Happy Friday! Recognizing a community’s hardest workers, plus other good news from this week

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Scouts pay tribute to community’s hard-working snowplow crew

The folks who clear the roads and sidewalks of snow are the true unsung heroes of our winter towns. Two Scouts BSA troops from Nevada have made sure their efforts don’t go unrecognized.

Troops 850B and 850G presented crewmembers with some complimentary, delicious Scout popcorn.

According to this article from the Elko Daily Free Press, the Scouts hope the popcorn makes for a delicious snack.

“I had three careers: medicine, the Boy Scouts and the Army”

George Allen of Rochester, Minnesota, is a retired rheumatologist who also served in the Army. Yet, being involved in Scouting remains one of his cherished memories.

In 1942, at age 12, Allen joined the Boy Scouts. By then, the United States had entered World War II. With his Scouting troop, Allen participated in scrap drives, during which they encouraged people to donate scrap metals, paper, rubber and cloth to be recycled and repurposed into weapons, planes, ships or other items. About once a month, Allen says, “We’d go on a truck through the neighborhoods and blow the horn. And if people had stuff that they wanted us to get, we’d go in their garage or basement, pick it up and put it in the truck.”

Read more about Allen’s experience as a BSA youth and, later, a volunteer in this article from the Rochester Post Bulletin.

Napa Valley Scouts head out into the snow

For more than 40 years, St. Helena’s Scouts BSA Troop 1 has gone winter camping in the High Sierra. This year was no different, when the Scouts snowshoed and spent the night in snow caves.

They also performed a retirement ceremony for a U.S. flag in an amphitheater made entire of snow.

Read more about their experience in this story from the St. Helena Star newspaper.

Montana troop recaps more than 100 years of service to community

As the BSA gets older and older (it turned 113 just last month!), we hear more and more about communities that have had a relationship with Scouting in one way or another for 100 years or more.

Scouting began in Havre, Montana, in either 1920 or 1921, based on research from its local troop. Read more about what else their fascinating research uncovered in this article from the Havre Daily News.

Scouts BSA troop helps assemble habitats for fisheries

They may look like large, spiky wheels for medieval torture machinery, but mossback habitats provide life to fisheries and offer broad benefits to lake ecosystems.

Under the direction of park rangers at Youghiogheny River Lake, Scouts from Rockwood, Pennsylvania, assembled 23 mossback habitats.

“The … Rockwood Boy Scouts are a great group of young fellows,” said one organizer. “They are fun to work with because they have a strong work ethic and truly care about the environment.”

Learn more about this cool project in this article from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.


About Aaron Derr 498 Articles
Aaron Derr is the senior editor of Scout Life and Scouting magazines, and also a former Cubmaster and Scouts BSA volunteer.