Last year I met three high school classmates at a rustic cabin in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area for a weekend of biking the Virginia Creeper Trail, cooking steaks, debating politics, and reminiscing about high school days. We were all in the band; and now, when we reunite, it is as the "band nerds." A clarinet, an alto clarinet, an oboe, and a bassoon -- from four different cities in four different states -- we rediscovered something from our past other than band that we had in common. Three out of the four had been in the same scout troop over fifty years ago: Troop 14, sponsored by St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Dan Hedrick, scoutmaster, General Greene Council. I still have my Handbook for Boys, printed in 1949.

With all the changes in the world over the past fifty years, much in scouting still endures. My old scout handbook lists "Cotton Farming" as a merit badge. The current book has "Computers." The old has "Small Grains and Cereal Foods;" the new has "Space Exploration." But both books have the same Scout Oath and Scout Law. Keep those constants in mind as you consider your fellow scouts and your relationships with them. Which will be your friends, bound by scouting's brotherhood, fifty years from now? "A scout is friendly."