Boy Scout Troop 648 Scottsdale, Arizona

Good morning,

Another fine T648 fundraiser extraordinaire is in the books.  Again, we came from twelve lengths behind to win – from a potential disaster shaping up as recently as last Tuesday, when only two boys had qualified for the salesmanship prize, and the auction was a scary, scrawny two partial patrol baskets.  You put your traditional final push to the finish line, and a typically marvelous event materialized!  Mr. Parizek is working out the final financials, but overall revenues will be in the close vicinity of recent years.  Congratulations!  High points include over ten boys qualifying for the magnificent steak dinner to be provided by Mr. Parizek to those of you who sold at least 25 tickets, and an auction that will exceed any in recent years – many thanks to Mrs. Conrad for overseeing this record setting component.   The room was always full of people eating, socializing and bidding on the silent auction items, and we ran out of plates for the first time ever – which is a great problem to have!  The only thing slightly down appears to be pre-event ticket sales to those who did not then come to the breakfast.  A big thank you to young Mr. Turner, Mr. Traynor and Mr. Hart for spearheading this exceptional event.  Special thanks to Scottsdale Worship Center for hosting us again.  For those of you who sold tickets, provided an auction item, and worked the event itself, your individual scout accounts will reward you by swelling proportionately.

This week we are back at it.  Remember that tomorrow is PLC – we meet at 6PM, followed by the troop meeting at 7PM.  We will have an opportunity this coming weekend for a troop service project.  Young Mr. Murphy is organizing an opportunity for you to learn how to change a tire.  The tires on our canoe trailer are in pretty bad shape, so stay tuned for more details on this Saturday morning session upgrading the tires and other necessary care and maintenance.  A week from tonight we will have our monthly adult leader meeting in the SWC board room at 7PM.

Two events to plan for this month as your school year build to a climax, and then you are freed for the summer.  On May 24^th we will have our annual opportunity to perform the solemn flag planting ceremony at the National Veterans Memorial Cemetary off of Cave Creek and the 101.  And on May 30^th is an exceptionally fun backing trip to Fossil Springs, some of the most wonderful swimming holes in this great state of Arizona.

All summer camp payments should now be finalized with Mr. Benyi.  If you are planning to use scout account funds for all or part of the $370 amount, please let us know.  We are slightly more than a month away from camp – where did the year go?!  We will also be having an Order of the Arrow election later this month – stay tuned for this opportunity to vote for our candidates for scouting’s honor society during an upcoming troop meeting.

See you tomorrow at the scout troop meeting.

Mr. Cole

A good many people today, and more all the time, live their entire lives without once having had the magnificent opportunity of sleeping under the stars.  There are none of those unfortunate souls in our troop!  Friday night, an intrepid bunch of T648 scouts headed up for the Mogollon Rim, planning to get some fishing in, but knowing full well that some adjustments may be necessary due to the impending front bearing down on us from California.  The stars on the Rim were glorious, the air crisp and cold, and the well-prepared tenters had a toasty night amidst the pines, followed by a fortifying hot breakfast in the freezing dawn.  As the dishes were cleaned and put away, the storm hit.  While some of the troop hunkererd down for conversation in a new low profile, hi-tech easy-up Mr. McFetters had discovered online, another group kept warm by going on a four mile hike.  After 6 hours of rain, wind, sleet, and accumulating large snowflakes, it became pretty clear that no fishing was going to get done.  When we finally became concerned about getting the trailer out of the dirt roads being buried by the falling snow, the boy leadership decided that we’d had enough of a good thing.  There is being prepared, and then there is good common sense!  During tear-down in the heavy snowfall,  I was reminded of the scene in ‘A Christmas Story’ (I double dog dare yah!) where Flick’s tongue gets stuck to the flagpole, as multiple boys’ fingers froze to their tent-poles as they were trying to get them apart.  As we had a late lunch in Payson, I was reminded of a de Cervantes quote – “forewarned is forearmed, being prepared is half the battle.”  We prepared, had a ball, have some good memories of overcoming the elements, but headed back down the hill before it became a tribulation.  Many thanks to the dozen who participated for completing a short, but memorably excellent outing.

This week we have the troop meeting tomorrow, and the focus is all about our upcoming Pancake Breakfast and Silent Auction this coming Saturday morning.  Your theme basket collections / donations are due, as Tuesday is the night that we will need to package up the baskets in preparation for the auction.  Please also bring any other auction items you have collected as standalone bids.  Young Mr. Hart is in charge of the Auction (Mrs. Conrad is the adult), young Mr. Traynor is in charge of ticket sales (Mr. Parizek is the adult), and young Mr. Turner is in charge of the breakfast (Mr. Cole is the adult).  We need everyone’s participation to also bring in your ticket sales to date, and then remember the ABCs of selling the remainder of the week (always be closing) to finish up with a bang!  We will begin on Saturday morning at 6:15, with the doors opening at 7:30, so come and setup, cook, serve, and cleanup – and you will cleanup with a brand new bulge in your scout account.

It is also the end of April, so the entire amount of $370 is due for summer camp.  For those of you selling tickets and working the event this weekend, your scout account is an option for paying some or all of the summer camp amount.  If that is your intent, please let Mr. Benyi know after the final accounting is completed for the May 3^rd breakfast and auction.  We will apply whatever amount you desire towards finalizing the summer camp fees.

This is an eventful week of scouting!  Keep working on your merit badges and your advancements – we will be having an early June court of honor before summer camp so you can be at your current rank for Geronimo.

See you at the troop meeting.

Mr. Cole

Greetings!

Just a reminder to everyone that our annual pancake breakfast is approaching on May 3. There are several ways that you can get involved; this is a great way to raise funds to help pay for summer camp or other scouting activities.

Starting back on April 1, Mr. Parizek has had tickets available for each scout, along with weekly “leads” on how to successfully sell. This is the easiest way to see an immediate return on investment- sell those tickets!

Also, as we do each year, we are working on the silent auction and patrol baskets. The boys have been discussing their baskets the past couple of weeks, but it is time to start pulling it together. Please click “here” for a link to a letter from Mrs. Conrad with details about the silent auction and patrol baskets.

Finally, don’t forget to attend the breakfast! It will be at Scottsdale Worship Center, 6508 E Cactus Rd.

Thanks!Mr. Benyi

Happy Easter!  I hope that this weekend has been a happy time filled with great joy, much family time, and good food.  Let the whole world sing His praises, He is risen indeed!

We begin a busy couple of weeks on the scouting calendar – no time like the present to dive back into scouting paradise!  The evenings in Phoenix and the days in the mountains are perfect for all sorts of scouting activities. Tomorrow night is an important time for patrol preparation.  Please attend to plan and provide your input on the patrol menu for this coming weekend’s outing to the Military Sinkhole on the Mogollon Rim close to Willow Springs Lake.  This will also be a good time to begin bringing in your items for your patrol baskets for the auction on May 3^rd.  Last week you finalized your patrol themes, and we now have less than two weeks until the event.  That means you still have two weeks to also be selling pancake breakfast tickets.  In addition to benefitting the overall health of your scout account, keep your eye on the real prize – 25 tickets sold yields a fabulous steak dinner put on for all of you top salesmen by master steak chef Mr. Parizek!

Many of you are working on merit badges with Mr. Conrad, Mr. Parizek, Mr. Clapp and Mr. Benyi – tomorrow night would be a good time to checkpoint with them on your status, and what requirements remain.  Summer camp is also coming, please ensure that you are up to date on payments ($300 due so far, $370 due by the end of April), that you have your merit badge requests for the week at Geronimo turned in to Mr. Benyi, and that you are working on getting a current health form completed.  A form from last year signed by the doctor June 22^nd or later should still be valid this year, otherwise a new one for all scouts attending summer camp will be needed.

Two weeks of fun and profitable scouting opportunities await.  Then amazingly it is already time to turn your focus to successfully closing out the school year.  See you all tomorrow at the scout meeting!

Mr. Cole

Wow!  I’m still charged up about last week.  Seeing all those feathers in one place last week makes me thrilled to see how scouting is alive and well in the Four Peaks District of our Grand Canyon Council of BSA.  There were 14 Eagle boards in our district Thursday night, and we were extremely well represented with the excellent boards turned in by our own Mr. Harness and Mr. Martin.  Congratulations gentlemen on a significant personal achievement, and we look forward in anticipation to your future as leaders in our community and in scouting.

In between final scrambles for AIMs testing, tax deadlines and Easter preparation, we have lots of scouting to do.  Many thanks to young Mr. Demski and all of his well- mannered teams for the contributions to the weekly Knights of Columbus fish fries, culminating with our final excellent service project completed last Friday night.  Tomorrow night we will have a 6PM Cooking merit badge class kickoff at the church facilitated by Mr. Parizek, followed by the troop meeting at 7PM.  The meeting will include everything you ever wanted to know about flag calling – I am confident that we will be the best troop to raise the flag this coming summer at Camp Geronimo!  We will also do some planning for our themed auction baskets for May 3^rd.  Hopefully many of you are already using Mr. Parizek’s top salesmen techniques and incentives to sell, sell, sell you allotment of tickets.  Keep in mind that a mere 25 tickets puts you into the awesome steak dinner award!

We also have a request from our quartermasters.  We are looking to replace tires on the troop canoe trailer, and are also interested in saving a buck or two in the process.  Do any of you have a contact or relative in the retail tire business that would be willing to help a boy scout troop with wholesale or discounted tires?

Please be planning to attend our Tonto Creek Base Camp outing the weekend of April 25-27.  The weather cannot be more gorgeous – it is a terrific time of year to be exploring the great Arizona out-of-doors.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a blessed holy week, and a Happy Easter!  See you at the troop meeting.

Mr. Cole

Greetings!

A few updates to share with everyone regarding summer camp:

1) Merit Badge signups are now underway. I have begun registration for all those who have turned in their paperwork to me. If you have not done so yet, please do this as soon as possible. I really want to help each scout get into the programs that he is interested in, but I can only do this if you return the paperwork.  For your convenience, this link will give you the signup form that I emailed a couple of weeks back: MB Signup Form. – You can either return this form to me, or you can just email me a list, 1-6.

2) Please check the date on your health forms from last year. These forms are valid for 1 year from the date of the doctor’s signature. If your signature is on or after 6/22/13, then the form should still be valid for this year’s camp. If not, please download the Annual Health and Medical Form and complete prior to camp.

3) Finally, everyone should be paid through $300 at this point. If you are behind, please get your payments in. The final $70 payment will be due by the end of April.

If anyone has questions for me regarding camp, please feel free to email, call, or see me at the troop meetings.

Thanks!

Mr. Benyi

What a gorgeous week of scouting activity!  Tuesday’s fingerprinting merit badge facilitated by Mr. Conrad was well attended and full of interesting ancillary trivia (did you know that an airline’s black box flight recorder is actually bright orange?  I sure didn’t!).  Everyone went home happy, albeit with black fingers.  For those of you still having to complete some of the paperwork in order to be awarded the merit badge, get ‘er done and turned in to Mr. Conrad.  Thursday night we attended an open house at Cocopah middle school letting 6th graders know about our troop.  Friday night we had a fine crew of fish eater / workers at our next-to-last Fish Fry service project with one more opportunity remaining on the docket for this coming Friday before Holy Week.  And then, in the highlight of the week, a large contingent of T648’s finest turned out in the perfect weather for an Eagle Project developed by the eldest of the younger Conrad men.  In an ambitious project benefiting Blessed Sacrament, we braved cholla, prickly pear and what seemed like thousands of other types of painful Sonoran plant life in collecting truckloads of trimmings while cleaning up an overgrown nature walk area in the north area of the property.  In parallel, another crew laid cement footings for the dozen or so stations of the cross, and a third crew repaired and painted the large stations themselves.  While the thorns were a bit rough on scout and scouter fingers, a fine project was delivered for our charter organization.  Just in time for Easter week, a lovely and solemn way to enhance worship and individual preparation for Good Friday and Easter Sunday is available for parishioners.  Congratulations to our latest Eagle candidate, and nicely done T648!

This coming week will continue to provide many scouting opportunities

• Monday at 7PM (SWC board room) is the adult leader meeting
• Tuesday at 6PM, Mr. Parizek begins the Eagle required Family Life merit badge for first class and older scouts
• Tuesday at 7PM is the troop meeting. Remember to bring summer camp payment #3 of $100 and be planning to have a current health form completed for camp (in June this year)
• Thursday we have two Eagle candidates going for their boards – good luck men!
• Friday is the final fish fry – we’ll need one more crew of 10 scouts

Other items of note.  You should already be selling our May 3^rd pancake breakfast tickets to everyone you know, and even more people that you don’t (who doesn’t love pancakes??).  The patrols will be deciding this week what their auction basket themes will be, so be planning to obtain appropriate items for the silent auction.  The next two outings are outstanding areas of Arizona this time of year – Tonto Creek will be a base camp, and Fossil Springs is one of our favorite backpacks.  If you are interested in joining the scouting fraternity of the Order of the Arrow, troop elections will be coming later in April.

There’s a lot going on!  Keep up your participation in meetings and events, as your patrol also benefits from all you do in earning points during this year’s Honor Patrol competition.  While the award for the Honor Patrol hasn’t completely been finalized by the PLC, the latest discussions were that the winning patrol might be awarded a fall trip to Magic Mountain.

See you at the troop meeting!

Mr. Cole

Hi,
This Saturday on April 5 at 7 in the morning  I am going to have my Eagle Project
at the church by the shed. We will be repairing and digging holes for the
stations of the cross as well repairing the mediation trail. Please bring
shovels, pick axes, posthole diggers, shears, wheel barrows, rakes channel
shovels, posthole diggers, and work gloves.

Our family lost my mother’s beloved brother Leonard last month at age 92.  He was truly one of the ‘Greatest Generation,’ a hero who fought in WWII on a PT boat.  Despite my asking, he never talked about his time at war – perhaps out of modesty, perhaps because I truly wouldn’t have been able to comprehend.  But this warrior, who had also as a boy broken my mother’s eardrum in a prank when he encouraged her to listen at the end of a pipe to hear the ocean, and then lit an M80 caliber firecracker at the other end, became an amazing person.  He was hugely larger than life, a big friendly bear of a person who called me ‘Davy, Davy Crockett’, and took me along in his fascinating plumber’s truck as he pulled pumps on remote farms in western Minnesota.  He raised my four wonderful cousins into being incredible people.  He typed a warm, newsy letter and mailed it to my mother every Sunday night for 65+ years.  He was the volunteer fire chief, a deacon in his church, and he waved from his truck at everyone he saw on the street, because everyone in town knew him.

Will we ever have another generation like my Uncle Leonard’s? It is easy to look at what surrounds us and think that the whole country has gone to the dogs. The truth of the matter is that we are still growing people with the same character as the every day Americans that we venerate as the Greatest Generation.  We witnessed that again at this weekend’s Eagle Court of Honor.  Young A. Dahlmann, T648’s former SPL, one of our best youth mentors ever, and the youth in charge of Camp Geronimo’s summer camp HQ became his family’s 4^th generation Eagle Scout.  During the ceremony, one of his former patrol members, who had also developed into an SPL in our troop, and recently been presented a Young American award by John McCain, provided the most eloquent and fitting tribute I have ever heard a young scout perform on behalf of his mentor.  Neither boy would likely have been considered leadership material 4-5 years ago, and look what a few productive years in scouting can aid in doing!  I have tremendous hope that the original Greatest Generation is leaving this world in good hands.

For those of you who missed Tuesday’s meeting, our Scoutmaster, Mr. Turner announced that he will be leaving beginning this morning for a new job in the Chicago area.  We thank him for he and his family’s wonderful service in our troop, and we wish them the best in their new opportunity.  While we will miss them, this is a busy time in the life of the troop, and we will begin the transition to our new Scoutmaster, Mr. McFetters over the course of the next three months while the Turner family lives in two places.  Our thanks to Mr. McFetters for becoming our future leader.  In the meantime, myself and Mr. Benyi will provide interim adult leadership.  This Tuesday is PLC at 6PM, and a unique chance to earn the Fingerprinting merit badge at the 7PM meeting.  Bring your partially completed worksheet from http://meritbadge.org/wiki/images/6/61/Fingerprinting.pdf and join in the fun!  Also on Tuesday night, we will pass out tickets for our upcoming fundraiser – our spring pancake breakfast.  Later in the week we will return to Blessed Sacrament on Friday night for a service project from 4-7:30PM helping with the weekly Fish Fry, and on Saturday morning at 7AM for young Mr. Conrad’s Eagle Project, which involves digging permanent emplacements for the 14 stations of the cross in the garden north of the church.  Next Monday night, adult leaders will be gathering at SWC for an early version of our monthly meeting.

For those of you attending summer camp in June at Camp Geronimo, the third installment of $100 is due at Tuesday’s meeting.  Keep in mind that Scout Funds can also be used to pay for summer camp, and selling pancake breakfast tickets, providing items for the silent auction, and working the event on May 3^rd are great ways to fatten a scout’s Scout Fund!

Whew – there’s a lot going on!  Let’s get started by seeing you at tomorrow night’s PLC and troop meetings!

Mr. Cole

T648,

Reminder that Mr. Conrad will be leading the Fingerprinting MB class this Tuesday, April 1st during the regular troop meeting at Blessed Sacrament.  All scouts are welcome to attend.  You’ll need to have reviewed the Merit Badge book and have the Fingerprinting MB workbook with you on Tuesday (http://www.meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Fingerprinting).  As Mr. Conrad mentioned on Tuesday, this is one of the few merit badges that can be accomplished in one session so please take advantage of this opportunity!

Mr. Turner