off point to our campsite, an older scout carried it for me. He also drank all my Cokes that night, and I learned a valuable lesson.

Parents and teachers are not there to do it for you in adult life; if you want the job done, you had better depend on yourself. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "You have to be lucky to succeed in life, but the luckiest people seem to be those who work the hardest."

Buddy-up

The corollary to self-reliance in scouting is interdependence. Scouts are always being told to "buddy up." You quickly learn in the wilderness that you need one another.

I once became disoriented hiking with a scouting buddy in the Pecos Wilderness of New Mexico, a place Troop 66 frequented every summer. I was so turned around that I was sure East was West despite the tell-tale shadows on the ground. My friend knew that the sun was infinitely more reliable than me and persuaded me to follow him back to camp. As C. S. Lewis once said, two heads are better than one, not because they are unlikely to both be wrong, but they are unlikely to both be wrong in the same direction.

Getting lost is not something that only happens in the wilderness or in one's youth. I still look to friends when I'm unsure which trail to take in life.

Develop role models

Young scouts are encouraged to emulate their seniors, something that was not difficult in Troop 66. From my first Scout Master, Raymond Haddock (who recently retired from the U. S. Army as a two-star general) to his successor, the late Oscar Hinger (they named an elementary school in Canyon for this life-long scout and educator), Troop 66 had its heroes.

I'll never forget people like assistant scout masters Larry Brotherton and Craig Hinger (popular high school seniors when I joined the troop), whose peers probably considered them square for spending all that time with us junior highers. And what 66er will forget the White boys (five brothers, all Eagle scouts)? Dave was my patrol leader. His older brother Tim died in Vietnam, news that, when I first heard it, made me feel both grief and pride (one of our own had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country).

My scouting heroes taught me the need for role models in life, something I consider when selecting interviewees for this column. Midlifers, too, need people to look up to.

Troop 66 is no longer around--gone with the general decline in numbers of scouts when the baby boom grew up--but its influence lingers on. Troop 66 still lives because, for many of us, everything we ever needed to know in life we learned in Boy Scouts.

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