Skip to main content

Trustworthy, Loyal, Etc.

March 2023
1min read

When Oliver Jensen joined the Boy Scouts (February/March 1985), the organization was already about sixteen years old, and early growing pains had ceased. I was a Scout in the very first year, before Mr. Jensen was born.

Shortly after the incorporation of the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910, Asa E. Lewis, principal of schools in Dallas, Pennsylvania, wrote to the National Headquarters in New York requesting that a troop he was organizing be registered, and that he be appointed Scoutmaster. National Headquarters, starting with nothing but a little information from the year-old Boy Scouts in England, was proceeding by trial and error. It eventually complied with Lewis’s request, designating the new troop Dallas, Pa., Troop No. 1.

We received the first edition of Handbook for Boys . No official equipment had been authorized at that time. The first item I recall was the pocketknife. It was recommended that tinned-steel canteens, pint cups, mess kits, and cutlery —Army surplus from the Spanish-American War—be purchased locally.

I enclose a picture of the first issue of uniforms. The narrow, light-colored strips at the shoulders supported a small haversack, which proved useless, being too small and painful to carry, and was soon changed. Leggings were of heavy canvas with metal stays, such as the ones women then wore in corsets. Belts were of heavy leather, with rings inserted at the side, and the buckle was a round metal insignia thrust through a slot.

No organization acted as sponsor for our troop. Some local businessmen subscribed funds to buy three twelve-by-fourteen-foot wall tents, but these were too heavy to carry and unsuitable for Scouting. Later, we got some Army surplus pup tents, made in two halves that buttoned together by flaps at the top, which were designed to be carried by two soldiers. We also got Army surplus blankets, which the boys bought individually.

Of all, my most enjoyable Scouting experience was camping during World War II with my two sons, a week at a time, over three successive years on North Mountain in the corner of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The oldest son became an Eagle Scout in Troop 281 in 1944. His two sons became Eagle Scouts in Troop 81 while living in Waterloo, New York.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "June/july 1985"

Authored by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Have historians underestimated the importance of Roosevelt’s twenty-four-year struggle with the disease that made him a paraplegic?

Authored by: The Editors

In 1983 our country went to war and left the press behind. The outcry that followed raised issues that first came up when Abraham Lincoln was President and still remain with us.

Authored by: Stephen W. Sears

The Civil War ignited the basic conflict between a free press and the need for military security. By war’s end, the hard-won compromises between soldiers and newspapermen may not have provided all the answers, but they had raised all the modern questions.

Authored by: John Chancellor

A veteran reporter looks back to a time when the stakes were really high — and yet military men actually trusted newsmen.

Authored by: Joseph H. Cooper

Westmoreland and Sharon embarked on costly lawsuits to justify their battlefield judgments. They might have done much better to listen to Mrs. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Authored by: Brian Dunning

The curious story of Milford Haven

Authored by: Brian Dunning

The curious story of Milford Haven

Authored by: Ruth Mehrtens Calvin

His works ranged from intimate cameos to heroic public monuments. America has produced no greater sculptor.

Authored by: Elting E. Morison

A lot of people still remember how great it was to ride in the old Pullmans, how curiously regal to have a simple, well-cooked meal in the dining car. Those memories are perfectly accurate—and that lost pleasure holds a lesson for us that extends beyond mere nostalgia.

Authored by: Peggy Robbins

Slovenly, impulsive, impoverished, and grotesque, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was the greatest naturalist of his age. But nobody knew it.

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.