Scoutmaster Podcast 180

And now for you, Scoutmaster. So as a Scout, maybe the first time you go to summer camp for a week you may feel a little homesick. That'll happen. You usually get over it. After you go. For several years you don't get homesick anymore.

After you go for several years more, you get camp sick At home.

Well, this is podcast number 180.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's see one entry in the mailbag this week from Jim Crutchfield, who is a volunteer in Carlisle Pennsylvania, where he serves on his district activities committee. He wrote in to say this: Clark, thanks for doing the blog and the podcast. I'm back to scouting for a third time to stay.

The first was a boy, The second when my boys were old enough to join And now, as I approach military retirement, I want to continue to serve among great people. I'm pouring over the blog, listening to the podcast, and I brought the book to read at the Jambo.

I worked the first half and now I'm back at real work. Well, thank you so much, Jim. I'm glad that you found us and I'm glad that you're finding what we've got out there useful. And thanks for getting the book. By the way, if you haven't heard yet I've got a book, That's right. It's called Thoughts on Scouting.

If you go to scoutmastercgcom, you'll find out how to get your copy. It's 150 Thoughts on Scouting that were originally published on our Twitter feed as tweets.

So it's a quick read, and it just came to me after getting Jim's message that you know you could take this book. Actually, you can get through the book probably in about 15 minutes. I mean, if you take a break, right, It's a quick one- to check off the reading list and you can walk around and tell people that I just read a book.

So well, yes, reason number 25 to buy my book. Thank you. This week is one of the best weeks of my year because I'm at summer camp and I'm pre-recording the podcast, and it's just going to be a short visit and I'm going to replay a story from a podcast almost two years ago and it's called The Boy from Our Hoose and it's going to take up the rest of the podcast and we'll be back again to talk to you next week and hopefully have some things from summer camp to report on. But until then, we've got The Boy from Our Hoose.

So, hey, let's get started, shall we?

This has to be the truth, folks, because there is no way anyone could make this up. The year is 1926. We're in New Jersey- Yeah, New Jersey, and we're in a warehouse and a crate, a big heavy crate of World War I surplus semaphore flagpoles. It sounds like a bad joke, I know, but this actually happened. This big heavy crate shifted and fell And because of that the whole face of worldwide scouting changed.

Now I'm a little ahead of the story, obviously. Now I understand why that crate is so important.

We've got to go back about 26 years and then we have to go a considerable distance from that warehouse in New Jersey. We've got to go all the way over the Atlantic to Our Hoose, Denmark. In August of 1900, a boy was born in the city of Our Hoose named Wilhelm Bihara Gard Jensen. Wilhelm grew up and became a boy who liked to go roaming through the woods outside Our Hoose. His older brother, Harold, sent him a Christmas present one year, and that Christmas present was the book Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys. The book had been a big smash success all over Europe and had been translated into Danish.

Well, Wil read the book and discovered that scouts did the kind of things that he wanted to do when he was out there in the woods hiking and tracking and camping and cooking over fires and all this great stuff. And he also discovered that to become a boy scout you had to join a patrol.

Well, there was no patrol around- not that Wil knew about- So he got his buddies together and he made up a patrol. That patrol did the sort of adventurous stuff that he had hoped they would do.

They got out in the woods outside of Our Hoose and went camping and hiking, But they had meetings that kind of devolved into you know, some kind of rough tumble games that Wil didn't particularly care for. And besides that, about 1912 there was a big downturn in the Danish economy and Wil's family needed to move and follow his father's work from place to place for several years. Four years later Wil and his family were back in Our Hoose. Wil was a bit older and he formed his patrol. He was their patrol leader And they just went scouting all the time. They camped on an island on a nearby lake and they put together theatrical presentations with other patrols to raise some money.

They tramped around the countryside, They hiked and camped one summer all along the west coast of Denmark And Wil just flourished. He attained the rank of night scout, which was the highest in Danish scouting in 1917. His circle of influence grew.

His patrol was now part of a real troop and he was the most senior patrol leaders and often led the group as a whole. He came into contact with other scout troops in the community and began to see the wider circle of scouting as it formed in those early days. By the time he was 20 years old, Wil was still involved with scouts who was helping lead his troop and he was also studying to become a pharmacist. But then he was selected to go to the First World Jamboree at Olympia in London And that's where he first met Baden Powell. Going to that First World Jamboree really spiked Wil's interest. He began to get very serious about his leadership in scouting.

He became the scoutmaster of the Troupenahus and a trainer in national training courses. He began to write for the National Danish Scout Journal and then he actually became its editor. His interest in journalism grew. He also wrote for newspapers and he published a book when he was 23 years old. It was a novel. It was called The Island and it was based on his experience with his patrol.

At the age of 25, Wil decided that he needed to see more of the world. His interest was piqued by going to the World Jamboree. He decided what he was going to do was travel around the world and kind of investigate scouting in other countries and bring the best ideas back to Denmark.

So he started out in the United States and that year when he traveled to the United States he got a job in a scout camp. And after the scout camp season was over he managed to wrangle himself a job, a very menial job, in the offices of the Boy Scouts of America. And that's where Wil came into contact with that famous crate of World War I surplus semaphore flagpoles, I mean, come on.

So he's moving the crate around, the crate slips and falls and it traps his leg, his right leg, And it breaks his right leg. And so Wil is now in a foreign country somewhere, but he's being well taken care of. He's got a busted leg. He ends up for laid up for a week in the hospital.

But you know, pretty soon he's on crutches and he's moving around. So once Wil was out of the hospital he was back at the offices and he had a chance encounter with the chief scout executive, James West.

Now you know the BSA was a relatively small operation at the time and West knew who Wil was, at least by an accident report, and saw him on the crutches there and he said: hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing fine.

What do you think of the Boy Scouts of America? And Wil gave him a brief answer right there in person. But he also decided that he really wanted to carefully answer West's question because Wil was a serious man And he had made this work the aim of his life.

So he sat down and he composed an 18 page single spaced memo and kind of dissected the BSA's strengths and weaknesses. He had a lot of good things to say about American scouting but he wasn't too sure that there wasn't this kind of mania for collecting merit badges. He thought the camps were a little soft, They were a little luxurious. Most important, Wil said troops weren't really using the patrol method that Baden Powell had set up.

Well, West read the memo and discovered that he had a very articulate, well-studied young man working for him in a warehouse who really had a handle on some things about scouting. So West persuaded him to become part of the BSA's editorial service. One thing led to another. One of Wil's suggestions had been that there really needed to be some kind of a guide for patrol leaders if the patrol method was really to be applied, And he was pretty insistent that it should be written by somebody who had been a patrol leader or been a Scoutmaster.

And so West kind of called his bluff on that and said: well, why don't you write it? Well, that was all that Wil needed to hear, And he started working hard putting things together.

Now I'm still calling him Wil, but by that time he was calling himself Bill, And the reason that he did that, he kind of Americanized his name. He had Americanized his name and he changed from Wilhelm Behergaard Jensen to Wilhelm Behergaard. But he noticed that people at the BSA office had a little trouble with Behergaard and it was coming a little bit out like Beergarden And he didn't like the association.

So he freely translated his Danish name, Beher, which means hill, and guard, which means court, to Hillcourt And Wilhelm and William. That worked, So he became known as William Hillcourt and to his friends, Bill.

So now you know who Wil is right: William Greenbar, Bill Hillcourt, the author of the first handbook for patrol leaders, And it was published in 1929 and translated into five other languages for use around the world. While he was working at the BSA offices, Bill met his wife, Grace Brown, who worked on the chief executive staff, and Grace was from Yonkers, And in June of 1933, Grace Brown became Grace Hillcourt. After a long honeymoon to Europe and tracking around and cycling through Europe, they returned back home and Bill began writing and editing Scouting Magazine. Once the handbook for patrol leaders was published, Bill was pulled in on another job and that was aimed at saving Boys Life Magazine. It was the midst of the depression.

Boys Life was not doing well And the Rockefeller Foundation made a small loan to help keep Boys Life afloat. And Bill's contribution was a single page in each month's magazine aimed at patrol leaders and the members of their patrol on all the great stuff patrols could do And how they could advance together through Scouting, all the great activities they could do.

And so the boy who had been a patrol leader in Ahus now became America's patrol leader and Greenbar Bill was born. In the years that followed, Bill's role expanded from being the BSA's chief journalist on Scoutcraft and troop leadership to becoming one of the primary program researchers and developers, And he did this in a really interesting way. A very hands-on kind of guy. He found a perfect location: the village of Mendham, New Jersey, just outside of the newly donated Schiff Scout Reservation. Bill and Grace talked Dr West into allowing them to convert an old stone sheep barn into a house for the two of them where they could be close to the troop that he was the Scoutmaster for Mendham, New Jersey's troop one was the experimental troop of the BSA In 1935, while they were there at Schiff Scout Reservation Bill and Grace met Olive and Robert.

You know who Olive and Robert are right, Baden Powell. That's a familiar name in scouting, the founder of scouting. Lord and Lady Baden Powell were on a visit to the United States And they were happy to meet with people at Schiff Scout Reservation and the training center there And they became a particularly fond of Bill and Grace And it started a lifelong friendship with Lord and Lady Baden Powell and continued with their children and grandchildren. Bill became one of the most familiar faces and names in scouting in the United States. He wrote articles for Scouting Magazine. He wrote articles for Boys' Life.

He wrote two editions of the Handbook for Scoutmasters, two editions of the Boy Scout Handbook. He wrote the first Scout Fieldbook which just became a classic text on basic campcraft and nature lore. He took wood badge training under John Skinner Wilson. He was the camp chief of Gilwell Park in 1936. And after World War II Bill was instrumental in bringing wood badge courses to the United States And he became the first Gilwell deputy camp chief in the United States in 1948 and the first BSA wood badge Scoutmaster. He edited Baden Powell's Scouting for Boys and aids to Scoutmaster's ship to be used to help revitalize scouting in war-torn countries, And the books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He helped develop junior leader training courses and new requirements for Boy Scout advancement. He corresponded with scouters in other countries, devising them on training. He met scouters from around the nation and the world at national and world jamborees in which he was always in attendance. Bill retired from professional service with the BSA in 1965. And he was able to put into print something that he'd been working on for a long time with Grace and Lady Baden Powell, And that was the first authoritative biography of Baden Powell published under the title Baden Powell: Two Lives of a Hero. It was translated into seven foreign languages and became the standard reference work on Baden Powell for many, many years.

Bill and Grace traveled widely. They visited scout friends and helped to implement training programs for scout associations all over the world. And Grace died in 1973, leaving Bill bereft of his great friend and companion. But he pressed on with his volunteer work and scouting. In the 1970s the BSA made some changes. Bill didn't like those changes at all.

He watched the BSA de-emphasize the outdoor aspects of scouting and try and make some pretty desperate moves to remain relevant. But in 1978, Bill convinced chief scout executive Harvey Price to allow him to write a new Boy Scout handbook and bring back the outdoor orientation to the Boy Scouts of America. And Bill did this for free And he spent a year and brought out the ninth edition entitled The Official Boy Scouts Handbook, and it was an immediate success and it really did serve to revitalize scouting again. Again. This was his second go round at the age of 78. And his efforts were recognized by the National Court of Honor and he was awarded the silver buffalo for distinguished service to American youth.

Bill spent his last years as a worldwide goodwill ambassador for scouting And he tried to never miss a jamboree or big encampment. And even though it had been some time since he had written a column for Boy's Life Magazine, his signature was still highly sought after And that signature was kind of interesting. It was his famous Bill signature superimposed on two green bars At the 1989 National Jamboree. People lined up for hours and Bill signed 7,423 autographs in the middle of a hot Virginia summer at the age of 89.. One of those 7,423 autographs is right here while I'm speaking to you And it's in a copy of the original fieldbook that Bill wrote that I happen to have and I brought to the jamboree with me. And I stood in line and I got to meet the man for just a moment.

He was sitting at a table there signing books very happily And when he saw that original copy of the fieldbook come across he looked at it and he looked up at me and he looked at his assistant and he said, well, that one's a two-fer And what he meant when he said that was that he would put both signatures. He would put the Bill signature with the green bars and his more formal signature in it. And I have it and it's a treasured little artifact that I have today from that very brief meeting with really one of Scouting's heroes. It all started with that big crate of World War I surplus 7,4 flagpoles and it led to something that changed Scouting permanently and to something that we've still benefit from today: The generous, generous heart of a great man, William Greenbar Bill Hillcourt. He passed away on November 9 of 1992 while he was on a Scouting tour. He was in Sweden.

He was very close to his home and his boyhood home in Denmark, But he passed away there and was brought back to New Jersey and has entered next to his beloved grace there in Cemetery in New Jersey And somebody who's well remembered. Now, if you haven't read the original Patrol Eater's Handbook, if you haven't read the old field book, the first edition of the field book, you know it's worth getting a copy, It's worth looking at And you can virtually shake hands with Greenbar Bill Hillcourt.