Scoutmaster Podcast 109

And now the old Scoutmaster. I certainly don't need to do this, but I use recordings of some of the people I interview as a little bump during the program. If you were willing, you could say: this is Bob Mazooka and you're listening to Clarke Green on the Scoutmaster podcast. You bet You bet I'm happy to. This is Bob Mazooka. He's got executive voice scouts and you're listening to my buddy, Clarke Green, on the Scoutmaster podcast and he is doing a fantastic job.

Well, thanks, Thanks, Bob. I'll have to play the entire recording so people don't think I told you to say that.

Okay, that's good. Well, this is podcast number 109.

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Well, as you can tell by the intro there, we've got a pretty special guest on the podcast this week And I'm very appreciative to Bob Mazooka for agreeing to do an interview with me. It was pretty exciting, I got to tell you.

Before we go any further, let's look in the mailbag here. Rick got in touch and Rick says: I love the podcast and the blog. I listen to and read many of them as soon as they come out, and I really appreciate your insights into the program.

Well, thanks, Rick. Certainly appreciate you being in touch. Rick said I have recently discovered your podcast. I'm enjoying catching up at the end of episode 55.

There's a beautiful piece of music which I believe is taps but be formed by piano, cellos and horn. Could you let me know what that piece of music is? I'd like to share it with others. Thank you and keep up the great work.

Well, Vic, thanks for being in touch. The piece of music you're referring to is taps by the O'Neill brothers and, like all the other music that is on the podcast, you can find it on an Amazon widget on the blog post containing this podcast.

Wait a minute now that's a sentence that would have been totally incomprehensible even five years ago. Right, There's an Amazon widget on the blog post containing each podcast. Sounds like a novelty song.

Oh well, Bobby Meadows wrote in. He said I have been an avid listener for well over a year. I'm assistant Scoutmaster for troop 218 in Saga Hatchee district of the Chattahoochee Council. I had to practice that for a little while. I wear many hats in my district and council, just like a lot of other scatters. I'm on my second time around on some of your podcasts and run across two podcasts that are incomplete Podcasts 54 and 57 would be possible to get a copy of these two.

Thanks for producing these, as they enlighten many of the questionable areas. With your many years of experience, Bobby, what you can do is you will also find a link on each podcast on the post that contains the podcast. There on the blog You'll find a link to the podcast archives. If you go to scoutmastercgcom and you click on podcasts on the menu, you'll see archive- go to the archive. I did fix 54 and 57.. Thanks for the heads up.

Somehow An incomplete file got transferred, but we're all set now. Kaylee Gallapo writes in to say thanks.

So much for the feature on Scouting in Canada. I've been a member of Scouts Canada since I was five years old.

I've held various positions in the organization, including as a Beaver Scouts leader And now, at 21,, I am one of those youth commissioners you found out about And one of the managers of our next national jamboree. I'm thoroughly looking forward to listening to more podcasts.

Well, thanks, Kaylee, And I hope I got Gallapo right. Let me know. We try right. We try In this podcast. I'm kicking off what I hope will be several different interviews over the course of 2012 to recognize the 100th anniversary of the Eagle Scout Award. I've been working at contacting notable Eagle Scouts trying to line them up for interviews and things like that, And I was really pleased- and, I got to tell you, slightly amazed- that our Chief Scout Executive, Bob Mazzucca, who is also an Eagle Scout, replied to my request for an interview by sitting down and recording an interview with me.

I wasn't quite so interested in his work as our Chief Scout Executive as his history as a scout and as an Eagle Scout. So I think- and Bob certainly had some fond memories to relate to us of that time in his life, And he's got some advice for us and a little bit of news about what's coming in the, what's happening in the coming years as far as the BSA is involved.

So I'm going to move right into the interview And after that there's a piece about the symbol of the Eagle and a little bit of the history of the Eagle Scout. So hey, that's plenty for one podcast, wouldn't you say? That's what I would say.

So let's get started, shall we?

48 years ago, my guest was in San Juan Batista, California. He was 16 years old and he was about to become Troop 28's newest Eagle Scout.

Now he's a pretty average scout, a pretty average, above average scout. He spent a couple of summers on staff at Pico Blanco Scout Reservation. He was inducted into the Esalen Lodge Order of the Arrow- Very similar story to a lot of guys in scouting- Went on to college and soon thereafter he started working for the Boy Scouts of America. He continued as a scouting professional for the next 36 years until he was selected to be our Chief Scout Executive in 2007.. And it is my great pleasure to welcome our Chief Scout Executive, Robert Mazuka, to the Scoutmaster Podcast.

Hello Bob, Hello Clark, how are you? I am just doing great And I invited you to come and talk with us today to recognize the 100th anniversary of the Eagle Scout Award. I'm working to interview a number of notable Eagle Scouts And what I'm really interested in is the story of that kid back there in San Juan Batista in Troop 28..

How did you get started with Troop 28?? I was actually. If you've got a minute, it's kind of an interesting story. I'm son of an Italian immigrant, one of eight kids. My dad was trying to figure out how to raise a family and we moved around a little bit. In my first few years of life.

We ended up in San Juan Batista when I was eight years old And we didn't know anything about Cub Scouting. I was never a Cub Scout but I got involved in the school and stuff.

And then my neighbor Abraham Vega came over one day and he was wearing this funny uniform And he asked me if I wanted to go with him to a troop meeting. I was 11 at the time, I guess, And I went and drank the Kool-Aid and never went back. It was really exciting, One of those fun kind of things. There's a really cool group of guys, a very eclectic group all over the map in terms of the intro, And the Scoutmaster was really a neat guy, Roy Pedersen.

And so I got started and got involved. A little while later I became a Den Chief and that was my first exposure to Cub Scouting.

I didn't know what a Cub Scout was And then I became the patrol leader of the Cobra Patrol. The typical story was a great adventure And it sort of kind of formed me. It was an interesting. I didn't know what was happening at the time, but I was sort of beginning to blossom and do things that I probably wouldn't have done had it not been for Scouting.

I played football as well and baseball in high school. But my interest in getting involved really kind of stemmed from that invitation by a neighbor to go join a Scout troop. You guys did what all other Scouts in the world do: You camped, you hiked, you hung out together, had your patrol improved. It was kind of an ideal time, though It was kind of a different time. Please don't let anybody get the idea you can do this today, But we would actually go out camping as a patrol by ourselves. We'd have a camp out and go out to a neighbor's ranch or farm and camp as a patrol and that sort of thing.

It was a fairly ideal. It was a very small town of about a thousand people and the house was never locked, The keys were always in the car, that kind of era.

So we were a lot more opportunity to just be boys and inventive and creative in ways that don't exist today, and that's a challenge for Scouting that we need to understand as well as we talk about the current time. But for me it was just a great adventure.

Can you point to any individual person who really made a difference in your life at the time? Sure, Ken, I can. Three Besides my father. My father was my hero, But the Scoutmaster Roy Pederson was just a great man. He was a park ranger at the state park there in San Juan. The mission and all of that historic grounds was a state park and he was a park ranger.

I had no kids of his own. He and his wife were just delightful people and he was a wonderful man. Milt Harrell was kind of the godfather of Scouting for decades. As a matter of fact I suspect that he had something to do with this. When I joined Scouting we didn't have anything and I didn't know where I was going to ever get a uniform or a cook kit or anything like that. One day they just kind of showed up and I didn't know where they came from.

But I suspect that old Uncle Milt did that. He was just kind of the godfather of the glue. That sort of held Scouting together in our town.

There was only one troop and one pack in this little town And then much further along. As I love telling Scoutmasters this story because, like it or not, good or bad, kids are listening to you, They really are listening to what you're saying. I was on the camp staff at Camp Picoblanco and I had just graduated.

It was my third year on the staff From high school, when I was spending the summer on the staff and I was going to go to college that fall, I remember toward the end of the season, Bill Litterdale was the camp director. I just worshiped this guy. He was a great baritone, great singer.

He had a bit of boxer in college and then the Navy in his nose was spread all across his face. That's a great guy. But one day toward the end of the season he sort of took me aside and we sat on a log and he just started talking to me about what I was going to do with myself. I had planned all my life to be a teacher. I wanted to be a school teacher.

I was going to college to be educated so I could be a school teacher. He suggested that I might want to think about professional scouting. He thought that he had seen something in me that would make me a reasonably effective professional scouter.

And here's a guy that I just worshiped telling me that he thought I was good enough to do what he does for a living. I was just blown away And so that was always in the back of my mind.

And as I got through school and graduated, I applied to be to scouting and there was no way. Frankly, I did teach school for one year simply because I needed a job. I had a little Catholic school in San Luis Obispo. I was actually working in the gas station and I was back in the days when you washed windows and stuff and I was washing the windows of this lady who was getting gas and she gave me her credit card and it was Mission Nativity Schools and it happened to be Sister Clarice and I was graduating that spring and I said, man, I need a job, I'm a history major. And she says: I need a history teacher.

My first year out of college I taught school but I got a call about midway through that contract here that there was an opening in Modesto and scouting and I went over and interviewed and came back, fulfilled my contract with the school and then started that July in Modesto in 1971 and I never looked back. It's been a great career, But it was that man, that man I worshiped, that man I respected. Had he been a plumber and told me that he thought I could be a good plumber, I probably would be a plumber today. That's how much I thought of Bill Hitterdale. He's a great guy, Obviously. That was just an amazing turning point and you've carried a lot of that forward.

What do you remember about becoming an Eagle Scout? That may have been a little bit different at the time than it is now.

Well, it was different. Frankly, I racked my brains for years because I read and I see all of these wonderful service projects that are happening out there. I couldn't remember my service project. Maybe it's in my record and they reminded me that there wasn't a service project back then and I became an Eagle Scout.

So I think, oh God, thank you, because I thought I would do something memorable if I had done something. But the thing that I- and I've been asked this question before- what about the process was most beneficial to you or most impactful on you? And for me it was learning to be a leader. I just did 21 merit badges. I did the required. I wasn't one to get all the merit badges or anything like that.

I was fascinated with this emerging part of me that could be a leader And I learned so much from that process about servant leadership and community service and all of that, and I learned that it felt pretty good to be a good leader, and I learned that in scouting, and so I would say that that was the most beneficial to me was learning the leadership skills that are still with you today, no matter what you do. If you had the opportunity to talk to that young guy then- that 16-year-old- you had to have had a time where you were a little discouraged about doing this, or how to step back, or two.

What was your talent? Well, first of all, I would say perseverance is absolutely the key and it's imperative. And the reason I say it's imperative because this is an everyday occurrence for me. Today I wear a lapel pin on my coat wherever I go, because it's a great conversation starter, and it goes kind of something like this: You go to take your coat off on the plane and your seat mate sees the lapel pin and he says, oh, that's a scout pin, right, And you say, yeah, it is. It begins a process of going down memory lane with his scouting experience. It's just like an itch just waiting to be scratched, But invariably what happens- and I meet these people every day who will tell me that their biggest regret in their entire life- and they've carried it with them for their whole life- is that they didn't close the deal, They didn't become an Eagle Scout, Especially if they made it to star or life, Especially life.

And I would say to a young man who was struggling with kind of closing the deal that he will regret it for the rest of his life, and I know this for a fact. This isn't just some philosophical big guy, old guy, talking to you here, Number one and number two. The other reason why it's really really important is the world we live in today needs Eagle Scouts.

We need the kind of character, leadership with integrity, sense of service and all of those kinds of things that goes along with becoming and being an Eagle Scout for the rest of your life. So, for a very personal, selfish reason, you'll regret it if you don't- and for a much more global reason, we need you to be an Eagle Scout. We're talking to Scoutmasters right now. We're talking to Scoutmasters, assistant Scoutmasters, people on committees and things like that.

Is it important for us to be driving these guys towards becoming Eagle Scouts? Well, I think we have to be careful about driving them to become an Eagle Scout, because I'll give you a personal example when I first started in my career: the relationship between my first boss and his son destroyed for life. He went to his grave. He strayed from his son over the dad's passion for him to become an Eagle Scout- for the dad's reasons and not the boys. There's lots of things that accrue to a young person's involvement in Scouting.

By the way, my older son's not an Eagle Scout but he got a tremendous amount out of Scouting And I think that, for example, as a matter of fact, I would say to anybody who thinks we can measure our success by Eagle Scouts: if that were the case, we'd be dismal failures. Five percent of the kids become Eagle Scouts.

There's a number of reasons why, you know, either the leadership isn't strong or there's a number of reasons why a young man doesn't go all the way. It's important that we create the environment where every boy who has the passion and the drive and the interest and with a little nudging- and that's fine, nudging is good- can become an Eagle Scout.

But we shouldn't be so focused on producing Eagle Scouts that we forget the impact that we make on every kid who gets involved with us over a period of time. Scout oath and law you carry with you for the rest of your life, regardless of the rank you make because you learn it early and the more that you practice it by being an active member of a Scout troop, the more it becomes part of your DNA. But it's really important that we don't just solely focus on producing Eagle Scouts at the expense of all those kids who aren't going to get there.

I think that's really important. You ask about people who work with Scouts.

What can we do to really make a difference and, especially today, become really good at it, learn how to relate to today's kids, understand the reality that kids face today versus those that you bring with you from your own past experience, and become really good at it? It's wonderful that you want to, but it's even more wonderful that you get good at it by learning and those kinds of things. I would be remiss if I didn't share that.

How do we get good at it, Bob? You learn from the best.

You learn from people around you Because you have done it for so long. There are lots of things that have changed. You have to embrace change. For example, I love the discussion that I have with old-time Scoutmasters who are really, really good guys but are angry at me for allowing them to take off on the left shirt. Left sleeve of the Boy Scout shirt. I love having the conversation with them about.

Tell me what the difference is between a young man reaching into his backpack and pulling out a field book, coming through the pages to see if he can eat that plant or if that snake is going to eat him, or reaching into his pocket and pulling out the very same device that he uses to get every other bit of information in his life to accomplish the same thing. It's just a tool.

Embracing things like technology that are creative in our approach and embracing the notion that kids are different today and if we want to impact them the way we know we can, we have to meet them where they are, at least meet them halfway. Those are things that especially people have been around for a while need to understand and embrace.

You will have been our chief scout executive for five years in September, Correct? And now you were telling me we have a mandatory retirement for the CEO, only for the chief scout executive of 65, and it's a good rule. It really is. When I started this adventure, I knew I would only have five years to leave the footprint that my predecessors have had 8,, 10,, 20 years to leave.

So I set myself on a journey of sprinting and I've been doing that and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I'm proud of where scouting is today and what we've done.

But if you move that finish line I think I'd die. I'm not quite sure how I'd get there.

So it's a good rule and I celebrate that, I embrace that and there's a lot of great folks that the selection committee is looking at that will succeed me and take us to New Heights. But it's been a great adventure Over your tenure.

What do you think is the most exciting and promising thing that's happening in the Boy Scouts of America right now? There's a couple. It's such a major exercise of reinventing our culture. You can change the organization chart all you want, but changing the hearts and minds of the people in the boxes, that's a whole other story.

We have really sort of redefined what we call kind of fund, the new BFA, in ways that help us learn how to serve our customer better, whoever the customer happens to be. And in the case of the national organization, I maintain that there's only two reasons for the national council to exist, and one is to preserve and protect the brand, because as that brand becomes more iconic: all the boats rise. And the other is to help a local council be successful because all scouting is local. The 1325 Walnut Hill Lane- the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts- owns one unit. It's a venture crew for employees. That's it.

Scouting happens in Peoria and Kenneth Square and places like that, so kind of reinventing that. And then this whole notion of learning how to embrace the world we live in today with technology and the STEM initiative and the healthy living initiative, which are addressing national crises that we have today with regard to science and technology and with regard to children's health. Those are things that I'm really proud of.

And then the iconic sort of cherry on the Sunday is the summit project in West Virginia, which is sort of the boldest thing we could do to proclaim that we're going to be around for another hundred years. Very intentional about talking about the future rather than the past.

And what do you think that second century is going to look like? Well, I can ask a lot of you: what are you going to look like a hundred years from now? Frankly, I don't have a clue. When you think about it, We may be teleporting around. We don't even know what transportation is, but I will tell you this- and I say this to anybody who cares to listen- that as long as trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent and concepts like on my honor, I'll do my duty, honor and duty and God and country- as long as those concepts are relevant, then scouting will be relevant and be strong a hundred years from now. But if those concepts are no longer relevant, we're all in trouble for bigger reasons than just scouting.

I really believe that as long as we continue to adapt to the world around us in ways of delivering to the kids around us, at whatever point in time we are, we will continue to be successful as long as we maintain our roots, our core values. The contribution we've made to America for a hundred years is producing individual good citizens and we will always need individual good citizens.

So I can't even dream at the rate of technology and other things going today. I can't even dream what we're going to look like ten years from now.

But the point is that those bedrock values that we've stood forever for and have stood the test of time had better always be important, and as long as they're important we'll continue to deliver. Thank you very much. If I can ever be of any service to you, sir, the podcast can let us know You already are. Thank you, Appreciate it. Appreciate it

A symbol of power, nobility and freedom. The eagle's flight through human history is steeped in myth and legend. An ancient Mesopotamia, the story of King Itana, tells of his flight to the heavens on an eagle. The Assyrian Babylonians recited the epichrome Anzu and a lion headed.

Eagle, so powerful that it could cause whirlwind simply by flapping its wings, was born. The Assyrian carvings blended the lion and the eagle, a symbol that spread to Greece, where Herodotus believed that griffin lived in the mountains of India, where it made a nest of gold. In Norse mythology, an eagle sits at the topmost branch of the world tree, representing wisdom and light. In ancient Egypt, the eagle was the symbol of the Nile and the royal bird of the Thebans. Egyptian hieroglyphics used the eagle as the symbol for the first letter of the alphabet A. The Greeks depicted the eagle with wings outstretched, a serpent in his talons, representing the triumph of good over evil, of supreme spiritual energy.

The Greeks named the constellation Aquila for the eagle, the sacred bird of Zeus. The Romans saw the eagle as a symbol of the god Jupiter and as a symbol of victory, and the eagle became the emblem of the Caesars, representing supreme authority. Chinese warriors, especially those who were fearless, tenacious or keen of vision, invoke the eagle as their symbol. The Athapascan people of western North America portrayed eagles as deliverers of their people from famine. The Comanche eagle dance tells the legend of a young son of a chief who died and was turned into the first eagle as an answer to his father's prayers. Many Native North Americans speak of how the thunderbird, a giant eagle, is responsible for creating thunder and lightning by the beating of its wings.

Pawnee see the eagle to be a symbol of fertility and honor the eagle with songs and chants and dances. The Aztecs revered the eagle as a symbol of honor and strength, and Celtic mythology the eagle is known as the oldest of all creatures, so ancient that the rock he perched on in his youth once towered amongst the stars but has since weathered to the size of a man's fist. To early Christians, the eagle symbolized ascension, and early iconography depicted the eagle as the symbol of Saint John the Evangelist. On June 20th 1782, the eagle was chosen to symbolize the new United States of America.

The eagle became a prominent feature of the seal of state of the new republic and several state flags now depict the eagle as due coins and currency of the United States. Zambia, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Panama, Botswana, Mexico, Germany and Indonesia have also adopted an eagle as their national symbol. The Apollo 11 crew named their lunar module eagle. That was with the words of eagle scout Neil Armstrong. The eagle has landed. That man was first on the moon in 1911.

The Boy Scouts of America chose the eagle to symbolize its highest achievement. The first eagle scout medal was awarded in 1912 to Arthur Rose Eldred. Eldred was the first of three generations of eagle scouts. His son and grandson hold the rank as well. In 1982, 13 year old Alexander whole, singer of normal Illinois, was recognized as the 1 million eagle scout of the last century.

More than 2 million scouts have achieved scouting's highest honor and can now name themselves eagle scout and are associated with one of humanity's most iconic symbols of nobility, honor and freedom.