What Happened to the Boy Scouts?

It’s hard for me to imagine today’s helicoptered suburban kids, who may be book smarter than we were, sleeping in tents that they pitched themselves, cooking on campfires, packing backpacks and lugging them around the Middle East and Europe.

I’ve been trying to track down the scouts who were on the Trip to Israel I wrote about recently. Of the 28 boys who are all about 75 years old now, statistics would approximate that eight would be dead.

In addition to Terry Klasky who I mentioned had died in the Air Florida crash, I found two others who’ve passed. With one exception I won’t mention names in this story, but I invite those described in the story to e-mail me and I’ll tell them who’s who.

Of those who I found, I noted a distinct pattern of  success.  I assume that some of those whom I could not find may have changed their names or become hard to find possibly because of some-less-than-successful life.

My one exception to naming people is the remarkable “Bernie” Herring. Actually, James Bernard Herring.  Or should I say, Father James Bernard Herring (the exception is because his life is already on the Internet.)  I have not found any other member who went into a religious profession or even became religious.

But that’s not what makes him stand out.  Bernie was the only African American Member of our troop and was the head Boy Scout.  Our troop was mostly made up of Jews from our Conservative Synagogue, but also had some members of other troops as well as gentiles.

I’m not trying to say “we had a member who happened to be Black.” What made him remarkable was that he was a true leader of the Troop.  He wasn’t respected because of his race. He was just one of us and let me say probably the first African American I grew to know or even talk to.  And if you are thinking that he was an athlete that put him in this position of leadership - I really can’t remember. He was a great student. He attended one of the fine Philadelphia Catholic schools and had a magnificent singing voice.  The entire troop took a bus to his school during a camping trip to see him perform as the king in The King and I.  I can still marvel at his performance 62 years ago. I’ve tried without success to contact him personally.

Another troop member became a professor at a University in Minnesota and is an expert on Beowulf.  I guess that’s just fate.

One was first a lawyer, who took over his family’s role in owning and managing cemeteries.

One became an art historian with a PhD. One became a dentist. One became an in-house lawyer with General Electric. There were several other lawyers in private practice, including me.  Another was a CPA. There were at least two M.D.’s.

One operated a thread company, and his brother was a business manager.

One member got various degrees in psychology and finished his course work for a PhD, but never completed his dissertation. He became a school psychologist and lead-operations person for a school district, in addition to becoming a police officer.

There were some parts about being a scout that were distasteful to many of us, but it’s fair to say that being in Troop 185 taught us some discipline and influenced our lives.