Max Eckenberg

In the annals of one's lifetime there are usually a handful or two of "My Most Unforgettable Character" (sic Reader's Digest). In my own existence of almost four score years it has been a privilege to have had several people in work and business, many as personal friends, and quite a few in the scouting program and Explorer Search and Rescue (ESAR), and many in Mountain Rescue Council (now known as Seattle Mountain Rescue (SMR) who I deem as "My Most Unforgettable Character". In the scouting and ESAR scene there are the likes of Don Wilson, Ivan Kay, Sam Gregory, Jon Wartes, Don Marsha, Larch Douglas, etc. and within the SMR there are the greats like Ome Daiber, Dr. Otto Trott, Al Givler, Jerry Sabel and others who have made such an impression on me to make them truly memorable. In this last category, (scouting, ESAR, SMR) there stands Max Eckenberg head and shoulder above the others to make him my special "Most Unforgettable Character".

I first met Max in the first years of the 60's when my son was a tenderfoot scout and I led the scout troop for a winter camp outing to the recently established Camp Sheppard by the White River on the north border of Mt. Rainier Park. Max was the new and first resident camp ranger of Sheppard who had sacrificed a comfortable income as a draftsman at Boeing in exchange for almost a poverty level existence of the Seattle Boy Scout Council to be able to work in the outdoors and the mountains with youngsters in the scouting program.

That first winter camp at Sheppard was most memorable for two things. Our troop stayed the weekend in one of the wooden former CCC barracks which were moved down the road from Ranger Creek. The old weathered single plank walls let in slits and plugs of light where the boards had shrunk or cracked and knots had fallen out. It would have been excellent air conditioning in the summer but in the winter those walls assured the interior temperature was the same as the outside weather. The barracks were furnished with double deck bunks lined along three walls and a sheet metal wood burning stove in the middle of the room.

As long as the stove was stoked to red hot it was passably comfortable. The first night the two scouts who volunteered to stay up and keep the fire going all night fell asleep during the night and let the fire in the stove go out.

The air temperature that night was down to -10 degrees (not including wind chill). In the morning the heads of lettuce for our salad had turned into green cannon balls, the half gallon cartons of milk had frozen and expanded to twice the original size and resembled ice footballs, the wieners turned into red popsicles.

The second memorable incident of that first visit to Sheppard was meeting Max Eckenberg. To me Max was the perfect persona of a true mountain man. His every day wardrobe consisted of a black beret cocked on his head, white T-shirts, black 1.5" wide police suspenders to hold up faded blue jean trousers. In cold weather he wore the green and black plaid wool jacket. He did put on a black suit for attending the occasional funeral. A piece of his wear article people didn't know about was Max's boots. His boots were custom made of the finest leathers by the Buffalo Shoe Co. in Seattle. That company had wooden lasts of Max's feet and made perfectly fit boots for him. Very expensive, yes, but a wise investment for someone who spent all day walking around in the woods.

That first overnighter at Sheppard, I spent much time listening to Max's dreams of a great future for Camp Sheppard and how it would be a great boon for an outdoor program for scouts. By Max's own admission, he suffers from "diarrhea of the mouth" whenever a topic of discussion concerns scouting, camping or any activity in the outdoors. His enthusiasm and total immersion in the subject of scouting and outdoor programs for scouts was infectious to any scouter who came up to Sheppard. No wonder that so many scout leaders who came to Sheppard fell under the Eckenberg spell and came up to Sheppard week after week to help build or improve the camp. People in the building trades . . . carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and others were forever coming up to the camp to build, repair, install, or just do general grunt work to improve the camp. Max even induced a contingency of U.S. Army Reserve CB unit to come up to Sheppard with their heavy equipment to build the camp parking lot. I don't think the scout office ever realized or fully or partially appreciated all the skilled work that came with Max when they hired him. Anyway, at that early period of Sheppard there were two of us, Mr. Tom Macartney, an explorer post advisor in Seattle and myself, who succumbed to Max' "diarrhea of the mouth" and eventually committed ourselves to serve as Max's volunteer assistants at Sheppard.

Once in a while Max would divulge segments of his early days as a youngster. He tells of his growing up in the Aberdeen area of Western Washington and how he rowed down the river in his canoe to get to town and to school. Much of the time the fishing was good on the river and like as not he was tardy for school almost always. One day a friendly man accosted him on his way to school and enticed Max to give him a ride down the river to town. Of course they fished along the way and upon reaching the town, Max went off to school and his new friend went his own way. At school, as usual, Max was called into the principal's office for being so tardy again. And who should be in the principal's office but that nice fellow who came down the river with Max! This new friend turned out to be the local truant officer. The man proved to be a real nice fellow and a true friend and by brotherly persuasion convinced Max to not be tardy so often.

As a young adult Max worked in the outdoors for the Forest Service. I presume that experience influenced his love for the great outdoors and honed his skills as a woodsman and an outdoorsman. One of the woodsman's skills that Max acquired and practiced sometimes was in the art of throwing the lumberjack's long handled ax.

Ax throwing is one of the events in lumberjack's skill competition whereby contestants throw a long handled ax at a bull's eye painted on the butt of a log from ten paces. One of Max's stories concerns asi tuation in which a young bully of a scout pulled a switch-blade knife on Max. This didn't intimidate Max at all and he calmly suggested to the youngster to put away his knife and things could be settled in a skill contest. Max would pin his beret on a tree trunk and the lad's cap would be pinned on an adjacent tree trunk and each would take turns throwing the long handled ax at the other's hat from ten paces away. Max, having experience and being adept at ax throwing soon had the young man's cap chopped to pieces while his opponent couldn't even hit the tree much less Max's beret. No more trouble from that young man after that.

As resident ranger at Camp Sheppard, Max put in long days and many nights in fixing, repairing, building, improving things at his camp. The job description of a resident ranger was to be on the premises, make sure everything is operating OK, and be accommodating and helpful to scouts who stay in camp. Not only did Max fulfill the job description chores, he was a one man construction crew and an outdoor naturalist and biologist. He was responsible for installing the water supply system, building the water storage and purification system, locating and building hiking and nature trails, making snow slide runs and did all the repair work of any part of the camp that needed attention. He also located and staked out miles of trails and many campsites in the mountains around the camp so the Sheppard staff scouts could lead scout troops on extended hikes.

The valued legacy Max left for the Seattle Boy Scouts include the Sheppard High Adventure Program (SHAP), the Sheppard Provisional Troop Hikes, the admiration of Camp Sheppard and SHAP of many scout troops from many distant states, and mostly the host of great SHAP staff youngsters who actually made the SHAP such a success. At the time they served as SHAP staff, they were all teen age youngsters taking on a tremendous responsibility of actually holding other youngsters' lives in their hands and through luck, fate, skill, experience, or whatever, all SHAP expeditions and climbs were successful with no accidents or injuries.

These SHAP staff members of some years ago are now near or into middle age and not surprisingly are all responsible citizens many of who are in high ranking positions in industry, law enforcement, education, high tech jobs, etc.

The SHAP was a national Seattle scout council program whereby scout troops from anywhere in the US were invited to come to Camp Sheppard for a mountaineering expedition culminating in an ice climb summit attempt of 14,410' Mt. Rainier. When Max first proposed such a high adventure program, we had encouragement and help from the National Park Service and also from Lou Whitaker of Rainier Mountaineering who had the commercial concession of guiding climb groups to the summit of the mountain. But it was quite a dilly to get final approval from the scout office. The head office was wary of any program that might cost them some money. We did finally get a reluctant approval go ahead sign and as the scout office feared, to start the program was a fair financial drain. Nylon perlon ropes, climbing helmets, ice axes, crampons, slings, and biners, food supplies, etc. had to be stocked.

Max was in charge of most of the logistics for the SHAP and made up the itinerary and scheduling and assigning of staff as guides and leader on climb groups, through friends and supporters in the wholesale grocery business, bought all the food, with help from nutritionist friends made up the menus, and through friendship and earlier association with Lou Whitaker got SHAP staff youngsters invited to partake in Lou's own snow and ice travel training he conducted for his own guide service climbers.

Tom Macartney and myself as unofficial Max's unpaid assistants took care of the administration phase of SHAP and spent a lot of time and efforts to mollify the scout office of overspending our slim budget and trying to curb Max's appetite for unlimited spending for SHAP. Max's philosophy on money was, "What good is money unless you spend it?" I kept telling him his view on money matters should be "What good is money unless you have some to spend." Anyway it was always understandable that Max was impatient to get things done for his SHAP. But the scout office always looked from the bottom line (financial) side of any program. It seemed we at Sheppard and the scout office were always at odds. I got to be quite used to going down to scout headquarters in Seattle to try to explain what they considered extravagant was what we considered a necessity.

In spite of a somewhat rocky start for SHAP, it turned out to be a great national success the first year. Scout troops and their leaders came from different parts of the country to take part in the SHAP. There was a high adventure program in Minnesota which involves canoe expeditions and another Philmont Ranch program in Arizona which involves hike trips but the SHAP was the only one that was a real mountaineering and climbing program. Nothing made Max more proud that to have a participating troop and its leaders being amazed and give glowing compliments for a great program and particularly praising the young teen-age SHAP staff members who led the group on a climb of a major mountain. Max has often mentioned a particular scout troop and leaders that came from California and the SHAP After this troop spent a week on Rainier and successfully made the summit, the leader after returning home to California, wrote to Max how all the scouts so enjoyed the whole program and was tremendously impressed with the young teen-age SHAP staff members. The leader was amazed that after the SHAP trip on Rainier, all the scouts that went on the trip buckled down and in quick order finished up their merit badges and requirements to make the rank of Eagle Scout. He couldn't explain what caused this surge of ambition but thinks he is correct in assuming that his scouts were so impressed with the SHAP staff to make them realize the importance of leadership. Whenever Max mentions this incident and the letter from the California scout troop, one can almost witness his T-shirt stretching to the point of ripping to accommodate his swelling chest. Proud? . . . You bet!

When word of the SHAP got around the country, the head of a large industrial company came to Seattle and to Sheppard to see for himself the operation of SHAP. This man was so impressed with Max's operation he was going to pledge a donation of $25,000 dollars for SHAP. That was a real windfall for Max in that SHAP always needed continuing funds to purchase new equipment or replace old or lost equipment and it was such a hassle to squeeze a dollar out of the scout office. The donor's big pledge offer was made to the scout office )bad mistake) and when this man returned back east, the scout office wrote to thank him for his generous offer and how much his donation will help in the scout office operating budget. (Dumb, Dumb, Dumb!) When the donor learned his donation was going to the scout office operation expenses and not to SHAP, he withdrew his offer. SHAP, the scout office, everybody lost out because of the obvious greed of the money grubbing scout office. It was a while before Max got over the disappointment of losing a big windfall for SHAP and of the resentment toward the scout office.

After the SHAP got started and going well, Max came up with another one of his innovative brainstorms. He long realized that there were many youngsters in scouting who never had a chance to get out in the outdoors or go camping because of various circumstances through no fault of their own . . . lack of experienced or qualified troop leaders, an uncaring troop committee, no parental support, etc. Max's vision for these young scouts that he considered unfortunate, was to form a provisional troop at Camp SHeppard of individual scouts from various troops in Seattle who might want to go on a week long hike in the outdoors. This provisional troop at Sheppard would be a one time temporary troop for one week during the summer led by a Camp Sheppard adult leader and some SHAP staff members. The hike outing would be one half way around the Wonderland Trail in Mt. Rainier Park. The food and a nutritionally balanced menu would be furnished by the camp. When this provisional troop program concept was proposed to the scout office, they were reluctant to give approval of such a program in that they felt the program would not be self sustaining and would cost the scout office some money. Also, they had to have assurance that the hike would have adequate adult responsibility and leadership. Our Camp Sheppard administration (Max, Macartney, and I) following the old adage of "If at first you don't succeed, suck until you do suck seed" we kept up the battering on the scout office and they finally approved the program after Max assured the camping chairman of the scout office that George Uchida (thanks, Max) would be leading the hikes.

The provisional troop hike was duly advertised in the local scout publication and we started to receive applicants from individual scouts from different troops of Seattle. As each application was received, I visited the scout's home for an interview with the parents to fully explain the program and its purpose, what would be furnished, what the scout would have to bring along on the hike, where to purchase or get things or equipment at little or no cost, what kind of clothing or shoes they should wear, etc., etc., and of course the list of the "ten essentials".

The very first provisional troop hike was a real unforgettable outing and gave me further insight on Max Eckenburg's make up and his concern for the young scouts at his camp. Our trop started on the Wonderland Trail on the White River side of Mt. Rainier Park and after hiking uphill through some woods and then on the rocky trail along side the lateral moraine of the lower end of the Carbon Glacier, we arrived at our first night's bivouac area at Mystic Lake, a distance of a little over seven miles from the trail head.

There were about thirty scouts in our provisional troop which was enough to divid the group into four patrols. After each patrol had laid out their patrol bivouac site and each scout made preparations for sleeping arrangements, the scouts had the rest of the afternoon free for themselves. Four scouts had brought along fishing rods and reels and jars of imitation plastic salmon eggs for bait. They stood on the shore of Mystic and cast their lines in the water Most of the rest of the troop stood behind these four to see if the fishermen could catch any fish. This particular day, the fishing in Mystic Lake was more than phenomenal As soon as each fish line hit the water, there was cut throat trout on. In a few minutes each of of the four fishermen had caught four or more trout. At this point I suggested to the fishermen that they might relinquish their fishing gear to four other scouts and give them a chance at fishing. The fantastic fishing continued and the second group of fishermen caught at least three cut throats in a few minutes a t which point, I had the fishing gear passed on to four other scouts. That afternoon, after a short time, all the scouts in the troop had landed at least three trouts each. All the fish caught were laced together in patrol batches and put into the lake to keep them fresh for next morning's breakfast. That evening after seeing the four patrols bedded down, I laid out my sack on a little knoll out of hearing but within eyesight of the troop It was a windless and starlit night and I got into my sleeping bag with not top cover or shelter on top. The muffled thunder of chunks of ice crashing down from Willis Wall in the distance every ten minutes or so was almost like lullaby and I soon fell into a deep sleep. It think it was about 2 A.M. when I was startled awake by a bright flashlight beam on my face. I was scared out of my wits when I heard Max's voice, "How's everything going? Is everything OK with your troop?" I just couldn't imagine Max (or anyone else) hiking through the woods and mountain trails in the middle of the night, alone, to make sure all was going well with his scouts! After I recovered from being jolted awake, I suggested to Max to lay his sack near mine and get to sleep and next morning at breakfast he was going to get a surprise.

In the morning after the troop was all up and their little breakfast fires were started, I led Max to a patrol that had caught the most trout the day before. I introduced Max to the patrol members and told them that they were going to have the Camp Sheppard Ranger for a breakfast guest. I think the youngsters were quite honored to be hosing such a dignitary.

After breakfast was over, I asked Max how he enjoyed his trout breakfast, fully expecting surprise and a mountain of compliments for a great fish feed. Max had a big grin on his face and described his breakfast experience. The scouts picked out two big trouts for Max, shoved a long stick into the mouth of the fish, held it over the cooking fire (like roasting marshmallows) for a few minutes and presented the fish to Max. max took the first fish and started chewing off the head and eating the rest of the fish like a candy bar . . . head, fins, bones, guts, tail and all. The whole patrol stared wide-eyed in wonderment to see blood, guts, and juices squirting out of Max's mouth. Max declared to me that he was hungry and fish was a nutritious food, cooked or uncooked, so he ate the barely warmed over fish as it was presented to him. Max ate the second fish the same way. After devouring the fish and wiping the juices off his chin, Max thanked his hosts and told them how much he enjoyed the breakfast. max told me, "I'll bet when they eat their own breakfast, the little guys are going to take off the heads, clean and gut the fish, spread out the fillets and make sure the fish is cooked through inside and out." Without complaining, or without a word to cause embarrassment, Max taught the young scouts how not to cook fish. Max's breakfast host patrol never did ever mention having the Sheppard ranger for a breakfast guest (embarrassment or self guilt?) and I never did bring the subject of Max's fish breakfast to anyone's mind (Actually the whole fish cooking fiasco was my own fault. I had forgotten my troop were all green horns in the wilderness and while we gave them instructions on how to cook prepared or dried foods and grains in a #10 tin over an open fire, I didn't consider that they might not know the first thing about cooking fresh fish.

Going on a hike outing with Max is a truly a learning and exhilarating experience. I'm convinced that Max has map, compass, and altimeter embossed right onto his brain. Having been in the woods with Max, I don't ever recall him studying a map or compass. Years ago I asked him if he ever got lost in the woods. He admitted there has been a time or two when he got turned around a bit but never ever got lost. In the mid 60's a contingency of Seattle MRC went to Mt. McKinley in Alaska for a search and rescue effort to find Jim and Lou Whitaker's climb group presumably lost in a big storm on the mountain. With Ome Daiber as OL at search base, Max was team leader of the climb group on the mountain. Max's recounting of his team running into the teeth of a tremendous storm and complete white-out is a story worth listening to. After long periods of plowing through hip deep snow in the severe storm and white-out, several of the rescue team members were consigning themselves to a horrible death and lamenting the fact that they will never see their families again and will die without even being able to tell them "Good-bye". And Otto Trott climbing right behind Max urging him to not give up and not to fall down because he will not be able to get up again and they would all die. Not knowing where they were on the mountain, or where they were going, Max was able to lead his rescue team back to search base to cheers, hugs, embraces of Ome Daiber who was crying for happiness.

Max was the pivotal individual who was instrumental in building the Shurman climbers' shelter on Steamboat Prow at 10,000 foot altitude on the Emmons Glacier of Rainier. With groups of volunteers who backpacked materials and equipment on weekends, he had made fifty-five climbs to the Steamboat Prow shelter site before some of his friends on the project realized that Max had never been to the summit of Mt. Rainier. Max never had any interest or inclination to make a name for himself for making record summit climbs, making first ascents of summits, initiating new climb routes, etc. and considered attaining the summit of any mountain was nothing special to crow about. So one weekend the Shurman shelter volunteers escorted Max up to the top of Rainier so he could at least say he had been to the Rainier summit at least once.

I've been privileged to hike through all the nature trails at Sheppard with Max as a guide who knew every tree, plant, bush, the many mosses, etc. He loved to escort anyone interested through his nature trails any time of the day. I recall a moon lit hike at midnight with Max through the thick wooded steep hillside on the back side of Sheppard to the pool at the base of Snoquera Falls at the base of the Snoquera escarpment. We hiked cross country along the base of the escarpment for a distance and crashed down through the woods and thick brush down the hillside and then back to Sheppard. I can assure a couple hour hike at midnight through some deep woods is quite exhilarating especially when Max is leading the way and one has no qualms about getting lost.

A wonderful outing experience I had with Max was the weekend the two of us spent hiking in the Goat Rocks. It was another one of those spur of the moment decisions and we took off without much preparations....a couple of sandwiches, a 150 foot perlon line, a couple of sleeping bags, and my light nylon two-man tent in case of inclement weather. The first night we set up the tent on the shore of a beautiful lake, crawled into our sleeping bags in the tent for the night. As two people laying side by side in their sleeping bags in one tent, Max and I talked about any subject that came to mind until we exhausted things to talk about and were ready to get to sleep. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, Max suddenly asked me, "What would you think if that tent flap at the foot of our sleeping bags should suddenly open and some mean looking big guy is standing over us with an ax in his hand?" Max continued on to say he was not afraid of anything in the wilderness or mountains, anything in nature or of wild animals but he is afraid of another man. He said Man is the only animal who will attack another human to get or steal something that he wants. An animal will seldom attack a man and usually only if it feels threatened or to protect their babies. Man is willing to hurt or kill another man for money or to get something that doesn't belong to him. It took a minute or two to let that scenario sink in and then my blood turned to ice. Here I am helplessly zipped up in a sleeping bag and there is this guy with an ax ready to do me in. What to do but to resign myself to fate and say "Sayonara". In a few minutes I heard Max's steady breathing in a deep sleep. I lay awake a good part of the night expecting that tent flap to open at any time.

Max Eckenberg is absolutely the most honest and most appreciative man ever to be born. Many years ago I was working for a large steel and pipe supply company and did I all the construction of the warehouses and offices, repairs of equipment and tools, cutting and fabrication steel parts, keeping the various machineries in working condition. My shop area was a quarter block away from the office complex and a distance away from the warehouses for the inventories. And in a separate building with tools, equipment, welding and other machinery to do all the building and repair work. One day early in the morning Max Eckenberg drove into my shop area. In the bed of his truck he had a big bull dozer blade which could be attached to the truck with heavy steel support arms. Max said the bull dozer blade keeps breaking off from the support arms and he had it fixed twice already in a welding shop in Enumclaw but it broke again. He wanted to know if I could weld the support arms and the dozer blade so it wouldn't break again. It wasn't much of a challenge and I welded the thing together. (About 17 to 20 heavy overlapping weld beads, chipping slag off every bead and letting it cool before overlapping another bead.) When I got through with the job, I told Max to take his repaired blade and go home before someone in the company sees him by my shop. But Max was adamant about seeing some officer of the company to give his thanks. I kept telling Max that thanks were not necessary but he wouldn't give up and wouldn't go home unless he personally thanked someone in the company. Finally I walked Max over to the office and introduced him to one of the managers. Max with his "diarrhea of the mouth" kept telling the office man what a great donation job the company did for the scouts. The manager kept saying it was no problem...the company was glad to help the scouts and no thanks were necessary. (I know he thought I did a fifteen minute repair job for some friend which is done quite often). But Max kept insisting thanks were certainly necessary and appreciation must be acknowledged. He went on to say, "Why, your man here (pointing to me) used so much material and spent over half a day to do a good job". When the manager heard "half a day", he stared at me with raised eyebrows. I hustled Max and myself out of the office pronto before Max got us into more trouble. Max always means so well but sometimes his "diarrhea of the mouth" can cause complications.

Max's relationship with his SHAP staff personnel was a rather a unique but a very tight one. Age wise Max was a father image but many times Max was an older brother figure to his SHAP staff. As a father figure or a surrogate father to the staff, he was a very permissive one who managed to be looking the other way whenever one of his SHAP gang engaged in some unauthorized shenanigan or outlandish behavior. For instance, when most mountain climbers are clipping short their boot laces to save weight, SHAP staff were known to pack folding lawn chairs and chaise Longues, comic books, a watermelon, a football (to play football wearing crampons in the crater of Rainier) on a summit climb of Mt. Rainier. Of course everyone in the climbing community have heard of these SHAP staff climbers but Max pretended he didn't know about what his staff people was doing or did on the mountain. Hence there was no need for lectures or reprimand about proper deportment on the mountain. Camp Parsons on Hood Canal in the Olympic Peninsula is the oldest and the biggest Seattle scout council camp and Camp Sheppard is the newest amd much smaller scout camp. Just as a little Chihuahua pup is always yapping at some much larger dog to show its defiance to the bigger dog, it seemed the Sheppard staff members always had the compulsion to accomplish some action to cause irritation, embarrassment, and loss of face to Camp Parsons and the Parsons staff.

At Parsons there hangs a big brass bell in their parade ground suspended up high on a cross bar held up on a couple of tall posts. The bell is symbiotic of Camp Parsons in that it has been there forever and rang every day for assembly, for reveille, for meal calls, for any emergencies, etc. One late night and into the wee hours of the morning, a group of the Sheppard staff traveled from Sheppard in the Cascades to Parsons on Hood Canal in the Olympic peninsula to kidnap the Parsons bell. They snuck into Parsons, climbed up to the bell and detached it from where it was hanging, lowered the bell with ropes, and spirited the bell and themselves away without anyone in the camp hearing them and waking up to witness the theft. In the morning when the bell was discovered to be missing, it was reported immediately to the scout office. Anyone who knew anything about the Camp Sheppard staff could guess (and guess correctly) that it was the Sheppard gang that had the guts enough to accomplish such a dastardly deed as to steal the bell which was such a symbol of Camp Parsons.

The kidnapping of the Parsons bell was not known to Max, Macartney, and myself but we learned of it as soon as the deed was accomplished. Of course we at Sheppard kept quiet and put on our innocent look. I know the scout office had suspected right away that it was the Sheppard gang who were the felons and the scout camping director stormed up to Camp Sheppard and without so much as a "How de do", confronted Max with "OK, Max, What did your guys do with the bell ???". Well, as I had mentioned before, Max is not one to tell any lie. Max looked the camping director in the eye and asked, "What bell?" Without dicing and without admitting anything, Max parried the camping director's accusation. Without any further discussion, the camping director stormed down the hill and back to Seattle.

As I understand it, the Parsons bell was taken to the Seattle home of one of the Sheppard staff and the crew of the bell burglary scrubbed it clean and painted it a bright fire engine red. A week or so later, the bell kidnappers snuck back into Camp Parsons in the wee hours of the morning and rehung the now cleaned and painted bell in its a accustomed place. To this day, no one of the Sheppard staff has ever been formally accused for stealing the Parsons bell and I'm sure the Parsons staff being so embarrassed over losing their bell has never mentioned the bell incident.

There were a couple more such "raids" on Camp Parsons by the Sheppard staff. One morning the Camp Parsons staff woke up to to find all their rowboats marked with black waterproof marking pens advertising Camp Sheppard. With such direct evidence, it was obvious that the culprits were the Sheppard gang again. But among all the Sheppard staff, which half dozen were the guilty ones? No one was talking and consequently no one at Sheppard was put on the carpet. In all the unauthorized staff actions, the activities were never disclosed beforehand to Max, Macartney, or myself but were informed of the activity as soon as the deed was done. Of course by then it was too late to admonish the wayward staff and it was best to keep quiet and not know or admit to anything. I think whenever anything went wrong at Parsons, the scout office looked toward Sheppard. Nothing was ever proven about anything but the suspicions were there. And of course Max didn't know a thing about anything.

Within Max's burly rough and tough exterior lies a sponge cake of a soft heart. For his own personal tragedies, he was always so stoic and never showed the devastation and pain he was experiencing. When his son Mike, a wonderful young man recently married with a good job and with a bright future ahead of him, passed away suddenly, Max never broke down or showed the anguish he was going through. For bad news of friends Max was so emotional and compassionate. Soon after his son Mike passed away, I was up to Camp Sheppard for some reason and while other friends of mine never knew about it, I divulged the sad news that my wife was terminally ill and had a very short time on this earth. My wife used to accompany me to Sheppard every now and then and knew Max (as many others did) as one of her favorite friends. When I told the news of my wife, tears flowed and Max cried for me!

Max has spent his whole adult life advancing and living the scouting creed and working for and with hundreds of young people. Monetary wise, he will probably end up with a big goose egg but he will be richer than Bill Gates in the number of friends and the hundreds of young folks he has influenced.

With all the adversities and disappointments experience by Max in his lifetime, there has been a few rays of sunshine. He was not all outdoors, hiking, climbing, and camping. He loved the games of baseball and football and loved ice cream. During football season he would frequently travel the twenty some odd miles to Enumclaw to watch the Enumclaw High School football team play a game. During baseball season he would come the ninety odd miles to my home in Seattle to watch the Mariners baseball team on the telly tube. One day Max bought the tickets and treated me to a Mariners baseball game in the King Dome. The game was to start at seven o'clock in the evening but Max insisted we get to the stadium at five o'clock to be able to see the two teams take the field for warming up before the game. He did so love the game but sitting on a hard bench from five to about ten o'clock makes for a long evening and some sore buns. All who knew Max knew of his addiction to ice cream (especially praline and cream flavor). If he finds himself in Enumclaw and has 35 cents burning a hole in his jeans pocket, he is likely to trade the coins for a praline and cream ice cream cone.

Among all the tough breaks handed to Max in his lifetime, there has been a couple of good things happen to him. After he had retired from the scout job, he did the best thing he ever did in his life. He married his second wife, Carol Hull who is an angel and is the perfect life-mate for Max. I don't know how Max did it or knew that Max could run so fast but I suspect Carol must have purposely slipped and fell going around a corner and allowed Max to catch her. Anyway, with Carol, Max has been the happiest guy since I have known him. Another good break that went Max's way was when he acquired 13 acres of Buck Horn mountain in the Okanogan hills to build a homestead for himself and Carol. Of course no land is worth anything without access to good water and Max had contracted with a well digger to dig a well on his Buck Horn property. The digger had dug a tremendous depth but with no results until finally Max had to tell the man to stop digging because he had no more funds to pay him. The digger agreed to stop but as long as he was down that deep he might dig a few more feet before giving up. One evening when Max was at my home to watch a ball game on the telly tube, I got a long distance call from the Okanogan area. It was for Max and when he answered the phone, it was from his well digger. The digger told Max that he had some tough news and Max, I'm sure, was devastated. Then after listening to the digger for a while Max's face lit up like a Christmas tree. The digger told him that they had dug another six feet or so and so much water gushed out he almost lost his whole digging rig. Apparently good water is a rare commodity on Buck Horn. In the Oroville (closest big town to Buck Horn) area Max was beginning to be known as the man who has water on the Buck Horn Mountain. I guess in a lifetime the good will eventually even out with the bad but in Max's case it certainly took a long time for the good to catch up.

Looking back now over the last forty years or so, I so feel fortunate and privileged to know and be associated with Max, "My Most Unforgettable Character". Most of us old timers will soon be gone and forgotten but Max Eckenberg will always be remembered as long as there are young people around.