Boy Scout Troop 648 Scottsdale, Arizona

Greetings!

Throughout the past several months, Troop 648 has had the good fortune to welcome many new families to our larger Troop family.

On June 14, concurrent with the regular troop meeting, we are going to hold a general parent orientation meeting for all interested parents. Whether you have been with us for 2 weeks, 4 months, or more, we will present to you a clear picture on the opportunities available to your son in Boy Scouting, along with pertinent information about Troop 648.

We will begin the meeting around 7:10pm on Tuesday, June 14  and will conclude before the end of the regular Troop Meeting. We welcome you to take this opportunity to join us for this orientation discussion.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Mr. Benyi

Hello all,

Tomorrow, June 10th we will depart the Blessed Sacrament church at 5:30 for Apache Lake, so please arrive around 5:00. Make sure that all the patrol members know who is buying their patrols food and how much it will cost. Gas is twenty dollars. Also, be sure to know what to bring for a canoe outing (swim suit, swim shoes, towel, sunscreen, dry clothes, etc). Also, there are no campfires allowed at the lake so if your meal involves a campfire you need to adjust accordingly. If you are signed up and know you are not going to be able to go on the outing, call me immediately. Be sure you know who you are tenting with, too. Also, it would be very helpful if all scouts would print out and sign the permission slip from the troop website. If you have any questions, call me at 480-596-9964- or 480-335-6600.

Thanks!

Matthew McFetters

Good afternoon,

Summer may be here, but T648 activities are still in full swing. Thirteen young scouts were a part of 39 T648 friends and family taking part in the 2nd Class local wild animal identification skills requirement held at the Phoenix Zoo with Mr. Butler.  Once completed, further exploration of Komodo dragons, orangutans and other non-native Arizona animals ensued.  Other boys continued to explore merit badges opportunities this weekend throughout the valley.  With no school work hanging over our heads, long summer days are terrific times to do exercises, practice knots, or review for advancement boards of review.  Your patrol leaders, troop guides or adult leaders really earn their keep when you are demonstrating for them what you have learned to do!

Speaking of advancement, after the PLC leaders meeting at 6PM on Tuesday this week, we will have our Summer rank advancement court of honor celebration at 7PM.  All family and friends of T648 are encouraged to attend.  We will have the honor of formally recognizing all the hard work this spring resulting in new ranks and badges for more than a dozen scouts.  Merit badges earned will be presented at our end of summer COH after summer camp.  We also want to recognize recent terrific fundraising accomplishments with a few sales awards.  But keep in mind that everyone who participated was a winner - with corresponding increases in their scout accounts.  Nicely done!  Later this weekend we will have an opportunity to cool off with our canoe outing at Apache Lake.  How good that last month we decided to move the outing from Big Lake, so that the water would be warmer for swimming at Apache.  As it turns out, the Willows fire outside of Big Lake would have been VERY warm.  The weekend of June 18th will be J. Andrews’ Eagle Project to rebuild a ramada and grill for a very deserving charity in south Phoenix.  And of course, summer camp is but a short month away.  For those of you attending Camp Mataguay, all merit badge selections and payments should be in to the troop, and medical exams should be completed or scheduled – they are requirements for participation at camp.

As a reminder, there will be no 6PM tenderfoot training on Tuesday night this week.  Come instead at 7PM and bask in the glory of the advancing scouts from T648!

Mr. Cole

The meeting on June 21, 2011 will be at Paradise Valley’s REI at 7:00pm-8:30pm
12634 N Paradise Village Pkwy

Good morning,

Many thanks to all who, with school out for summer, had an opportunity to sleep in on Saturday and didn’t.  On a beautifully brilliant Phoenix morning, 49 Troop 648 scouts, scouters and family joined many hundreds of others in fanning out across 50,000+ graves at National Memorial Cemetery.  The landscape was covered in a sea of flags waving in the breeze after an efficiently reverent 45 minutes of hole punching and flag planting.  This year I had the honor of taking the picture of the older and younger Mr. Harness placing a flag on the grave of their father and grandfather, Colonel Harness.  What a tremendous opportunity for all of us to pause in the midst of our busy, yet free lives, to give thanks for those who gave so much – and more often than not, their all.

We also had a number of our troop out in front of local WalMarts yesterday and today selling flag pins in the spirit of Memorial Day, and those young men were very successful!  Please continue to wrap up your summer camp requirements with Mr. Benyi and Mr. Cole – all payments for those attending should be finalized, all merit badge requests submitted, and health forms obtained or doctor appointments scheduled.  Camp is in only a few short weeks!  In the meantime, we have tenderfoot skills session at 6PM followed by the troop meeting on Tuesday which will include swim check at the Andrews’ home, 2nd Class Native Animal identification at the zoo on the 4th, PLC coming up on the 7th, Rank Advancement Court of Honor on the 7th, our June canoe outing to Apache Lake on the 10th-12th, and Mr. Andrews’ Eagle project on the 18th.  A brief word about the COH.  This will replace our troop meeting at 7PM on 6/7/11 at the church.  All family members are encouraged to attend to support the hard work the scouts have invested.  It will be a relatively short and simple but sincere opportunity for us to award scout rank advancements the youth have earned this spring prior to their attending summer camp.  A much more comprehensive court of honor including subsequent rank advancements, all merit badges and a troop potluck will occur late in the summer, after Camp Mataguay.

Hope you have all had a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Mr. Cole

Greetings!

Reminder: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 (tomorrow) is the cut-off for the Spring Court of Honor, which is coming up on June 7, 2011. If you have completed a rank in the past few months since the Winter Court of Honor, please speak to Mr. McFetters or Mrs. Norling to confirm that your rank achievements have been recorded. You can speak to either of them at the meeting tomorrow night, or give a call or send an email.

Even if you have reported your rank previously, it is advisable to double check that it has been recorded; this is the best way to ensure that you receive your rank at the upcoming Court of Honor.

Thanks!

Mr Benyi

Hello All!

This weeks meeting will be the swim check. This is a top priority for all who plan on going on the canoe outing, as you cant canoe without first passing your swim check. It will be held at my house, which is located at 10836 Nth 65th St, Scottsdale, AZ. Directions are below. Please bring your own towel and wear your class B shirts and swim trunks.

DIRECTIONS:

For this we will be starting at the church.

1) Turn out onto 64th St heading North (Towards Cactus and Thunderbird)

2)Turn onto Cholla and back onto 64th St(Basically a U-turn to the other side of the wash)

3)Go down 64th St heading South until you reach Desert Cove

4)Go down Desert Cove and turn into 65th St (On the left).

5)You will see the house marked and that is where the drop off is.

You can also turn off from Shea onto 66th St, go down and turn left on Desert Cove, and then 65th st will be the turn off on your right.

I hope to see you all there, especially all of you who are planning on going canoeing.

Thanks,

JR

Good Afternoon,

As you might already know, our troop takes part in an amazing ceremony every year the Saturday before Memorial Day (Tomorrow morning). We meet at National Memorial Cemetery at around 6:30 and enjoy some doughnuts and punch before the actual ceremony begins. Anyone is welcome to attend, so bring your entire family! For our scouts, Class A is mandatory. What I think is the coolest part of this ceremony is how the entire cemetery looks completely covered in flags, and how fast it happens with so many people! It is a really great thing to do, so please don’t miss it!

For quick notes, it is Saturday, May 28th at the National Memorial Cemetery at 6:30 A.M.

The address is 23029 N. Cave Creek Rd. Here’s a map.

See you there!

-K. Lara

Good morning,

It was a good weekend for the world to keep on spinning, with rapture confined to an excellent morning working on the emergency prep merit badge, performing as ‘victim’s’ during during emergency training at a local fitness center, and an afternoon honoring T648’s 34th Eagle Scout, Mr. T. Zahnow!  As we look ahead, school may be almost out, but troop activities just keep on truckin’.  We have 6PM new scout tenderfoot training and the 7PM troop meeting tomorrow, an event on May 28th that continues to move me every time I participate, this weekend’s flagpin fundraising opportunities, a June 4th visit to the zoo with Mr. Butler to discover native Sonoran animals, a Court of Honor and our June canoe outing.

A brief commercial on the May 28th event.  Every year on the Saturday before Memorial Day, a large group of volunteers, most of them scouts and scouters, join together early in the morning at the National Memorial Cemetary off the 101 freeway at Pinnacle Peak and Cave Creek Roads.  This site contains over 50,000 veteran gravesites, and every year there is an event in which participants arrive between 0630 and 0700 to honor our veterans.  The morning begins with hundreds of scouts, scout leaders and families gathered in the cool air for a brief ceremony and reflection, and then begins the work.  At 0705 hole punchers and bundles of American flags are distributed, and the crowd fanned out.  I’ve often felt that from 30,000 feet, the event must look like an ant farm or a bee hive with the swarm intent upon covering every inch of their workplace without rushing, but respectful, relentless efficiency.  By 0800, every grave has two feet worth of American Flag waving smartly in the wind, in time for our national anthem and taps to solemnly be played.  As I depart, it gives me chills to see the sea of waving red white and blue, and I silently give thanks for the millions who have fought to keep us free.  Then I gratefully head out into the still early morning, and enjoy a hearty breakfast with my family, while discussing all that we have seen and experienced. 

Good luck with finals!  See you tomorrow night!

Mr. Cole