Re: 17 Eagles, one COH
Russ Jones (CSRTJ@TTUHSC.EDU)
Thu, 6 Feb 1997 23:29:17 -0600
When I received my Eagle almost thirty-two years ago, the practice in this
council was to have a single Eagle Court of Honor for all Scouts throughout
the twenty-county council who had achieved Scouting's highest honor within
the previous year. As a result, I was one of forty-one Eagles so honored on
that day. Interestingly, sixteen of the forty-one were from one troop,
which was not here in Lubbock, but in the small (population < 1,000) town of
Silverton. The next largest single-troop contingent consisted of four
Eagles, while two troops, including my own, had three Eagles each, two other
troops were represented by two Eagles each, and eleven Eagles were the sole
honorees from their respective units. The court was an appropriately solemn
affair, conducted in the sanctuary of one of the city's largest churches,
and consisted solely of honoring the Eagles. I do not know if I would have
felt any prouder if I had been the sole honoree.
By contrast, I recently attended, as an invited guest of one of the Scouts,
a court of honor conducted by the one "supertroop" in our council. This
troop typically has some 130-150 active Scouts at any one time; they do not
attend any council's summer camp, choosing to conduct their own at a state
park in Oklahoma instead, and they only rarely participate at all in
district or council events. Their practice is to have one court of honor
annually, at which time they present all advancement awards for the year.
The affair includes a catered meal and usually features a speech by some
person of note: a U.S. representative, a state senator, or, at the event
the year prior to the one I attended, the governor. A good deal of to-do
was made over the contributions of the troop's adults during the previous
year, particularly three assistants who had provided first aid to one of
their Scouts when he broke his neck by diving into too-shallow water at
their summer camp last summer. Then came the announcement of the
Scoutmaster's choice of Assistant Scoutmaster of the Year, who was presented
a custom-made jacket. Next, what I can only describe as a diorama was
played out as the Scoutmaster was brought forward into the spotlight, onto a
sort of short runway projecting forward from the dais, where he was seated,
surrounded by four or five Scouts representing the gamut of ages in the
troop. As the boys knelt adoringly around the Scoutmaster, a recording of
"Wind Beneath My Wings" was played, and then the Scoutmaster was presented
with a rather expensive-looking gift. Eventually, they got around to
awarding the merit badges and below-Eagle rank advancements: the
advancement chairman would call a boy's name and announce the awards the boy
had earned during the previous year, reading from a list attached to the
outside of a manila envelope that contained the boy's awards. As soon as he
had finished with one, he would start on another, handing the previous boy's
envelope to an assistant to hold until the boy finally made his way up
through the crowded banquet hall to the front of the room. Unless one knew
the boys, one couldn't know which of the three to six boys en route between
their chairs and the floor-level presentation area at any one time was the
one whose achievements were currently being announced, but I noted that
there seemed to be a number of boys who had not bothered to show up for
their packets. When all was said and done, the advancement chairman noted
that they must have set some sort of record, because they had just finished
presenting eight hundred and some-odd awards in a period of only a little
over seventeen minutes. Next, a number of Eagle Palms were awarded, with
quite a bit of ballyhoo, because this particular Scoutmaster makes plain his
preference for boys who remain active in the troop after reaching Eagle and,
conversely, a certain degree of disdain for those who do not. At long last,
they finally got around to the seven Eagle presentations, which were not
particularly impressive. As each Eagle was announced, a little bit was said
about the number of merit badges he had earned and the number of troop
summer camps and national high-adventure camps he had attended, then he was
placed on a small, separate stage to suffer through his mother's reading of
a three-to-five minute speech she had been asked to prepare, after which his
father came forward for the pinning of the medal. The mothers' speeches
were rather touching, but the presentations as a whole bordered on the
maudlin. The Scoutmaster was generally congratulatory in introducing each
of the boys except one, who was by far the youngest at only fourteen. This
particular Scoutmaster is of the opinion that unless a Scout is at least
sixteen, has been to at least one national high-adventure camp, and has
staffed at least one of his troop's summer camps, he's not really Eagle
material regardless of what else he may have done, and he made it quite
clear that it was only under duress that he had approved the boy's
application. He also made it clear that he was not ever likely to do so
again unless the boy remains active in that troop, attends at least one
national camp, serves on the staff of the troop's summer camp, and otherwise
ultimately proves himself to the Scoutmaster. It was interesting to see his
evident discomfort as the fourteen-year-old received a significantly longer
and louder round of applause than the other boys when it was announced that
he had a combined total of fifty merit badges, far more than any of the
other Eagles. Also of interest was the statement concerning another of the
new Eagles to the effect that he had passed his board of review only two or
three days before.
Now, lest you think the fourteen-year-old was deserving of the Scoutmaster's
disdain, or that he is merely a badge-hunter, let me assure you that is not
the case. The young man eats, sleeps, and breathes Scouting, in addition to
performing well in both academics and athletics. Each of the past two
summers he has attended not only his own troop's one-week summer camp, but
also, as an "adoptee" of another troop (a practice his Scoutmaster
disapproves of), one week at each of our council's two summer camps--one on
the plains, and one in the mountains--for a total of six weeks of summer
camp in two summers. It was my privilege to serve as one of his merit badge
counselors and to sit on his board of review as a representative of the
district, and he is exceptionally mature and insightful, pays close
attention to detail, and does not settle for the merely good enough. His
project was exceptional, both in concept and in execution, and if I've ever
met a natural leader, he is it.
I'll leave you to draw your own inferences from the above. I just thought
you might like to know how one troop does it. However, to the idea of
presenting the Eagle as the high point of a regular court of honor as a
means of having the whole troop there for inspiration, I wonder if the same
effect might not be achieved in such a way as to make it a more singular
honor for the Eagle, by having a strictly Eagle court of honor in which the
younger members of the troop have participatory parts to play in the
ceremony, as color guard, honor guard for the Eagle, etc., which would
require their presence. They might be even more impressed and inspired by a
court of honor that was solely for the purpose of honoring one boy. Just a
thought.
Yours in Scouting,
Russ Jones <csrtj@ttuhsc.edu>
Scoutmaster, Troop 575 & National Jamboree Troop 1636
South Plains Council
Lubbock, Texas
Eagle Scout, class of 1965
"I used to be a fox..." SC-295
"I used to be a staffer..." SC-430, SR-110, SR-???
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City |
