Boy Scouts take oaths of service to their community. (Photos courtesy of Bill Truran)
Eagle Scouts Alijaan Anjum, left, and Ethan Poplawski.
In writing about our home area, a frequent choice is to go to objects that we can see or to perform a recounting of history that has taken place here.
Other elements of life have also been encountered here - that which is unseen. Scouting is one of them.
Last weekend, I had the good fortune to attend a ceremony celebrating the highest level of achievement for a young person in Scouting: Obtaining Eagle Scout status.
Scouting has been a mainstay in Sussex County during my lifetime and in fact for more than 110 years. Many boys from my hometown of Franklin joined the Scouts during their youth, and this is true for other localities in our county.
The Boy Scouts of America have acted as a kind of rite of passage for many, who became a member just as perhaps an older brother had or maybe their father or grandfather.
Being a Scout has been a way to find friends beyond the classrooms of one’s childhood school, boys from a few miles beyond where our Little League experiences were or beyond our summer swimming area or the hikes and games and wanderings in the farm fields nearby that boys will do in their spare times. In one’s youth, these represent new horizons beyond the boundaries of Franklin.
There are those who enjoyed the outings and learned a couple things about a compass or tracking or how to handle a bow and arrow. A few of the boys made an earnest effort, a great dedication of time and growing talent, to work on merit badges and gain new knowledge and work toward a quiver full of badges.
These few boys will have gained quite a wide breadth of tools and assets on which to build the rest of their lives. The work will serve as a feather in their cap as their nascent resumes begin to build to enhance their blooming careers. They will have a foundation of great tools to use, and many of them develop leadership qualities.
Many of these Eagle Scouts have gone on to serve our country through West Point or Annapolis, and they have performed leadership roles in society.
A good addition to the work of the boys is that their parents have the opportunity to help them know and grow. What a great bonding and building relationship this is.
Here are tenets of being a Boy Scout:
- Oath: “On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
- Scout Law: “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”
- Scout Motto: “Be prepared.”
Taken along with our spiritual commitment to God and our family, I think these principles nail it for our own moral compass and purpose.
While this column is about the two boys, the girls had similar organizations. Checking today with Mom, in the 1930s or so, she was a Brownie, then a Girl Scout. She says my aunt Stella Sparnon was a Campfire girl in the 1910s. I know they enjoyed and cherished the experiences all the days of their lives.
The two boys I had the good fortune to witness gaining the Eagle Scout status were Ethan Poplawski and Alijaan Anjum. Congratulations to them, their families and to all of us for the valuable addition to our community that they provide.
It is important to record this from an historical perspective. The Scouts have served us in Sussex County for generations, and many times the same family connections pervade the years.
The boys and girls who took part in Scouting exemplified some of the best qualities of being a citizen. Our communities over the years, and certainly today, need good citizens - people who hold up traditions and who take oaths for goodness and keep them.
The Scouts hopefully will be the people who build essentials, maintain laws and fill seats on town boards, people who act as leaders and help guide us in directions for the betterment of society.
What a good program Boy Scouts has provided, a long legacy in Sussex County.
Bill Truran, Sussex County’s historian, may be contacted at billt1425@gmail.com