Doing their best

Leaders work to bolster Scouting in Arkansas

Be prepared.

For generations of young men (and later young women), this motto has served as an indispensable guide not only in their membership in the Scouting movement, but to life in general. Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell grew to understand, and said so 86 years ago, that wealth, business success or self-indulgence aren’t what promote happiness.

“Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it,” Baden-Powell wrote in his farewell to Scouting a few years before his death. “Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one. But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try to leave this world a little better than you found it, and, when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time, but have done your best.”

Evidence of his advice and the Scout Motto can be found in the merger in Arkansas of the Fort Smith-based Westark and Little Rock-based Quapaw area councils of the Boy Scouts of America. Scouting officials announced two days before Thanksgiving formation of the 56-county Natural State Council.

It was a merger of necessity. Scouting saw its ranks shrink during the pandemic, and, before that, a historic split with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over Scouting’s membership policies helped to dry up a steady stream of participants. Membership was also hurt in recent years as Scouting’s leaders came to terms with a history of sexual abuse cases involving troop leaders and youths and the organization’s failure, for years, to adequately respond to it.

But leaders in these two councils in Arkansas, dedicated to the principles of Scouting, stood prepared to do what it took to make sure Scouting remained a viable and valuable option for young people.

They could have looked at the gloomy side. They could have clung tightly to the organizational structures that served the Scouts of a different time. But, as Westark Area Council President Jack Butt of Fayetteville said last week, it was “love at first sight” when the councils’ leaders met to discuss a possible merger four months earlier. They, like all Scouts and Scouters, had pledged to do their best to do their duty.

The result is the Natural State Council, with commitments to maintain Westark’s 600-acre Camp Orr on the banks of the Buffalo River, where thousands of Northwest Arkansas scouts have spent time, and Quapaw’s 3,200-acre Gus Blass Scout Reservation near Damascus in north central Arkansas.

Mergers aren’t easy. To some degree, egos and tradition must be put aside for them to happen. But those involved in these merger discussions chose to do a good turn. They grasped the need, above all else, to maintain an organization that changes the lives of many young men and women for the better.

Kudos to them, and congratulations to current and future Scouts who will be served by this new organization.