what does the rank of eagle scout mean to you
What It Means to Be an Hawkeye Sentry
By Mark Ray
A new book explores the impact of men who have earned Scouting'southward highest rank from World War II to the present and beyond.
- In Search of Eagle Scouts And Their Stories
| |  LEGACY OF HONOR: The Values and Influences of America's Eagle Scouts By Alvin Townley 256 pages Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95 world wide web.thomasdunnebooks.com |
Coker tried everything to survive those long hours: praying, counting to himself, thinking about his family. By the end of two months, nevertheless, he could barely call back his own proper name.
But he remembered the Spotter Oath. "The very last thing I could consciously hold onto was the Scout Oath," he said. "By the end, I could simply become out the outset verse: 'On my honor I volition do my best.' That forced my brain to function and say, 'I will do this once again. I volition not exercise what they want me to do.' "
Coker's remarkable story is merely one of dozens Alvin Townley uncovered as he traveled the land, interviewing Eagle Scouts of all ages in gathering textile for his book, Legacy of Accolade: The Values and Influences of America'due south Hawkeye Scouts. The volume was published at the terminate of last year past Thomas Dunne Books, a segmentation of St. Martin's Press.
An Eagle Scout himself, Townley gear up out to gauge the lasting significance of Boy Scouting's highest rank. "Subsequently I was several years removed from Scouting, I really began to wonder what it means to be an Hawkeye Scout when y'all're not wearing a uniform every twenty-four hours," Townley said in an interview. "Beyond that, what departure has the program made? Has it really mattered? I wanted to detect out, and I did."
Townley was so committed to finding out that he quit his job, sold his business firm, and spent a yr as a self-described "homeless vagabond," crisscrossing America in search of Eagle Scouts. In all, he traveled 40,000 miles and interviewed well over 200 Eagle Scouts and Picket leaders.
The Hawkeye Scouts Townley profiles in Legacy of Honor—men who earned their badges over a span of eight decades—are a study in diversity, reflecting every race and embracing many creeds and political persuasions. They include Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Some would seem right at home in a Norman Rockwell painting, while others are less conventional (like the Hawkeye Sentry Townley met who had sported a Mohawk haircut, earrings, and tattoos at his Eagle Scout court of honor).
"There are Eagles of every stripe, shape, and colour; yet they all have this mutual thread," Townley said. "And that to me is the corking thing nigh the story."
Townley's highly readable book falls neatly into 2 halves. The first focuses on achievements, past and nowadays, telling of Eagle Scouts who served in the armed services and the government, who founded and led Fortune 500 companies, and who became heroes on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many have familiar names, including Michael Bloomberg, Pecker Marriott, Sam Walton, and Jim Lovell.
The book'southward second one-half focuses on Eagle Scouts who are edifice a legacy for the future by conserving natural habitats, leading colleges and universities, and serving as campsite counselors and Scoutmasters. This office of the book also explores how the legacy of Scouting lives on in and then many families.
For instance, Townley introduces one Nevada family in which all 11 brothers became Hawkeye Scouts. Their mother, Sherry Thomas, explains that she had to motivate but her first iv sons to accomplish Eagle. "Especially when nosotros got to number x and 11, the older boys really put pressure on the younger ones," she says. "They weren't going to let the tradition finish!"
Anecdotes similar that are sprinkled throughout Legacy of Award. Readers will meet a U.S. representative who can still recite the Society of the Pointer ceremonies he led as a Lookout and the Scouter who took an FBI squad with him on a Philmont trek. They will read near a Scoutmaster who helped 75 boys become Eagle Scouts over 44 years and the camp staffer who survived a diving blow, thanks to a Scout to whom he had taught the skills to earn the Lifesaving merit badge.
But most of all, readers volition acquire about Hawkeye Scouts who are giving back to their communities in ways both large and small.
"The people I met with are doing an incredible range of different things in different places," Townley said, "but they all take this sense of duty to other people and are all linked together by that. And that fact has given rise to an incredible legacy of service."
Townley chosen this legacy "an untold and absolutely inspiring story." Thanks to Legacy of Honor, readers now take the chance to see just how Eagle Scouts have served, loved, and led America for nearly a hundred years.
Mark Ray is a frequent contributor to Scouting magazine.
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Copyright © 2007 by the Boy Scouts of America. All rights thereunder reserved; anything appearing in Scouting magazine or on its Web site may not exist reprinted either wholly or in part without written permission. Because of liberty given authors, opinions may not reflect official concurrence.
Source: https://scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0701/a-what.html
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