Scouting, Volume 66, Number 3, May-June 1978 Page: 30
50, [34] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Bob is a strongly-built, jovial type, half
Dutch, half Irish. But his ruddy face must
have paled and stiffened the day a doctor
examined his five-year-old son and said,
"Muscular dystrophy." Life was never the
same for Bob after that. Looking back now,
he would probably say life became better.
Dystrophy is incurable. A slow killer.
The doctor said, "Bill will keep
getting weaker, but may live ten
years." It turned out he lived to be 22. After
his death, Bob kept fighting for all the other
boys in similar fixes.
But it was Bill, at age eight, who drew
Bob into Scouting. The family lived in a
town called Sunland, in Los Angeles
County. Not far away was the Charles
Lowman School in North Hollywood, the
county's only public school for children
with any handicap except blindness or
deafness.
As pupils there, Bill and another Bill
became inseparable. They were known as
Bill D. and Little Bill. One day Little Bill,
despite cerebral palsy that made him
splutter and drool when he tried to talk,
went to the weekly lunch-hour meeting of
the school's Pack 177. Next day Bill D.
asked, "Dad, can I join too?" Bob said, "You
bet."
The pack—sole handicapped unit in the
council—turned out to be a feeble little
group. It met on the second floor because
ground-floor rooms contained equipment
that might be damaged by frolicsome Cubs
despite their assorted impairments. So kids
unable to tackle stairs weren't members
unless their parents would carry them up
and down.
There were 10 members altogether.
Three mothers and two dads were in
charge, but felt gloomy. Almost every
suggested activity was opposed by someone
because "My son can't do that."
Yet Bill D. and Little Bill liked it. The
meetings gave them what they missed in
their own neighborhoods—easy friendship
and socializing. Around home, when they
ventured near any bunch of kids, the kids
went elsewhere.
So Bob moved in to help, first as a
committeeman and soon as Cubmaster. He
got along well with people; his job as a rate
specialist for the Southern Pacific railroad
kept him talking every day, negotiating
terms, and selling his company's services.
By now he'd shaken off whatever despair
hit him in the first years of Bill's infirmity.
His energy and big laugh were bubbling up
again. He built the pack to 30 boys, differ-
ent though it was from any other known
thereabouts.
"None of us knew beans about how to
run a pack," he recalled long afterward.
"Much of what was in the manuals
wouldn't work for Cubs who couldn't run,
30
maybe, or couldn't handle tools because
their hands shook, and so on. Nobody'd ever
tried this before, as far as we knew. But that
didn't mean it was impossible. Our boys
wanted to belong, earn badges—and I
mean earn. Most of them would hate it if
someone said, 'Here, sonny, I know you
can't qualify for this badge but we'll give it
to you anyhow because we pity you.' So we
thought up challenges that would test them
to their limit but weren't impossible."
If Cubs' hands jerked too spasmodically
to fold the flag as a color guard did, they
folded it on a table—and thus learned the
rite. Others with deformed hands passed
the Tying Things achievement by directing
a mother as she held a rope. Wheelchair
bovs passed the rail-walking test by hauling
themselves along on parallel bars. Those on
crutches or in braces ran in relay races
anyhow, against others with the same limi-
tation; they wore crash helmets because
they fell often, but nobody helped them up.
Part of the challenge was getting up on
their own.
Bob stayed with Pack 177 after Bill
moved on; he knew it was rescuing boys
from a living death of uselessness. But he
also went with Bill into Troop 177, which
he helped organize for handicapped Scouts
including the mentally retarded. It became
a close-knit group. Teamwork was com-
plex. "At camporees and summer camps,
each of our patrols pitched its own tents by
combining four good arms and four legs,"
Bob recalled. "If one couldn't help phys-
ically, he might figure out the jobs for the
others and call the shots. Our Scouts looked
after each other. They never left a wheel-
chair kid behind. Somebody strong enough
to push him was always with him."
Outsiders (including parents) never
ceased to wonder how these
Scouts communicated. Little Bill
would phone Bill D. and seem to be only
grunting, but Bill D. understood. Another
Scout was called "completely nonverbal"
by doctors and teachers; he apparently
never spoke. "I don't know why I bring
him to meetings, he doesn't get anything,"
his father complained—yet the boy got
along well in his patrol; they talked to
him, and sensed replies. Still another Scout
with a speech impediment built a wheel
showing the alphabet, and spelled what he
wanted to say.
Bill used his wheelchair to "pace off"
distances. He ascertained its wheel cir-
cumference, tied a rag on a spoke, then
counted the times the rag came around as
he wheeled himself. But a hike for Second
Class was an ordeal. By then his only
mobility was in his wrists, and there was
no way to travel the required five miles
under his own power. At that time the
Scout Handbook said a Scout physically
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"Pointing the Way" as seen by
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The Scout Seal is Your Guarantee of
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 66, Number 3, May-June 1978, periodical, May 1978; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353600/m1/46/: accessed May 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.