Scouts, Scouters and Parents:
I hope this email finds you well and in good health. I am sending this a day later than normal because last night we held a very productive Patrol Leaders Council (PLC) to discuss our Troop program, the current and projected state of Virginia's plan on reopening, and summer camp. Summary of decisions and updates are as follow:
The PLC elected to continue to connect virtually for at least two more weeks. We have put a tentative mark on the calendar of 30 June to resume in-person Troop meetings and we are working with our chartering organization, St. Matthew's Lutheran, for location options. Over the next two weeks, the PLC will continue to meet virtually to gauge what we can do given the Commonwealth's recovery phase and local COVID-19 infection rates. In the meantime, some patrols have connected virtually and other patrol leaders are seeking to reach out to patrol members to meet and check on status of members and families. We reviewed the latest guidance from the Governor that transitions Virginia to Phase 2 on 12 June.
As you are aware, our first choice (Resica Falls) and back-up (Goshen) option for summer camp are closed by their respective councils. Now, our third choice, T. Brady Saunders, has been closed by its council. Ms. Sue Straka is currently reaching out to The Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia (~five hours away) to see if it can accommodate us. Please be on the lookout for an email with a short on-line survey that should come out tomorrow. We will use this to gauge interest in options for summer camp or some other form of extended camping, as we know that some families are electing to forgo summer camp this year. Please respond quickly so we have an accurate number of interested Scouts and adults to reserve an accurate campground size. Note that if we go to summer camp, we are targeting late July/early August before school starts back up.
Scoutmaster Minute:
Theodore was a sickly boy. His health conditions were to plague him throughout his childhood. He suffered poor eyesight and asthma and other ailments including headaches, fevers, stomach pains, and intestinal groaning. By far his worst malady was asthma, with attacks so bad as to nearly suffocate him. Some lasted for weeks. Having been born in 1858, his asthma was not very well understood, and doctors possessed no medicine to aid in opening the air passages. In an attempt to relieve the child, his parents tried many commonly used remedies of the day. The stimulants nicotine and caffeine were believed to help open the air passages so his parents would have Theodore puff on a cigar or drink the strongest coffee one could get down. The coffee often made Theodore vomit. Usually his father, Theodore, Sr., would carry his young son around just trying to comfort the child and to force air into his lungs. His lungs were so weak that Theodore had to have his parents blow out his candle at night. His father recognized Theodore's strength of character and strongly encouraged him to develop his body through exercise, building an exercise room for him and his siblings on the family porch. His father famously remarked, "Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it." Theodore rose to the challenge of his father and from that point on began a regimen of strenuous exercise that he would follow for the rest of his life. Theodore loved the outdoors and nature. During one family outing in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, his father noted Theodore's remarked lung improvement after arduous mountain hikes. Theodore would continue to take on exercise, adopting weight lifting, gymnastics, wrestling, horseback riding, hiking, climbing, swimming, and rowing.
This fitness would serve him well in later life when he served as New York City's Police Commissioner, and later leading the charge of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment up Kettle Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War -- action that earned Theodore the Medal of Honor.
Most know Teddy Roosevelt as our 26th President. What many do not know about is his involvement with the Boy Scout movement. Starting in America a year after his presidency, Roosevelt was an ardent booster of the organization. He served on the committee of Troop 39 in Oyster Bay, New York, and was the first council commissioner of Nassau County Council. As a former president, he was elected honorary vice president of the Boy Scouts of America. Roosevelt was the first and only man designated as Chief Scout Citizen. Roosevelt once remarked:
"More and more I have grown to believe in the Boy Scout movement. I regard it as one of the movements most full of promise for the future here in America. The Boy Scout movement is distinctly an asset to our country for the development of efficiency, virility, and good citizenship. It is essential that its leaders be men of strong, wholesome character; of unmistakable devotion to our country, its customs and ideals, as well as in soul and by law citizens thereof, whose wholehearted loyalty is given to this nation, and to this nation alone."
For many years after his death in 1919, several thousand Scouts and leaders in the New York area made annual pilgrimages to his grave in Oyster Bay.
No human is without flaws and we are all born with both natural strengths and unique challenges. Teddy Roosevelt's example shows us that we should not let our disabilities serve as stumbling blocks or excuses to achieve greatness.
I will keep myself physically strong.
Yours in Scouting Service,
Doug Henry
Scoutmaster, Troop 1396