Legacy of service

COEUR d'ALENE - Boy Scouts always had its fun moments, Jeff Traw said, but sometimes the teenager couldn't fathom the point of the lessons.

Like ice rescue training? Come on.

"I always thought, 'We live in Coeur d'Alene. The lake hasn't frozen in years,'" the 18-year-old said. "Why do we need to learn this skill?"

He found out when he was in the sixth grade and wandering with friends by the frozen Spokane River, he said, where he saw three teenagers fall through the ice.

"I remembered what they taught us in Boy Scouts: Reach, throw, row and go," Traw said, and described how he tore off a tree branch to fish out the older boys. "From then on I never questioned why we learned the skills. I just knew I had to know them. Otherwise, somebody might die."

Not for nothing do Americans suit up their boys in khakis and neckerchiefs.

The Boy Scouts of America turns 100 this year, and alumni from across the Inland Northwest gathered Wednesday morning to honor a legacy of service and tackling the outdoors.

Besides Traw, who spoke at the event, roughly 120 adult scouters turned out for the 100th Anniversary Alumni Breakfast at The Coeur d'Alene Resort, where tables of scout memorabilia was displayed.

"This is the best turnout we've ever had for these breakfasts," said Dean Opsal, member of the Inland Northwest Council that put on the event. "It's fun to take a look back at all the old stuff because it brings back a lot of memories for lots of these guys."

Tim McCandless, scout executive for the Inland Northwest region, spoke on the history of the Boy Scouts of America, founded by W.D. Boyce in 1910 after the businessman was inspired by the English version of the program.

"Scout programs started spreading like wildfire all across the country," McCandless said. "Before 1910 was up, troops popped up in Spokane and Wallace, and then all over the area."

North Idaho remains a prominent fixture in the scouting community because of Camp Easton, McCandless said, which continues to lure scouting troops from around the world.

"We've had troops from Taiwan who came there three years in a row," he said. "The reputation there is second to none."

Kootenai County also currently boasts 1,919 scouts, Opsal said, with 800 registered volunteers.

These include Hayden Mayor Ron McIntire, who was honored on Wednesday with a 100 Year Celebration Award for his service and financial contributions to the scouts.

The event also included a speech from Vaughn Ward, Republican candidate for the first congressional district, who spoke on the leadership skills he honed while serving in the Marines in Iraq.

As evident in the tables lining the room, neatly adorned with old collections of merit badges, pocket knives and exploring manuals, the Boy Scouts has provided decades of memories for boys learning the ropes of life.

Chuck Fisk, a 76-year-old scout unit commissioner from Spokane, was posting notes beside photos of scouts at work.

A scout volunteer for 63 years, Fisk remembered joining the organization in 1947 at the behest of his father, who had been a scout in his own youth.

"My dad told me, 'I'll get my Eagle when you get yours.' That's when adults could still become an Eagle," Fisk said of the highest Boy Scout rank. "I said, 'Yeah right, dad.'"

But his father completed his final merit badges behind his son's back, Fisk recalled. So when the young man was called to the stage for his Eagle badge, he found two: One for him, and one for his father.

"I hugged him around the shoulders and shouted, 'You did it! You did it!'" Fisk said with a laugh, adding that soon after the Boy Scouts created the 18-year-old deadline for Eagle Scout status. "We were one of the last father and son pairs to get our Eagle together."

Lorenzo Elias, 71, said he joined the scouts in 1950 through his military school in Los Angeles, Calif.

The camping trips and outdoors training reminded him of his grandpa's cattle farm, the Worley resident remembered, which prompted him to get involved again in the '60s.

He wasn't visiting any cattle farms, though.

Instead, he was assigned to study the inner city of Los Angeles, where the Watts riots occurred, to nurture a scouting program.

"Our job was to go into the cities, study the tactics youths used against law enforcement, come back and put together a program to reach out to kids and make scouting relevant there," Elias said.

Throughout the '60s, he helped orchestrate a network of volunteers at local schools to transport kids and scout masters to camps outside the city, he said.

"What these boys did, they served the community in things like crowd control and other projects," he said. "I felt it was very rewarding to have an impact like that on the community."

Alumni at the breakfast apparently had equally endearing memories, as the gathering donated $24,856 on Wednesday to the Boy Scouts.

Alumni have interest in preserving their legacy, said adult scouter Bob Rackham.

The 75-year-old is happy to explain how all four of his sons are Eagle scouts, nine of his 18 grandsons are Eagle scouts, and "The others are coming along."

The scouts program hasn't changed much since he joined 1943, he said, even in the '60s and '70s when he served in the Marines in Vietnam and the country was in a tumult over war and civil rights.

"My sons were born and raised in that time frame, and I think it was paramount in their lives they had something as successful and stable as scouting they could get involved with in those challenging days," he said.

Now it's the fellowship of other adult scouters that gives him a sense of belonging, he said.

"When we see each other, or just spot someone in a crowd who's a wood badger, we meet and talk," he said. "There's something magnetic about that. Once you get involved with the loving and caring, it stays with you forever."