Our Thanks To You
Illustration By Richard Sparks
Frankly, we don't thank you nearly enough for your dedication to what is good and true: teaching our youth members—our children—the virtues of what a Scout should be.
And you never know when and where those patiently taught lessons in character that you imbue our young membership with will shine forth—but they will shine forth—even if you don't get to see it. Which brings us to a story we heard...
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One of our national office staffers was recently at a post office that had two stamp machines. The regular line was long inside the facility, so several people had lined up in front of the machines to save time.
Or so they thought. One stamp machine began malfunctioning, and the gentlemen trying to make it work lost his temper. His behavior distracted our staffer, who was using the machine next to his. She got flustered, pressed a wrong button, and out popped a few stamps instead of the stamp book she needed. And now she figured she might be short on credit in the machine for a stamp book, and she had no other currency with her. As our BSA employee stood there figuring the arithmetic, a man of about 40 who had seen her dilemma came forward and offered her a dollar. She declined, but he insisted, saying, "It's only a dollar." So she took the bill from the stranger and thanked him as he turned to walk away. She put the dollar in the machine, out came a stamp book, but so did a dollar coin and some other change. Delighted, our staffer called to the man and insisted he take the dollar coin. As someone in the stamp machine line murmured, "Chivalry isn't dead," our employee had another idea. "Are you an Eagle Scout?" she asked the helpful stranger. He seemed surprised, but then looked thoughtful and said: "No, but I was a Webelos Scout. I earned my Arrow of Light." Bingo. To which our staffer replied, "Thank you for your Good Turn." |
This is a little incident. Not a heroic rescue. Not the stuff of the National Court of Honor. The kind of thing that should and could happen every day. As the poet Wordsworth described it, "That best portion of a good man's life—his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."
A Scout is kind—and an awful lot more. And all our young people in the Boy Scouts of America—three million of them—have you, the volunteer leaders of the BSA, to thank for your great dedication in forming them, ethically and morally, one day at a time, one value at a time, during many activities, and over many years.
You're really making a difference—in the lives of these children and, ultimately, in the life of this great nation.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from a couple of your staunchest fans.
Roy S. Roberts
President
Roy L. Williams
Chief Scout Executive
November - December 2003 Table of Contents
Copyright © 2003 by the Boy Scouts of America. All rights thereunder reserved; anything appearing in Scouting magazine or on its Web site may not be reprinted either wholly or in part without written permission. Because of freedom given authors, opinions may not reflect official concurrence.