R. Ray Depew Boy Scout

Past

When I turned 11, I went into Boy Scout Troop 430, also chartered to the Wilmington Ward. The Scoutmaster was a dynamic man I only knew as Brother Richards, and two of his assistants were Jim McCabe and Blair Muhlstein. Brother McCabe was in charge of the new Scouts, and our new Scout patrol was called the "Guide Patrol." Brother McCabe taught me several important lessons having to do with Scoutcraft, and over the years those lessons have acquired new layers of meaning having to do with leadership, commitment and many other life topics not visibly related to Scoutcraft.

Shortly before my 12th birthday, Brother Richards had a heart attack, and Brother Muhlstein took over as Scoutmaster during Bro Richards' convalescence. Not long after that, we moved to Hawkesbury, Ontario.

The Boy Scout troop in Hawkesbury was not much to speak of. You were nobody if you weren't in their drum and bagpipe corps. They were not supportive of the new Canadian Scout handbook, rank advancement, camping or anything else normally associated with Scouting - not much besides that stupid bagpipe corps. It was a waste of a year.

I do remember that the Canadian handbook copied a lot of text and pictures directly from my Boy Scouts of America handbook. (In fairness, the Canadian Boy Scouts had a way-cool green beret that BSA copied a few years later when they issued their own red beret.)

I also remember one page in the Canadian handbook that quoted the Golden Rule from the holy books of many different world religions. As an adult, I wish I still had that page of the handbook.

When we moved from Hawkesbury to Naperville, Illinois, I joined Troop 50, chartered to the Fox Valley Ward of the Chicago South Stake of the LDS Church. The Scoutmaster was Thomas J. Sullivan, and his assistants were Ron Athay and Don Mindar. While I was with Troop 50, I caught up on that lost year in Canada, went on some memorable campouts, served in several leadership positions, and was elected by my peers to the Order of the Arrow. (This was back when a troop of 1 to 10 boys could only elect one Scout to OA, a troop of 11 to 20 could only elect two Scouts, and so on, so it was a real campers' honor society.) I earned my Life Scout rank and was most of the way to Eagle.

I can try to describe the depth of love and respect I feel for Brother Sullivan, but the words will not be adequate to the task. He was a great man in many ways, and I owe a lot of what I am today to his example.

Brother Sullivan and Brother Mindar used to go to summer camp with us every year. We liked camp so much that we lobbied our adult leaders to take us for two weeks instead of one week, and they did, for several years running.

My family moved to Michigan before I completed my Eagle Scout requirements, so I finished them with the fledgling Troop 1535 in Plymouth, Michigan. Brother Sullivan brought a carload of my friends from Naperville to be at my Eagle Court of Honor in 1973.

Shortly thereafter, we moved back to Hawkesbury. I served for two years as Junior Assistant Scoutmaster in a different troop, chartered to the Pointe Claire Branch, Montreal District of the LDS Church, until I left for college.

Present

Blair and I had a lot of fun together. (And we had fun with the boys, too.) I learned a lot from him about leading youth, which became useful in later years. Blair passed away in Loveland on April 5, 2012, after a four-year battle with cancer.

My job took me to Santa Rosa, California in 1983, where I became Assistant Scoutmaster, and then Scoutmaster, in Troop ..., chartered to the Santa Rosa 4th Ward, Santa Rosa Stake of the LDS Church. I had a couple of ASMs, but my favorite was Craig Shiman. Craig and I became good friends. We took the boys camping on Mount Tamalpais, on the beaches and in the redwood forests, and climbing on the cliffs of the coastal range.

When we moved to Corvallis, Oregon in 1986, I was made Scoutmaster of a troop that wasn't really a good fit. The boys were more into team sports than Scouting, and their parents wanted a babysitter or something more than they wanted a real Scoutmaster. So I resigned for a while. Then my son's Cub Pack needed a Webelos Den Leader. I was a volunteer substitute for a while, and then they made it official. After only a few months in Webelos, they said they needed a Cubmaster, so I had fun playing Cubmaster until we moved back to Loveland, Colorado in 1990.

Back in Loveland, although I was a member of the troop committee, I didn't serve in any leadership positions in the troop. I went on many campouts with my oldest son as a Boy Scout dad (motto: "All of the fun, none of the responsibility!").

Instead of doing Scouting, I went backpacking and camping with my own children, including some memorable trips with my oldest daughter. I was the designated male at the church girls' camp nearly every year.

Then in 2005, I volunteered to go to summer camp with my youngest son, again as a Boy Scout dad. By now we were part of two-year-old Troop 687, chartered to the Lakeside Ward, Loveland Stake of the LDS church. A week before summer camp, the leadership of Lakeside Ward asked me to be the Scoutmaster, to replace an ineffectual Scoutmaster with whom the troop committee and parents had been struggling for a couple of years.

So I went to camp as a newly-minted Scoutmaster. The other adult at camp with me was our troop committee chairman, a gung-ho Scouter named Joseph Schneider, who shared my attitudes about Scouting. He observed with some irony that, according to my service record, he was young enough to have been one of my Scouts in 1986. I observed with equal irony that the Scoutmaster I was replacing had, in fact, been one of my Boy Scouts in 1983.

I only stayed in Scouting for a year. Apparently the idea of "tenure" has not sunk in yet with the church leadership around here. I handed over the reins to someone else.

Future

So I'm back to being a Boy Scout dad. I will eventually make it to Wood Badge. And I imagine that I'll end up on the steering committee for a camporee or two.