How did Wichita Falls, TX end up as the first lodge in Texas?
Or where’d the early OA lodges come from?
I’ve had two different conversations in the past two days on this subject so there must be some interest in this. I believe Tracy Mesler recently posted this question to Patch-L regarding lodge 35, the first lodge in Texas. For those who don’t know, Wichita Falls (Northwest Texas Council) was a small community in an out of the way part of Texas. It still is a small community in an out of the way part of Texas. So why did it have the first lodge in the state?
We were discussing this topic in our office yesterday. Many of the early lodges not in Pennsylvania, New Jersey or New Yorkcame out of promotions of professional staff from these areas to the new areas.
Paul Myers has done a lot of the research on this. Paul has traced how Execs from either Chicago (lodge 7) or St. Louis (lodge 51) took the OA programs they saw in these large, metropolitan councils to the remote councils when the got promoted. Actually, the move from Philadelphia to Chicago was through Carroll Edson being promoted to Chicago as Scout Executive.
Now I don’t yet know the answer to lodge 35 Wichita but in talking with Duane Fowlks today he mentioned how lodge 60 was founded by a professional who was one of four brothers who each had earned Eagle Scout, joined the profession out east, and then came west. Lodge 60 disbanded for awhile but when it reformed it was by a Vigil Honor member from Lodge 51 out of St. Louis who had moved to the area.
There really is nothing surprising about this. Scouting has always been about individuals giving of their time to provide a quality program to our kids. The OA program is a great program and easy to transfer from one community to another. Maybe I can those who have done some of this research to chime in. Who brought OA to your council?
on January 5th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Kecoughtan Lodge #463 was founded by Eddie Jones, a Scoutmaster from Newport News who was a well regarded camping enthusiast throughout the State of Virginia. Eddie had been inducted into Nawakwa Lodge #3 in Richmond in 1945 following his return from World War 2 and upon Nawakwa’s establishment (following years of a secret post-Pamunkey Lodge honor camping society). Nawakwa inducted Eddie because of his contribution to Camp Shawondassee, Richmond’s longstanding camp. He conspired with other adult leaders in Newport News to bring the Wimachtendienk to Camp Okee, and, working with brothers of Blue Heron Lodge #349, launched the new lodge in 1951. Eddie was an All-American football player at Purdue in the 1930’s, an Eagle and Quartermaster Award recipient who has the distinction of being the first Scout to earn more than 100 merit badges (all of them available at the time), and one of the collecting hobby’s earliest star. In fact, many, if not most, of Marv Gershenfeld’s Order of the Arrow gems came from Eddie after he stopped collecting.