ADULT LEADERSHIP

What's the difference between the military and the Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult leadership. In the beginning all the hikes and climbs that went out from Camp Sheppard had an adult on them. By the mid-seventies, many, if not most, of the trips left camp without an adult. This was not a decline in adult leadership; to the contrary, it was an example of the finest adult leadership.

The staff went on training trips with the likes of Ome Daiber and Larry Penberthy, Max paid close attention to the development of each boy and the program itself was set up to develop leadership. Starting the first year as an assistant hike leader and progressing as skills developed and experience accumulated to rope leader on climb, hike leader and eventually climb leader. All the time learning from the older staff, from Max and the other program adults. On a hike usually the scoutmaster or a parent of one of the scouts served as the responsible adult, but when a troop was unable to send an adult, Max tapped some of his adult volunteers to accompany us, most notably Ivan Kay and Bob Wegre. Both were retired gentlemen who were very good at staying in the background and letting the staff lead the trip. In camp, Mr. Wegre had a tape recorder that he set up by our stereo system to tape Led Zeppelin, The Doors . . He claimed he liked the music but we had the volume way to high, so he would turn on the tape player, get away from the noise, come back and collect his tape and listen at a lower volume.

My first year on staff I was on a trip with a troop of young scouts and Ivan Kay was along as the adult. We camped at Fish Lake and after dinner Ivan asked if I wanted to walk around the lake. I agreed and figured that because Ivan was old and had kept his jacket on, this would be an easy stroll around the lake. A quarter of the way around, my jacket was off and I had unzipped the long zippers on the legs of my wool pants. I was completely unprepared for the pace at which he strode through the woods and had to ask him wait for me while I pulled those long wool pants off. He coolly stood there with his Filson buttoned up and observed how zippers on the legs of the pants were handy if you were going to be changing your pant all the time. We finished our walk and Ivan was still cool as a cucumber and I was drenched in sweat. He was very nice about it and didn't let on, but now, thirty years later I'm beginning to know the satisfaction he felt of walking some young buck into the dirt.

The adults on the trips that were associated with Camp Sheppard were generally pretty good, but the ones that came as troop leaders were a crapshoot. Some were fine; others were, single-handedly, more trouble than a whole troop of whiney, runny-nosed spoiled twelve year olds. There were a few trips that seemed to go fine until a couple of weeks after the trip a letter would show up at the Scout Office accusing (often falsely) the staff of being unprepared and incompetent. I suspect it was the immaturity of some of these adults that persuaded Max and Nolan Sanner (the Chief Seattle council executive) to allow trips to go with no adults. I think too, that they knew these trips were way better off without an adult, because the very core of Scouting is a gang of kids traipsing into the woods alone, learning to take care of themselves and to get along with each other.

Just because there were no adults in the woods with us, doesn't mean we didnÕt have adult leadership. As the trip leaders, the Camp Sheppard staff knew we had to answer to Max, and Max had to answer to the Scout office, the Scoutmaster and to the Scout's parents. At the end of the trip Max was right there, asking how it went. He wanted to know the successes and how we handled the problems. On the climbs there was no question about adult leadership, there was none. Ome Daiber came on one and John Miner came on another staff climb, beyond that all the climbs where the sole responsibility of the 16 to 18 year olds of Camp Sheppard staff. We took that responsibility to heart; nobody wanted to be involved with a mountain tragedy. And we knew we had to answer to Max. Three times a day. We carried a two-way radio on every summit climb, not the 8 oz. Cell phones or Talk-a-bouts of today, but a solid 15 lb. antenna waving, static crackling, radio of yesteryear. Every day at 6:00 AM, noon and 6:00 PM we made contact with Max and told him what was going on. He would keep us posted on the weather reports and occasionally advise us ("don't plan a summit camp, the weather is going to get nasty up there tomorrow." Or, "come down through Sherman instead of Muir, because the camp bus will be at White River."). But mostly we carried a radio "just in case". If things started to go wrong, the radio was our link to adult leadership.

When Camp Sheppard became a National High Adventure Camp, it attracted troops and explorer posts from across America, and these groups usually had an adult or two along. On the glacier it was obvious that the Camp Sheppard staff had the skills and experience necessary to climb the mountain. These adults were very easy to work with and they exercised their leadership by encouraging the troops and offering moral support. Even in the most difficult situations did anyone question or second-guess the leadership of the Camp Sheppard staff. The National Scouting office was very uncomfortable having climbers on the mountain with no adult and for the first one or two climbs Max was able to find experienced mountaineers who could climb comfortably with young boys. But, the program grew and finding experienced climbers willing to spend a whole week with us became very difficult to find. It wasn't long before climbs were leaving with no adults and Max was between a bureaucracy and the big mountain. The National Office knew that if any tragedy occurred, they would be criticized, castigated, raked over the coals and sued for a ton of money. Max knew that too. He also knew that the young men he had trained could do the job and do it better than anyone else in the Scouting organization at the time.

At the start of every climb Max would take the leader aside to remind them that they were the cornerstone of the High Adventure Program. If anything happened on this trip, the whole thing would come crashing down, closing our program and probably closing or damaging the other High Adventure programs in Maine, Minnesota and at Philmont. Then he had to trust us as we headed off up the mountain with a dozen scouts. The National Scouting office was right to worry, just like all our parents worried, just like Max worried every time a trip went out. But, the staff of Camp Sheppard got hundreds of scouts up and down the mountain and led thousands of scouts over thousands of miles of trail with an excellent safety record. "If you survive it, it's an experience" and for those of us lucky enough to be on the Camp Sheppard staff, what a great experience it was!