A Scoutmaster's Blog

I was fortunate to be chosen as the scoutmaster of Troop 1417 for the B.S.A. 2001 National Jamboree. I had a great time at the event and shared it with a great troop of Boy Scouts and adult leaders from the Central Minnesota Council. I took home plenty of pictures and a lot of memories.

When I discovered that Boys’ Life magazine had created a video on VHS tape featuring many of the events and activities I had to buy it. Yes, you read that correctly. It was a VHS tape. DVDs had just arrived on the market but had not become popular in homes yet.

If I remember correctly, I bought the program as part of a three tape collection. Each tape featured a different Jamboree. The set included the events from 1993, 1997, and 2001. All three were created by Boys’ Life magazine.

I recently did a search on the Boys Life Scoutshop website and discovered that these videos are now available as DVDs. There are also DVDs available for the 2005 and 2010 Jamborees. If you wanted them all you could buy the set of 5 DVDs and save yourself a few bucks. You can find these at this link:

https://magazines.scoutshop.org/catalogsearch/result/?q=Boys%27+Life+Jamboree+Souvenir+DVD

Since I only have the VHS tapes I am very tempted to order the 5 disc set. The individual event DVDs sell for $11.95 each while the DVD set is only $40.00. That is like getting one event DVD for free!

I did not see any DVDs available for the 2013 and 2017 National Jamborees. I do not know if they made one for those events or not but there was not any listed on the website. That would be sad if there are not videos created for those two years.

Did you attend one of these Jamborees? Is this something you would consider buying? Leave a comment below and let us know of your opinion.

As I was gathering patches for my new Scout uniform shirt I went to the eBay auction site to find an adult leader 2001 National Jamboree patch since I did not want to remove it from my old shirt. I found one at a very reasonable price, for only $5.20 with shipping. As I was searching for it I came across a few other auctions that caught my attention.

Normally I just glance at the auctions since the prices usually end up going higher than I like. One auction did catch my attention. It was a patch set from the 2001 Jamboree that I had never seen before. The set included three patches from the Jewish Shomer Shabbat Contingent. I could be mistaken but I think it may include an adult leader, a participant, and a staff patch. It was a very good looking set.

I decided I would like to add it to my Jamboree collection. I checked the price and I thought it was very reasonable. The seller was only asking $9.95 for the set, and that included postage. I hit the Buy It Now button before I could change my mind.

The patches arrived last week and look sharp. I am glad I purchased them. But I do not know anything about this contingent. My mission to you is to leave a comment with some information of this group. I appreciate the help.

2001 National Jamboree Gateway

In 2001, I served as the scoutmaster for Troop 1417 of the Central Minnesota Council for the National Jamboree, which was held at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. I had a great time. I also had great assistant scoutmasters, great junior leadership, and great Scouts. I was quite proud to be the Troop 1417 scoutmaster.

One of the fun things about a Jamboree was walking around to look at all the gateways troops made as entryways to their campsites. There were some fairly simply ones, and some very elaborate ones. Troop 1417 shared a gateway with Troop 1418, also from Central Minnesota Council. Ours was more toward the elaborate end of the scale. As you can see from the picture, it featured Paul Bunyan, Babe the blue ox, our Jamboree shoulder patches, and our troop flags. The Scouts came up with the design and worked hard building and painting it. I thought it turned out quite well.

One of my favorite parts of the gateway was the center portion, between the entrances, where the Boy Scouts signed their names. Each troop has its side, and the Scouts signed it by patrol. Patrol names were located in white areas which portrayed clouds in the artwork. Melrose Boy Scout Troop 68 had two members in each of the Jamboree patrols of 1417, and another Scout who served as the troop scribe. The pictures are a nice remembrance of who was in each patrol.

Unfortunately, we did not have room to take the whole gateway home with us when the Jamboree came to an end. Most of it was tossed onto the sub camp garage pile. A few smaller pieces did get taken home by a few troop members. All the little triangular pine trees found a home. One of them came home with me. I would have lover to take the painted panels home with me, but there was not room on the bus. I really wish I would have grabbed the panels with the Scout’s names. That would have been a great keepsake.

Has your troop begun making plans for the 2017 National Jamboree? Have your gateways been designed yet?

I attended the 2001 National Jamboree as the scoutmaster of Troop 1417. I had a great time. I had a great troop. And I collected quite a few patches from the event. In fact, I still collect patches from the event when I find some for a reasonable trade or cost.

One set of patches that I was not able to attain at the Jamboree was the seven piece Marvel shoulder patch set from the Theodore Roosevelt Council of New York. Each of the patches featured a different super hero: Spiderman, Thor, Wolverine, Captain America, Ironman, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. The patches were extremely popular at the Jamboree and soon became hard to find, and very hard to get when you did find them. The National Office may have stated that patches should be traded one for one, but after a couple days you did not find that rule being followed very well. Once I discovered how many patches it would “cost” me to get them I decided to let them go and trade for other CSP’s.

Well, time moves on and years pass by us. Occasionally I would check out eBay to see what I could find for 2001 Jamboree patches and memorabilia. Once in a while I would find a good deal and was able to add to my Jamboree collection. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the Marvel patches for sale at what I considered a reasonable price. It did not take me long to press the BUY button and add this set to my notebook.  I should point out that I did not buy the patches as one set, but bought them individually over the span of a few weeks. I paid anywhere from $5 to $10 each.

Have you been to a National Jamboree? Did you collect any patches? What were your favorites?

I know many of you collect patches, be they council strips, Order of the Arrow lodge flaps, or activity patches. One of the several patch collection I have is of the 2001 National Jamboree. I collect from that event because I attended it with nine Boy Scouts from my troop. I still add patches to this collection when I can pick them up at a reasonable price. Here is a photo of the patches I collected from eBay auctions in the last three weeks.

Maybe I should not have done it. After all, it has been 13 years since that event was held. But I had a good time and a great group of Scouts along so I will always remember the 2001 National Jamboree fondly. So, last night I decided to try to expand my collection of patches from the Jamboree. I decided to try my luck on eBay.

When I buy patches for my collection I have a rule I kind of follow: unless it is a very special patch that I really want badly I will only pay up to $5.00 per patch. Of course, this means there are quite a few patches that I will probably never add to my collection because the people selling them price them too high for my budget, like the Marvel hero patches or the dinosaur patches. I also prefer to buy patches as sets or lots. I like sets because I can (maybe) get all the patches from that council in one lump grouping. I like lots because they usually are priced as less than $5.00 per patch, plus I add more patches to the collection quickly.

I bid on or bought patches from four actions last night, and added another four to my eBay watch list. The best of the batch was a ten patch set of Jamboree shoulder patches from Indian Nations Council. It is one of those council sets in which the same patch design was used for all ten troops, with a different border color for each troop, which is actually a popular way to provide different patches for each troop but also keep the cost to a minimum for the participating Boy Scouts. (The picture only shows six of them.)

The other auctions include council shoulder patches from the West Central Florida Council, the Blue Ridge Council, and the Crater Lake Council, and a two patch set of Order of the Arrow patches from the Sakuwit Lodge. The auction description stated this lodge does not exist anymore. This lodge was located in the Central New Jersey Council which was dissolved in February 2014. I look forward to adding this set to my collection since they have now become a part of Scouting history.

This will add 15 patches to my 2001 National Jamboree collection. These patches will force me to start a second three ring binder. I will probably put council shoulder patches in one book and OA patch sets in the other. I may need to order the few more pages in which to place the patches. I will worry about that after I receive the patches.

The 2001 National Jamboree may be ancient history to today’s Boy Scouts but it is not to me. Not yet anyway. That is the Jamboree I attended as a scoutmaster of one of two troops sent from the Central Minnesota Council. I had a great time at Fort A.P. Hill, as did the Scouts in my troop.

I did not get to do a lot of patch trading while I was at the Jamboree. That is why I occasionally check eBay and other sites to find patches at decent prices to fill in the council shoulder patch and Order of the Arrow patch collections. I recently found one auction on eBay which netted me a six patch set from the Old North State Council. The six patches have the same design but sport different color borders. I like this addition to my collection.

I have a question for you readers. Were there only six patches from this council, or were there others? Did the different color borders represent six troops sent or did they mean something different? Thanks for the help.

I was the scoutmaster for one of two troops the Central Minnesota Council sent to the 2001 National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. I had three wonderful assistant scoutmasters, a fantastic group of youth leaders, and a great group of Boy Scouts in Troop 1417. At the reunion gathering held a month after the Jamboree I told the parents that I never want to be a scoutmaster for another Jamboree troop again, because this troop set the bar so high and behaved so well that I felt I would never again get another batch of Scouts like this. Troop 1417 was nearly a perfect Boy Scout troop.

Scoutmaster Mike of Jamboree Troop 1418 and I received quite a surprise during that reunion gathering. The chairperson of the Jamboree committee came forward to speak to the Boy Scouts and their parents about the Jamboree experience, and to present Mike and I with a couple tokens of appreciation. The first was a nice looking plaque which now hangs on my wall with other Scouting honors. The other was the troop’s flag used for the Jamboree.

Mike and I both glanced at each other when we were presented with the flags. I do not know if he expected it, but I did not. My first thought was “What am I going to do with this? It is huge!”  I thought it would be better to display it at the council office, or in the ceiling rafters of the Scout Shop. I have no place to hang something like this.

Twelve years have now passed since that reunion. To tell the truth, even though the flag is nicely folded in the tote that stores my Jamboree stuff, it is now probably my most prized part of the collection. After all, it is a one of a kind item. There is only one flag for Troop 1417 from the 2001 National Jamboree.

But you know what really adds value to this flag, at least in my eyes? Nearly every member of Troop 1417 signed their name along the white border on the right edge of the flag. I only have two items in my collection that are signed by the Scouts and troop leadership, the troop tee shirt (mentioned in a previous article) and the troop’s flag. They are very special.

My question is this. Is it a tradition in your council for Jamboree troop members to sign the troop flag and present it to the scoutmasters of the troop?