Troop 24 Anniversary Dinner

It has been almost a week now since Troop 24 celebrated its 75th anniversary,
and I want to share some of the feelings that have been warming me all week.

We were not able to contact very many of the more than 800 alumni, but we
did get some of them to come back. Our most successful source of addresses
was the roster of Wolfeboro Pioneers, a pre-OA (but still active) group
devoted to maintaining the council summer camp.

The oldest was an 81-year-old retired orthopedic surgeon who joined the
troop back in 1926. Wow! I hope that when I am 61, that I look and sound
as sharp as he did. One of the things he shared with us was that he became
a doctor because of the work he did on First Aid Merit Badge. It seems that
in those days, one of the things they did was to spend some time at the
local hospital while working on the badge. The interns there showed him
how to identify and treat fractures and sprains, and he had a great time
doing it. So much so that he decided to do it for a career. Among other
things he later accomplished was founding a department of orthopedic
surgery at a West Coast medical school!

Another alum, one of two sons of one of the early Scoutmasters of Troop 24,
shared a reminiscence of summer camp in 1931. Both sons were there, by
the way. With his permission, I have uploaded his story to our WWW pages
at
http://www.emf.net/~troop24/history/trout.html

I invite everyone to read his story there if you can, or write me by
private email to troop24@emf.net, and I will send it to you. Please do
not request it via this list. I will not respond to any requests sent
to Scouts-L.

One told the story of how as a 15-year-old Eagle, he and three of his
friends, also Eagles, had to venture up to Telegraph Avenue in 1970
(remember this was Berkeley in 1970) in full uniform to have their pictures
taken for the newspaper.

We had several sets of brothers and two sets of father&son, all Eagles.

One of the things we were able to do is create a listing (12 pages double
columns) of all 858 Scouts who have been listed on the recharters. Several
of the alums had a great time looking up people they had known. One
mentioned that he recognized some people he knew that he didn't know they
had been in the troop.

We started things off with a small Court of Honor, with 4 Scouts receiving
their First Class badges and 1 receiving Star, plus a few merit badges and
camping awards.

Then we had a dinner. Instead of doing it buffet style, we had a set menu,
and each family was given a recipe and an amount to bring so that all of
the tables would have the same food available, and we could adjust the
amounts based on how many people showed up. The troop provided the main
course (roast beef) and a cake decorated with the logo from our anniversary
patch.

After dinner, the former Scouts each got up and shared a few memories of
the old days in Troop 24.

All in all, it was so much fun that several of us decided to try it again
in 5 years instead of 25!

As a postscript, a couple of days after the dinner, I received an email
message from another alum from the early 1940's. It seems his son (also
an Eagle, but not from 24) had been surfing the web and came across our
home page. He asked his dad if that was the troop he had been in, and
the answer was Yes! He shared some of his experiences with the troop and
later, and I have a patch to drop in the mail to him tomorrow.

YiS,

Alan R. Houser ** Scoutmaster, Berkeley Troop 24 ** troop24@emf.net
** WWW page ** http://www.emf.net/~troop24/t24.html **

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