Boy Scout: The term has been used as an insult for anyone who is naive, a do-gooder or profoundly unhip. The derogatory sense of the term has even found its way into Webster’s Dictionary.
The fact is, uncool or not, the number of boys in the Scouting program of the Northeast Illinois Council, extending from Evanston to the Wisconsin border, has swelled over the last 10 years to 15,200 at the end of last year from 9,597 in 1983, a 58 percent increase. That exceeds the percentage of population increase in Lake County, which was about 20 percent.
Nationally, the figures keep moving up from a low point in 1979 when they bottomed out at 3.15 million. As of December 1992 (the most recent figures available), the number stood at 4.15 million, said Richard Walker, national spokesman at the Boy Scout headquarters in Dallas.
Bob Russell, council executive for the Northeast Illinois Council, said population increase may explain part of the local rise but not all of it. “It’s also because of a much more intensive effort to retain kids in the program,” he said.
This being the 84th National Boy Scout Anniversary Month, it’s a good time to take a look at these troopers and to take notice that one Lake County troop, Troop 46 of Lake Forest, stands out at least in terms of the number of Eagle Scouts it has produced.
The highest achievement for a Boy Scout is to become an Eagle.
“This troop has more Eagle Scouts than any other troop in Lake County,” said Troy Johnson, senior district executive for the Fox Trail District, Northeast Illinois Council, Boy Scouts of America. Each year an average of three boys from this trooop now receive Eagle rank-the highest achievement for a Boy Scout-compared with the district average of one per troop.
It’s not simply troop size that accounts for the high rate. Forty-two members make up the troop, and there are troops in Lake County that are twice that size, according to Bob Palmer of Lake Forest who took over as scoutmaster of the troop in September. The troop currently has six Eagles and has produced 110 since it began in 1929, the most for one troop in the county.
“The number of Eagle Scouts in Troop 46 is significant because nationally only 2 percent of all Scouts become Eagle Scouts,” said Bert Tucker, who was scoutmaster from 1985 through 1990. By comparison, Troop 46 had more than 6 percent when he was scoutmaster. Currently it’s more than 9 percent.
“It says a lot about continuity of the program,” said Gordon Boyd of Lake Forest, chairman of the Fox Trail Boy Scout District, which comprises 78 units of Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Explorers in Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Libertyville, Mundelein and Vernon Hills. The troop is “more than 60 years old. For them to have an ongoing production of Eagles, the troop has to have adults who are committed, and they’vedone it right. These kids are high achievers.”
“Someone once said that earning Eagle is the highest achievement of boyhood,” Palmer said. “Personally, I think it’s the first extraordinary achievement of a man.”
To reach Eagle, a Scout must have earned 11 merit badges while rising through three lower ranks, then 10 more badges while working on the Eagle rank, which must be reached before the 18th birthday. Merit badges are awarded for everything from camping prowess to first aid to citizenship. Heavy emphasis is placed on community service as a requirement for advancement throughout the Boy Scout program, which accepts boys at age 11.
The make-or-break factor for an Eagle is completing a community project, such as a blood drive or cleanup project, managing volunteer labor from start to finish.
“The interesting thing about Eagle rank is it’s within the reach of about any Scout to attain,” Palmer said. “It doesn’t require tremendous intelligence. What it does require is organization, self-discipline and perseverance. In short, it requires self-mastery.”
Some eminent Eagle Scouts-though they weren’t members of Troop 46-can vouch for this.
Donald Rumsfeld, formerly of Winnetka and now of Chicago, has been a congressman, secretary of defense, presidential chief of staff under Gerald Ford and, until retiring recently, chairman of General Instrument Corp. of Chicago, an international corporation involved in the development of wiring components. But before all that he was an Eagle.
“It’s important because it reflects accomplishment,” he said of the Eagle rank. “There are many distractions for young people. One of the values of Scouting is that it teaches many things that schools don’t teach about the outdoors and nature.
“The Eagle Scout program teaches self-reliance, teamwork and values,” he said. “There’s no question that what Scouting stands for are values in life. Everyone in society would benefit from learning them.”
Onetime Lake Forest resident Samuel Skinner, now a Chicagoan who is president of Commonwealth Edison Co., is a former secretary of transportation and White House chief of staff under former President George Bush. Skinner too was an Eagle.
“It was the first accomplishment that I got as a youth,” he said. “It showed me that you can achieve things if you work hard. It gives you a lot of confidence in yourself and in your ability.
“You need discipline in the business world today, and becoming an Eagle Scout teaches it well.”
A Troop 46 alumnus, Paul Goeldner, 69, of Lake Forest, a retired electrical engineer, received Eagle rank in 1941.
“It was almost like getting your master’s degree or your doctorate,” he said. “It teaches you the importance of getting something done that you might not want to do. . . . I think the whole process makes you feel better about yourself and puts you in the right groove of life.”
Boyd pointed out that Eagle projects aren’t just make-work programs to keep kids occupied. “They’re very important,” he said.
Chris Weil of Lake Forest, a 17-year-old senior at Lake Forest High School, became an Eagle in May 1991. As his project, he and 15 members of his troop refurbished one mile of the city’s trail network in McCormick Woods directly north of Ft. Sheridan. This involved smoothing the trails, covering them with wood chips supplied by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association and eliminating some trails. Including planning, Weil estimated that he spent 120 hours on the project over a two-month span.
“At times working for Eagle was very difficult,” he said. “Some of the advancement rank requirements and some of the merit badges were tough. At times I seemed to be overwhelmed by it. But I just tried to take things as they came along, and that helped me to continue.”
Classmate Collin Webb, also a Lake Forest 17-year-old, completed his Eagle project in February 1992 by cleaning up a ravine at Sheridan and Deerpath Roads with a volunteer crew of 15. His project took him 101 hours.
“Looking back,” he said, “the project was a great experience in leadership, planning and pulling things together-in reaching a goal.”
Beyond helping a youth meet Scout requirements, such work is of great benefit to the community, said Julia Plumb, director of education and volunteers for the Lake Forest Open Lands Association, which benefits from two or three Eagle projects a year.
“The Boy Scouts do a lot of maintenance for us,” she said. “There are 250 acres with miles of trails that they help preserve and maintain. It saves our land manager a lot of time and probably saves us $1,000 to $2,000 a year.”
Lorraine Tweed, president of the Lake Forest Foundation for Historic Preservation in 1984-86, said that organization likewise drew a heavy monetary benefit from one Scout project that saved “thousands and thousands of dollars.”
At the time, Chip Tucker, now a 24-year-old pension consultant at Hewitt Associates in Lincolnshire, led an army of 130 community volunteers in planting 10,000 plants and spreading 40,000 pounds of mulch, all supplied by the historic foundation, in 27 city gardens in one day in 1986.
“I got two big awards for this project,” Tucker said. “I won a first-place Governor’s Hometown Award for youth achievement for the entire State of Illinois,” he said. “The project also won a second-place Governor’s Hometown Award for overall community service projects. . . .
“I never thought that at age 16 I’d be planning and managing a project that involved 130 people, at least $10,000 and 10,000 plants,” he said.
“What Chip did boggles my mind,” Tweed said, not only because he supervised so many people but also because he devised techniques to speed the planting process, such as building a spiked grid that dug 36 holes in just seconds so plants could be set in.
The element of leadership also makes an impact in applications for college admission, according to Ted O’Neill, dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of Chicago. He said of the Eagle rank, “It’s impressive. It’s something we note. We think that it indicates something useful. There’s no one who doesn’t benefit from it…. What’s interesting about Eagle Scout activities is that the person has stuck with something for quite a while.”
And over the years, Troop 46 has had a lot of people who stuck with it.
The reasons for the troop’s pre-eminence may not be clear, but those connected to it are willing to guess.
Goeldner thinks it may have something to do with the Scout method of blending achievement with help for others. Once he and two other members became Eagle Scouts, “there was just a drive for other guys to want to do it. There were a lot of kids that we helped . . . that were on their way to Eagle.”
Russell, the council executive, said, “They are certainly one of our pacesetter troops. I think they work at it, they make it a priority.”
Palmer, the scoutmaster, said he thinks achievement is infectious. “When a Scout sees others achieving, he becomes motivated to keep up with them.” He added that though Troop 46’s stature in Eagles may be surpassed at some point by another Lake County troop. “And that’s okay,” he said. “Scouting isn’t about competition; it’s about cooperation.”
As for any cynical reaction that Scouts get from some people, it’s something they seem to overcome.
Don Verbeke of Lake Forest, an investigator for the Lake County state’s attorney’s office who became an Eagle Scout in 1957, said, “I’m a retired police lieutenant from Highland Park. I was on the force for 24 years. A lot of the guys used to kid me about `the Boy Scout attitude.’ That’s not a bad thing. The reason I got into police work is because this job is intimately involved with helping people who are in trouble. That attitude comes from Scouting.”
Tucker said peer pressure against scouting actually led him to drop out for two years. “I left scouting when I became a freshman in high school. The image wasn’t very cool,” he said. “I eventually got back into it. Part of it was that I wanted to do the camping, and I had made so much headway on my Eagle, I didn’t want to just quit. And really, I don’t know what bothers kids about it, whether it’s the uniforms or going to meetings. But if everyone who thought it was geeky would just get into it, they could change it to fit themselves without losing the good qualities of it.”
The coolness factor hasn’t been ignored at the national headquarters, according to Walker, who added that this is an impediment to recruiting urban minorities to help lead local programs.
“They don’t think it’s cool,” he said. “So in May we’ll be unveiling a major national initiative to turn that around,” Walker said.
“Many Scouts get negative feedback from their peers, because Scouts are not considered necessarily cool,” Palmer said.
“In truth, Scouting is an unusual opportunity to be given personal responsibility. It’s done with a minimum of adult interference. Scouts get placed in situations where they have to use their personal resources. The real enjoyment comes from doing things you didn’t know you were able to do.”
