BoyandGirlScouts.com – News, Opinion, Advice

Mnawar ABBOUD Says:

14 March 2009 at 5:14 pm.

I am a scout from TUNISIA (north afrika)
I had been in TV as an international camp staff .I was in west camp on august 1979 (West was Best )
At 11/8/1979 a storm or a tornado struck TV drawing a Z in the reservation
I can not forget it. I have some photos of it .Would you like to receive it ?
Please help me to contact my friends of the staff summer 1979. Now i am 62 years old.I still remembering : ED SYMOND from Boylston;LARRY ;BARRY ;STANLEY ;BOURGAULT ;Michael Mac QAID…I have their photos .

Jay Marcimo Says:

10 August 2009 at 5:50 pm.

Hello I also was there on august 10 1979 as a 14 year old scout, One of the boys in my troop was john white he was killed at the hickory camp site, 30 years later i still remember him and that day. any one who was in that provisional troop, would like to hear from you.
Sincerely Jay Marcimo Worceter Ma

K Lambert (ex L Stead) Says:

16 December 2009 at 3:56 pm.

I wrote this five years ago for my online journal. Jay, I was googling last August as well and missed your post by about three hours. If Jay or anyone wants to reach me, I can be reached on gmail with the name klambert (hopefully that will fool the bots), but that may be a blue pill you don’t want to take.
———-

It was 25 years ago today, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It’s never taken on the sepia tones of a memory. It remains vivid, bright, raw. The green of oak leaves. The taste of barbequed chicken. The smell of raw cracked wood.

August 10th, 1979, Treasure Valley Scout Reservation in Paxton Massachusetts. I was 13 years old and had spent most of the summer at the camp. I’d been taking a special skin diving class that was going to get me the non-scuba snorkeling certification. It was parents day and I rushed back to our campsite, Sleepy Hollow. My tent-mate Ed was already there. John White, a 10 year old and our youngest camper, came into my tent with a coffee can. He’d found a beautiful salamander, red all over with black spots. There were a few leaves in the can and holes poked in the top. I’d never seen one like it before. The salamanders where I grew up were thinner and black with darker red stripes. It was enough for me to be a little enthusiastic, not just polite. Nobody was rude to John, but he was younger than any of us and there’s just a large gulf between a 10 year old and 12 to 14 year olds. I think he may have been a bit lonely and I’m not sure why he was at the camp at all since the minimum age for boy scouts is 11. We all guessed his father had pulled strings or something. I told him to go back to his tent and get ready for his parents visit. He did and I opened my footlocker and started to get ready.

The wind picked up and then got crazy. It had been a summer of wonderful thunder storms, which we’d watch from the wooden dining canopy. I loved the storms. It was a large canvas army tent on a platform and the wind was enough to begin blowing up the sides where we hadn’t properly secured it. I stood at the front, holding onto the center pole like a captain at the wheel of a ship and shouted “abandon tent! abandon tent!” And everything went black.

I have no idea how long it was, but I woke to hear Ed calling my name. I didn’t realize I had been unconscious at all and thought the tent had just come undone on top of us, until I tried to get up and felt the tree against my back. It was wedged against my footlocker, hitting it in the middle, and I was pinned in front of the locker. I laughed, it was ludicrous that a branch had fallen and squirmed out from under the tree an stuck my head up. It wasn’t clear, but the rain had stopped. There was green everywhere and the smell of electricity, wood, and green in the air. An oak tree had some down on top of us, trees were down everywhere around us and the ground was a sea of late summer leaves. We had no idea what was going on but we got ourselves out of the tent and went to the dining fly. As I crossed the road, I saw a sunfish sailboat in a tree up near the next campsite.

Everyone at the dining pavilion was scared. One person was convinced we were in the eye of the storm and it would happen again. We talked him down and tried to get some news on my transistor radio. Since there wasn’t any, we decided it must have been something that only had hit the camp. Most of the kids from our camp were already in the dining pavilian when the storm hit. A few others had wandered back like we had from our tents across the road. I can’t remember his name, he was a strawberry blond if my memory serves, tall, thin. He was pale, but not as pale as he was when he wandered back from the tents. I can’t remember his voice, but I remember the monotone of fear. “John White is dead.” Nothing more. Just that simple statement. I’m sure we all knew it was true, but we interrogated him about how he knew. I can’t remember what he said, but he mentioned blood and made it clear.

I can’t remember at what point, but eventually someone from the camp staff came to our campsite. I can’t remember who we told or why or now. I think it was Ron Wilkins, but I could be wrong. There was an emergency protocol and that was to return to your campsite dining pavilian. And we were to stay there. They went off to check the tent area for John and anyone else who might still be there. That was all we knew.

Perhaps an hour after the storm, perhaps longer, we were still alone when a man walked into our campsite. He was young, but not young enough to be a counselor. We looked at each other, but none of us knew him, but it was obvious that the parents were starting to arrive for parents day. His voice I can still hear as clearly as I did 25 years ago “I’m John White’s father.” We looked at each other, and I’m sure it was written all over us. But none of us could do it. None of us could tell his poor man that his son was dead. We told him that we hadn’t seen him and maybe he should try the medical cabin. He asked “Is he one of the fatalities?” I didn’t answer, we just told him again he should go to the medical cabin. I looked into his eyes and when he heard us say that, he knew. I still think about him. About what that must have been like. To know, but not have it confirmed. To need to be strong for a group of kids when your own child is dead. He knew were the medic cabin was and left. I don’t think he spent 2 minutes in our campsite. I doubt if I’ll ever spend a harder 2 minutes.

A short time later we were sent to the lodge where we could get something to eat and which had a clear road open to it for parents to get to. Trees were down everywhere. The little path I’d walked up so many times was almost an open field. There was BBQ chicken. I can still taste it and oddly none of us had trouble eating. The cook told us we shouldn’t talk about anyone being killed because nobody had been. We told him it was someone in our campsite. He said he was sorry. He had known of course, he was just trying to save anyone who didn’t know any trauma.

There were two kids at the camp killed. One on each side of the pond. I didn’t know the other boy. He was a CIT at the waterfront if I remember. John had crawled under his cot and been crushed when a pine tree snapped and flew onto the tent. I don’t remember ever seeing an emergency vehicle. It’s my understanding that the entire event was handled by the camp staff, who with a very few exceptions were little more than kids themselves. I don’t think anyone could have done a better job. I think about that a lot when the radicals who now run scouting want to drum people out. Nobody asked if the 18 or 20 year old digging a body out from under a tree was gay or an atheist and plenty of us at the camp were both. How dare they deny something so good to people.

It’s all behind me now. I had some very tough years and my parents believed in toughing it out rather than therapy which didn’t help. I couldn’t camp in bad weather for a while and I’ve never really enjoyed camping again. But eventually it passed from my feelings. Still every year on the anniversary I think about it though. I wonder how things might have been different. If I’d not sent John to get dressed, would he have been killed? If he hadn’t found the salamander, would he have been changed already and in the dining fly? If my footlocker hadn’t been open, would I have been crushed by the tree? If I hadn’t been a joker shouting abandon tent would I have been there for the footlocker to block the tree? Probably so, my cot was completely crushed and I would have been standing next to it to change. In the time I lost, was I unconscious? It took me some time to remember talking with Ed and getting out of the tent. Was that just from being stunned physically or was it lost time? Did I hear or see more than I could take and simply block it out? Would it have been kinder to tell his dad? How do my friends feel about the anniversary of the date and how has it affected their lives?

There’s no profit in thinking about it, but one still does. Even if I didn’t know John that well, he deserves someone to remember him.

Ron Herrera Says:

11 August 2011 at 2:29 am.

I was on staff as a CIT working with Phillip, who was an international scout from Indonesia. We were in the commisioner area that was next to the provisional troop. I was the first staff member to get to the site that John was at. I remember asking the other kids who were huddled in the little kitchen area if everyone was alright. They said one boy was missing and his tent was “over there”. There was nothing there… I was on my way to look for him when a senior staff member arrived and sent me to the waterfront. I do not know how I would have reacted had I found him. I do think about it a lot now. I am an assistant scout master now, and I go to camp each year with my son. There is still a small amount of fear, when a storm hits while camping, and I make sure that all scouts are aware of the dangers. So in some small way, hopefully it will help somewhere.