Tom,

Hi!

First of all, Congratulations on raising 3 Eagle Scouts. That says a lot about their father (and mother). You have obviously done a wonderful job raising and educating your 3 sons on their practical life skills.

Believe it or not, I don't think I usurped or encroached on his leadership role in this project. I have been constantly reminding myself to let him take the lead and do the work so that he will learn from it, even when he makes mistakes. A big reason for that has been the numerous small battles we have had re meetings. He has been SPL a little longer than I have been Scoutmaster. It has been hard to let him lead the boys, so I hear about that constantly. I also heard about the problem of giving orders to my younger son at Scouting activities, at least until he realized that the alternative is taking orders from his older brother. But even that seems to be coming along fairly well.

Fortunately, we did not have any major problems at the project. We had a very good turnout of the scouts and scouters from our troop and a sister troop. The surprise was that we had absolutely no volunteers outside of scouting and USFS volunteers. Either our compromised publicity was insufficient, or a fairly easy outdoor activity was just a whole lot harder sell than I would have ever guessed.

He has been spreading his wings quite a bit over the last year. This summer, he will work as a camp counselor (mostly life guarding) at a nearby BSA camp. He did that last year as a volunteer. This year he seems to have wangled some pay for his work. I am very proud of him since he is accomplishing a lot more than I ever did at his age (newly 15 yo) away from home.

Thanks for the good wishes.

And best wishes for your entire family,

John