November, 2009

A Centennial Celebration!

I’ve led a fairly interesting and satisfactory life, but recently I’ve begun to feel that I’ve missed out on a very important life experience: I was never a Boy Scout! Though I enjoyed many of the experiences in my younger years that Scouts learn and do, I did them without structure and guidance... “learning by the seat of my pants,” as the old saying goes. And perhaps if I’d learned more scouting skills and survival techniques along the pathway of my teen years, I wouldn’t have had such a miserable time in July, 1976, when I and a friend were experiencing (and barely surviving) an adventure of our own during one of our numerous cross-country hitchhiking/camping trips. While we were camping (and I use that word very loosely!) on the side of a very muddy hill in upstate New York outside of New Paltz for several days during the onset of Hurricane Belle and trying to start a fire with wet wood under a tarp-turned-tent, I would have given my last bottle of Gatorade for the ability to start a fire for warmth, cooking, and dryness.

Why am I, now at age 54, feeling the regrets of not being a Boy Scout? The MCHS is in the process of creating an exhibit celebrating the upcoming centennial of the Boy Scouts of America which will be installed in the Doan History Center from March 18 to November 13, 2010, and its research has been a fascinating and eye-opening experience for me….and it makes me wish I’d been a Scout, too!

Within three years after Lord Baden-Powell started the Scouting movement in England in 1910, a scout troop was organized in Midland, and the interest in scouting has never waned locally. The thousands of boys and men who have been active in local scouting have taken scout-taught skills, life lessons, and values into their adult lives and careers, and many still credit scouting for the lifelong successes and interests they’ve enjoyed. As we continue to create and install this fascinating exhibit, we need your assistance with information, artifacts, stories, and memories. Your financial support is also needed, as this exhibit deserves to be told on a level that is a bit beyond the exhibits budget of the MCHS during these tough times. If you are able to assist us in any way with “On my Honor: Celebrating 100 Years of The Boy Scouts of America, 1910-2010,” please contact me at your earliest convenience. Its work has begun, and March 18 is just four-plus months away!

As we approach mid-November, please remember that we are temporarily closing our Heritage Park facilities from November 15 until March 15 as a cost-savings measure that will allow us to go forward during the current economic constrictions we are operating within. Though the Doan History Center and other buildings will be closed for four months, our good work and activities still go forward, albeit in different places and with modified schedules. Trena and I will maintain offices at the MCFTA, and our phone numbers and email addresses will remain as they’ve always been. PLEASE--- stop by or contact us at the MCFTA, and remember that our reduced public hours are temporary, hopefully, and the length of our reduced operations directly depends upon the budget support we can garner during the weeks and months ahead. We still desperately need your volunteer support, too---numerous current and new projects await us, and our limited staffing situation requires your help, now more than ever.

These are still exciting and productive times for your historical society….and, as always, please feel free to contact me at 631-5930, ext. 1300 if you have any questions or comments that can help us move forward. And if you want to hear about how Bruce and I survived Hurricane Belle (in grand style, no less), just ask!