A legendary leader was honored Oct. 22 when Battleground District of Boy Scouts held the first Joe Ed Walker Memorial Camporee on a farm near Lattimore, not far from where Walker grew up.
While the smoke of campfires scented the crisp fall day, dozens of boys in khaki uniforms saluted the American flag as it was lowered near sundown while just as many former Scouts, leaders and family members saluted the memory of a man they revere as a mentor and friend. During his 10 years as Scoutmaster of Lattimore Troop #113, a record-setting 35 teenagers reached the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest award in scouting; hundreds of others learned the life lessons of a man remembered for always believing that the impossible is possible.
One of those Eagle Scouts, Wilson Brooks, played Taps as a hushed crowd watched from a green hillside while the honor guard lowered the flag, folded it precisely into a triangle and presented it to Donnis Walker, Joe Ed Walker’s widow, who held her husband’s red wool Boy Scout shirt with the troop number 113 embroidered on the sleeve. Their two sons, Michael and Braxton, both Eagle Scouts, stood nearby.
"If he (Joe Ed) were here," Mrs. Walker said, "he would say, ‘It wasn’t me. We all came together to grow these boys.’"
Many of those "boys," many now fathers of scouts, were present and were talking. They, along with many assistant leaders and parents,Wholesale Cheap Burberry Wool Scarf Online laughed about adventures over the years as they chopped and sold firewood and baked cakes to raise funds to send the entire troop to a national camporee or how they survived a flood out on Cherry Mountain or went skiing or hauled boys and equipment to monthly campouts and to the annual campout at the beach when boys and parents were rewarded for a year of earning skills badges that taught young boys how to live.
"He loved it," Mrs. Walker said. "The cold, the rain. Troop 113 had a reputation that if they were going camping, it was going to rain."
They camped every month. When one of the boys was asked how that could happen since their Scoutmaster worked rotating shifts at Fiber Industries, he replied that Joe Ed was off one weekend a month and that’s when they went camping.
"I asked him one time if we were ever going to have a family vacation again," Mrs. Walker remembers.wholesale Necklace Jewellery for sale "He said, ‘We are family.’"
One Friday night she remembers having almost more family than she could accommodate. "Joe and the boys had gone camping. I woke up at 2 a.m. to a loud banging," she says. "Joe came in the back door soaking wet and covered in mud. The troop had been camping at Cherry Mountain and were flooded out. All 20 boys trooped in their house, looking just as bedraggled as their leader.
"I said, ‘Joe, call their parents.’ He said that we would get them dry and let them spend the night. They stood in line to take showers and I found enough T-shirts and blankets and quilts and they all lay down on the floor and went to sleep. The next morning, I cooked everything they had bought for both Saturday’s and Sunday’s breakfasts plus a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs I had. They ate it all," she laughs.
It was that belief in going beyond what was required or expected that made Joe Ed Walker the leader that helped 35 young men become Eagle Scouts, the highest earned honor in Scouting. They were told that number set a record in the state.
If a boy wanted a badge in a particular area, Walker always found someone to help "his" boys as he liked to call them. For the aviation badge, he found a man who flew an airplane; for the waterskiing, he found a man with a boat; for photography, they spent hours in a photographer’s basement learning the techniques; and so it went. About 25 boys participated each year and many went on to earn all the awards available through scouting including the God and Church award and the Order of the Arrow.
Walker himself was awarded the Order of the Silver Beaver in 1979, the highest honor for a volunteer leader. He had come a long way from the day in 1971 when he argued that he had no experience while two neighbors visited his home to ask him to take over the troop so that all their sons would have a chance in Scouting.
It all started that year when Walker’s son Michael wanted to be a scout. A neighbor went over the scouting manual with him so he could earn his Tenderfoot rank. When Michael came home from that night’s meeting, his mother remembers his saying, "I can be an Eagle Scout, but I need somebody to help me."
Within a week, friends and neighbors, J.B. Williams and Jack Dover, called Walker and then visited him at home to ask him to become the Scoutmaster of Troop #113. "The Lord was in this," Mrs. Walker believes.
After attending his first training session, Walker came home to wonder, "I don’t know what I’ve got myself into." He dove in with a passion that made Scouting a priority. That winter, he took a week’s vacation and five-day break from Fiber Industries to train for the wood badge, a first step for leaders. The next year, the troop brought home the first of many blue ribbons from a camporee. "You’d have thought he won the lottery," Mrs. Walker remembers.
The impossible only seemed to make him more determined. In 1973, the troop planned to attend the national jamboree, but the total cost would be $5,000, a sum too expensive for some of the boys in the troop. Walker wasn’t going unless everyone went. Fathers cut and sold firewood; mothers baked cakes.Search hundreds of replica Mens Prada Long Sleeve T-shirts Online at Discount price. Walker asked the town of Lattimore if the troop could post a large sign in the yard of the town’s clubhouse to show their fundraising progress.
A trailer was built to haul firewood and paper that was collected for 2 cents a pound,Best NBA Adults Online to carry the troop in the local Christmas parade, and it was used to haul equipment when the town gathered for a huge send-off of every troop member to the Pennsylvania national camporee.
That family feeling carried over into the many experiences the troop shared. As many as 50 boys and parents would camp each year at the beach as a reward for earning a certain number of badges. When Walker tried to make reservations at Sherwood Forest at Myrtle Beach, he was turned down because the camp ground had experienced problems with other troops. "We’ll show you," Mrs. Walker remembers her husband saying and then promising, ‘If you’ll allow us to come one year, I will be personally responsible for any damages or problems.’ We went there for eight years and every year as we left, they would say come back next year. We never had any problems. Joe said he would take this group of kids around the world."
"He loved them like his own," she says. "He kept up with them. When they got married, when they had babies. He never lost sight of them." They couldn’t lose sight of what he taught them either. They always knelt for prayer in church and when asked why, he replied, "These are young men who are going to need strength from God. If we can kneel and pray in the woods (a Scout tradition) why not kneel in God’s house?"
Walker retired from Scouting to help his wife when her mother became ill. In 1999, he fell on a loading dock in California on his job as a driver for Turner Trucking, which fulfilled a boyhood dream of driving a tractor-trailer. He retired after 33 years with Fiber and drove seven years for Turner. The explanation for the fall turned out to be a progressive, genetic illness that attacks the cerebellum, causing symptoms similar to Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s. Eventually, he was confined to a wheelchair. When he was buried June 5,Best Earrings Jewellery for sale 2010, his family walked out of the church through a corridor created by 28 of the 35 Eagle Scouts he had assisted.
"He got to do it all," his wife says. "He drove a big truck; he was an EMT for 25 years; but Scouting was closest to his heart. That’s where he made his difference."
While the smoke of campfires scented the crisp fall day, dozens of boys in khaki uniforms saluted the American flag as it was lowered near sundown while just as many former Scouts, leaders and family members saluted the memory of a man they revere as a mentor and friend. During his 10 years as Scoutmaster of Lattimore Troop #113, a record-setting 35 teenagers reached the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest award in scouting; hundreds of others learned the life lessons of a man remembered for always believing that the impossible is possible.
One of those Eagle Scouts, Wilson Brooks, played Taps as a hushed crowd watched from a green hillside while the honor guard lowered the flag, folded it precisely into a triangle and presented it to Donnis Walker, Joe Ed Walker’s widow, who held her husband’s red wool Boy Scout shirt with the troop number 113 embroidered on the sleeve. Their two sons, Michael and Braxton, both Eagle Scouts, stood nearby.
"If he (Joe Ed) were here," Mrs. Walker said, "he would say, ‘It wasn’t me. We all came together to grow these boys.’"
Many of those "boys," many now fathers of scouts, were present and were talking. They, along with many assistant leaders and parents,Wholesale Cheap Burberry Wool Scarf Online laughed about adventures over the years as they chopped and sold firewood and baked cakes to raise funds to send the entire troop to a national camporee or how they survived a flood out on Cherry Mountain or went skiing or hauled boys and equipment to monthly campouts and to the annual campout at the beach when boys and parents were rewarded for a year of earning skills badges that taught young boys how to live.
"He loved it," Mrs. Walker said. "The cold, the rain. Troop 113 had a reputation that if they were going camping, it was going to rain."
They camped every month. When one of the boys was asked how that could happen since their Scoutmaster worked rotating shifts at Fiber Industries, he replied that Joe Ed was off one weekend a month and that’s when they went camping.
"I asked him one time if we were ever going to have a family vacation again," Mrs. Walker remembers.wholesale Necklace Jewellery for sale "He said, ‘We are family.’"
One Friday night she remembers having almost more family than she could accommodate. "Joe and the boys had gone camping. I woke up at 2 a.m. to a loud banging," she says. "Joe came in the back door soaking wet and covered in mud. The troop had been camping at Cherry Mountain and were flooded out. All 20 boys trooped in their house, looking just as bedraggled as their leader.
"I said, ‘Joe, call their parents.’ He said that we would get them dry and let them spend the night. They stood in line to take showers and I found enough T-shirts and blankets and quilts and they all lay down on the floor and went to sleep. The next morning, I cooked everything they had bought for both Saturday’s and Sunday’s breakfasts plus a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs I had. They ate it all," she laughs.
It was that belief in going beyond what was required or expected that made Joe Ed Walker the leader that helped 35 young men become Eagle Scouts, the highest earned honor in Scouting. They were told that number set a record in the state.
If a boy wanted a badge in a particular area, Walker always found someone to help "his" boys as he liked to call them. For the aviation badge, he found a man who flew an airplane; for the waterskiing, he found a man with a boat; for photography, they spent hours in a photographer’s basement learning the techniques; and so it went. About 25 boys participated each year and many went on to earn all the awards available through scouting including the God and Church award and the Order of the Arrow.
Walker himself was awarded the Order of the Silver Beaver in 1979, the highest honor for a volunteer leader. He had come a long way from the day in 1971 when he argued that he had no experience while two neighbors visited his home to ask him to take over the troop so that all their sons would have a chance in Scouting.
It all started that year when Walker’s son Michael wanted to be a scout. A neighbor went over the scouting manual with him so he could earn his Tenderfoot rank. When Michael came home from that night’s meeting, his mother remembers his saying, "I can be an Eagle Scout, but I need somebody to help me."
Within a week, friends and neighbors, J.B. Williams and Jack Dover, called Walker and then visited him at home to ask him to become the Scoutmaster of Troop #113. "The Lord was in this," Mrs. Walker believes.
After attending his first training session, Walker came home to wonder, "I don’t know what I’ve got myself into." He dove in with a passion that made Scouting a priority. That winter, he took a week’s vacation and five-day break from Fiber Industries to train for the wood badge, a first step for leaders. The next year, the troop brought home the first of many blue ribbons from a camporee. "You’d have thought he won the lottery," Mrs. Walker remembers.
The impossible only seemed to make him more determined. In 1973, the troop planned to attend the national jamboree, but the total cost would be $5,000, a sum too expensive for some of the boys in the troop. Walker wasn’t going unless everyone went. Fathers cut and sold firewood; mothers baked cakes.Search hundreds of replica Mens Prada Long Sleeve T-shirts Online at Discount price. Walker asked the town of Lattimore if the troop could post a large sign in the yard of the town’s clubhouse to show their fundraising progress.
A trailer was built to haul firewood and paper that was collected for 2 cents a pound,Best NBA Adults Online to carry the troop in the local Christmas parade, and it was used to haul equipment when the town gathered for a huge send-off of every troop member to the Pennsylvania national camporee.
That family feeling carried over into the many experiences the troop shared. As many as 50 boys and parents would camp each year at the beach as a reward for earning a certain number of badges. When Walker tried to make reservations at Sherwood Forest at Myrtle Beach, he was turned down because the camp ground had experienced problems with other troops. "We’ll show you," Mrs. Walker remembers her husband saying and then promising, ‘If you’ll allow us to come one year, I will be personally responsible for any damages or problems.’ We went there for eight years and every year as we left, they would say come back next year. We never had any problems. Joe said he would take this group of kids around the world."
"He loved them like his own," she says. "He kept up with them. When they got married, when they had babies. He never lost sight of them." They couldn’t lose sight of what he taught them either. They always knelt for prayer in church and when asked why, he replied, "These are young men who are going to need strength from God. If we can kneel and pray in the woods (a Scout tradition) why not kneel in God’s house?"
Walker retired from Scouting to help his wife when her mother became ill. In 1999, he fell on a loading dock in California on his job as a driver for Turner Trucking, which fulfilled a boyhood dream of driving a tractor-trailer. He retired after 33 years with Fiber and drove seven years for Turner. The explanation for the fall turned out to be a progressive, genetic illness that attacks the cerebellum, causing symptoms similar to Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s. Eventually, he was confined to a wheelchair. When he was buried June 5,Best Earrings Jewellery for sale 2010, his family walked out of the church through a corridor created by 28 of the 35 Eagle Scouts he had assisted.
"He got to do it all," his wife says. "He drove a big truck; he was an EMT for 25 years; but Scouting was closest to his heart. That’s where he made his difference."
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