Saluting 100 Years Of Scouting
Friends since their school days, lifelong Boy Scout John Henry Felix asked Dr. Lawrence Tseu to become an honorary Scout. Too poor to join as a boy, Tseu responded by giving Hawaii Scouting $1 million
By Chad Pata
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for Chang Kai-shek. He met her while she visited Honolulu on her way to Paris, and a lifelong love affair was born.
“She used to tell me I was the only self-made man she had ever met,” says Tseu. “Everyone else she knew came from wealth.”
It is this same self-reliance that BoHing found so appealing in Tseu that he found so attractive about the Scouts. It takes boys and turns them into men - men who can survive off the land, navigate by the stars and live without all the comforts that we take for granted these days.
“It teaches life skills in an outdoor setting,” says Rick Burr, CEO of the Aloha Council. “Scouting is one of the few organizations that still incorporates the outdoors. We have researchers now coining phrases like ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’ ‘cause kids aren’t getting out and learning the spatial concepts that nature provides. Scouting has never forgotten that, for kids, it is important to have them outdoors to learn the skills and develop mentally.”
Merit badges have changed over the years. Anachronistic studies as horse and buggy repair have been discarded and replaced with cinematography, journalism and computer programming. But they have never lost the outdoor connection, occasionally even incorporating the modern world with the ancient, with their geocaching badge that uses GPS technology to find hidden items in the wilderness.
Though the badges have changed, the concept behind them remains the same.
“Merit badge program is about exposing kids to things they wouldn’t usually get exposed to at home and opening their eyes to all the opportunities out there in the world,” says council president Ross Murakami.
“You’ll find that often-times a lot of merit badges are trade- or job-related. You’ll be surprised to find how many people, because of a merit badge, develop an interest in a particular field and end up in that field for the rest of their life. When you are 12 you don’t realize that; to them, it’s just having fun.”
At the center of the training and learning is the camp. It is the mecca for the Boy Scouts, the spot they all remember from their childhood, the location where they molt the trappings of youth and take on their adult form. Without the camp, the scouts are just another after-school program to dump kids into, and if not for Dr. Tseu’s donation, the camp itself was becoming the dump.
“That’s why Dr. Tseu’s donation was so important as a lead gift to inspire others to help out as well,” says Murakami, who says the pool is so sunken to one side that only half the pool skimmers still work. “To have this happen right at the end of our centennial is really amazing.
“People think of Scouting - and we have been around for so long - that we don’t need the community support, but you’d be surprised how much of our support comes from the community. We don’t have a large endowment and our biggest asset is our campsites, and Camp Pupukea is the biggest of those. It is the uncertainty of the outdoors. The kids have to adapt and they get to experience that in a safe environment.”
Even the oldest Boy Scouts have to agree that camping is at the heart of the experience, as the 80-year-old Felix firmly maintains.
“It made all the difference in the world; Scouting really shaped my life,” says Felix. “It taught me service, community service, selfless service, values that are forever, and I have been in Scouting for 72 years. I still love to go to camp. I think I’m one of the few members of the board that’s been through wood badge! I just love the outdoors.”
The fire still seen in Felix’s passion for the Scouts is testimony to their beliefs that Scouting is not just there to bring boys to adulthood, but rather a way of life that lasts into our octogenarian stages.
“The focus is on the kids, but the opportunity for adults and adult leaders to grow through the Scouting program are incredible,” says Murakami, whose son just became a Boy Scout this year.
“Look at John’s 72 years in Scouting. Only a fraction of it was as a kid; the majority of it was as an adult. You don’t realize the importance of it until you are in the program and look back as an adult.”
And this is exactly what Tseu has done with his generosity, looking back on his youth and his hard-fought success and wanting to provide an easier way for youths to find their way to the mountaintop.
Much has changed since he was hustling for quarters to feed his family. The Scouts no longer turn away kids who can’t buy uniforms, all are now welcome regardless of their ability to pay. Now Camp Pupukea can continue to serve as a launching point for men, in a world that is so desperate for a few good ones.
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