My volunteer life: Death of a pack
After at least 30 years, a local Scout unit not so quietly goes away
When my second child was in first grade 23 years ago, he brought home a flyer his best friend, James, had given him: “Come join Cub Scouts!” it read, with an invitation to a pack meeting at a nearby school a couple of nights later.
When we walked into the multipurpose room at the school for the meeting, it felt like chaos.
I’d been a Cub Scout as a kid in Ohio, and then briefly a Boy Scout, too.
But my recollections were time-worn and hazy.
This?
More than 100 elementary school-aged kids were running around yelling and playing while the adult volunteers got the room ready for the meeting. There were some home-made cakes being set up on folding tables along one wall for a silent auction, and a couple of older women were setting up their sewing machines in the back of the room to sew patches on uniforms for a small donation to the pack.
As we stood there, me overwhelmed, my son saw his friend and dragged me over to where James was sitting with a few other boys from their class. James’ mom introduced herself, and said she would be the boys’ den leader this coming year and looked forward to having my son in her den.
While we were chatting, the room suddenly started to quiet. I looked up and a couple of adults in Scout uniforms were standing center stage - holding their right hands up with what looked like a World War II “V for Victory” sign.
As soon as the room had quieted - and it took less than 15 seconds, with not a word said nor a single “hush” - the meeting opened with a prayer and a flag ceremony.
I think it was the fact that two adults holding up two fingers could quiet over 100 kids without saying a word that sold me.
We signed up that night.
I was too cool, in my mind, to be one of the dorky Scout leaders. I took my son to all his weekly den meetings, and the monthly pack meetings at the school. We joined the den for field trips, went on a couple of Pack campouts, baked a cake for the annual Blue & Gold Banquet, built our first Pinewood Derby car together, and when he earned his Wolf rank the next year, I proudly pinned his rank patch on his blue Cub uniform.
But I had zero interest in taking on any volunteer duties that would require wearing the adult BSA uniform.
My son lost interest in Cub Scouts after about three years, so he didn’t finish his Webelos rank nor bridge with his buddies to a Boy Scout troop.
A few years later, though, another friend in middle school talked him into visiting his Boy Scout troop, and we were back in it for awhile. This time, I was more active, volunteering on the troop committee - helping plan budgets, fund-raisers, assisting on outings. I took some adult training, and even went along to summer camp.
And after my son lost interest in Boy Scouts after earning his First Class rank, I figured I’d done my part.
When I remarried some 15 years ago, it was a package deal - two more children came into my life, and when my stepson - in first grade - brought home a flyer asking us to visit a Cub Scout pack, I couldn’t help but notice it was the exact same pack!
When we showed up a few nights later, I found that the pack had shrunk considerably in the years since my older son had been in it. There were fewer than 20 kids in the pack, and only about five boys in his den.
But that first year - Tiger Cubs - was great fun. We went on hikes, camped at the local Moose Lodge park, and built our first Pinewood Derby car together.
As we were finishing up that first year, and preparing to bridge over to Wolves, we learned that our cubmaster was bridging over to Boy Scouts with his son.
Somehow I’d shared that my older son had been in the pack a decade earlier - and so the local Boy Scout field representative decided I was the perfect person to become the new cubmaster.
There being no graceful way out, I donned that olive drab uniform for the first time since I’d been a Boy Scout.
Over the next three years, we grew the Pack back up over 50 boys before my step-son bridged over to a Boy Scout troop and we continued our scouting journey there.
In fact, based on our success in growing the Pack, I was offered a job as a field rep for BSA, I job I held for almost six years.
This past Saturday morning, we held a farewell Blue & Gold Banquet for my old pack at the Moose Lodge. The school lockdowns during COVID-19 made it impossible for us to get on campus and recruit new families. And due to the ongoing national bankruptcy case involving the national Boy Scouts of America organization, the only thing most parents we did meet with knew about Boy Scouts was that it was involved in a sex-abuse lawsuit.
Without new families to replace the last den of boys bridging over to Boy Scouts, there was simply no way to continue. When our charter expired on Dec. 31, the pack ceased to exist.
Some 40 folks were there Saturday to say goodbye to our old pack. Among them were some of the volunteer leaders from when my older son and I first joined in 1999 - as well as some of the former Cub Scouts, now with facial hair and deep voices and even wives in tow. And some of the former boys who had been Cubs when I was cubmaster were there, too - bringing me up to speed on all they’d done in the years since: college, first jobs, new hobbies.
As everyone was introducing themselves and finding a seat, I stepped onto the stage in the hall at the Moose Lodge and held my right hand up with the two finger forming not a Victory V - but, as I’d learned 20 years earlier, forming wolf ears, because if you’re listening then you’re not talking.
It took a bit longer than usual, but as folks noticed the “quiet sign” was up, the chatter stopped.
We opened with a prayer and the pledge. We took photos, ate pizza, and enjoyed camp-fire dutch oven cobbler - cherry, apple and peach.
Mostly, we shared stories - pointing out to each other where each of us were in a slide show that covered more than 30 years of Cub Scouting: Our pack tradition of always entering a float or marching in the local Christmas parade, summer camp and Scout Fair, the great Winter Camp of 2013 when a bunch of kids from San Diego froze their little behinds off during the coldest weekend in Idyllwild in half a century (and had their first snowball fight!).
At the end of the day, we took our pack flag off it’s pole, folded it carefully, and had some of the former Cubs present it to the Moose Lodge leadership as a memento of three decades of Cub Scouting in our town.
I share this story not because there was anything special about our pack, our families, our time together - but precisely because it is so very ordinary.
Over the past four years, our local Boy Scout Council has shrunk by about two-thirds. All sorts of troops and packs (and Venturing crews and Sea Scout ships and Exploring posts) have struck their colors for the last time, and put their unit flag into storage at the church, veteran’s hall or service club where generations of kids had gathered for weekly meetings, assembled in the parking lot before heading off to camp, received their Arrow of Light and Eagle awards.
When I was hired as a field rep for our local Scout council, we had 16,000 kids in Scouting in our county. Now, it’s about 4,000.
Nor is Scouting the only youth organization that is rapidly shrinking.
A few weeks ago, we were clearing out the garage and I found my youngest daughter’s two old softball mitts. I called her old coach to see if he had any girls that might want a good leather glove but couldn’t afford one. He was glad to take them, and said they’d be at the indoor batting cages that night.
When I stopped by, I asked how the local fastpitch softball league was doing. He shook his head slowly and explained that the girls from my daughter’s old team were now on a 14U travel team. After the COVID restrictions were lifted, so few girls came back that the league could only field a single 14U team - which meant that every week they’d be playing a team from another league. At that point, he said, it made more sense to just form a travel team.
A few weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the legal and liability issues that are hammering youth enrichment programs across our country.
The above two examples illustrate the loss this presents to the next generation of kids in communities all across the country: Fewer sports teams, fewer Scouting units, fewer dance troupes and youth theater companies.
Fewer opportunities to get away from video games and TikTok and learn new skills in the physical world.
The saddest thing about all this just might be that most of the kids coming into that age group now will never even realize what it is they’ve missed.
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If I were a cynical person, and I am, I would suggest that COVID provided an opportunity to kill off any chance children have to learn to appreciate camaraderie. Those of us in the older generations perhaps enjoy a bit of online "life," but we keep the quote marks around it because we know that there are real people out here and real social support networks and our lives are meant to be physically shared with others. But the children . . . the children are a different story. They are learning to take the quotes out of "online life" and make it as important (or more important) than real life.
Nice piece. I don't get to read everything you write, but I enjoy what I do catch.