Re: Eagle Court of Honor?
alan houser (houser@CEDR.LBL.GOV)
Tue, 8 Nov 1994 15:17:19 PST
Greg Stewart asks:
>Whose job is it to plan, conduct, etc the Eagle Scout Court of Honor?
It boggles my mind that parents cannot get behind their son when he
has earned his Eagle rank, but there's a lot of things out there on
the evening news that I can't comprehend either.
Anyway, as Scoutmaster or especially as a former Scoutmaster that he called
to for help, you ARE a surrogate parent for this young man. If his parents
are not in a position to provide what he needs in pulling together a Court,
you should definitely step in. It pains me to see the lengths to which
adults will go to get in the way of the boys. One of the satisfactions
I find as Scoutmaster is finding ways to get around that and promote the
Scouts for their merits.
I try to keep a copy of the scripts for all of our Eagle courts, and I
bum additional scripts from whomever I can, including the collection in
the archives at SCOUTS-L. Sometime after the Board of Review I make copies
of all of them and give them to the Scout, asking him to look them over
and decide what he wants to do. If his parents aren't interested (thank
goodness all of my Eagle parents have been very interested) and even if
they are interested but need some help, then I will work with him to
define the ceremony and put together the booklet.
Olan Watkins wrote:
>I know it is the custom for the parents to pay for and send out the
>invitations, provide an Eagle cake to serve and all that, but if the parents
>will not do it, the Troop needs to take the bull by the horns and do it.
Our Troop provides some money (I think it's around $170.00 -- I'm not
quite sure how they arrived at that number) towards the cost of putting
on an Eagle Court. The rational is that it is the Troop's role to invite
Council dignitaries, other Scoutmasters and Cubmasters (we invite them to
get them excited about taking their Cubs beyond the Arrow of Light), the
rental of the lodge at Camp Herms (the local urban Council Camp) and
decorations), and to help cover the expense of feeding the rest of the members
of the Troop. In addition, the Troop buys a redwood tree sapling to plant
in the Eagle Grove at Camp Herms in the name of the new Eagle.
Alan R. Houser ** Scoutmaster, Berkeley Troop 24 ** arhouser@lbl.gov
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City | 
