Learning to Swim

              I recently attempted to figure out what was the best scouting experience I have ever had.  It’s easy for me to remember the more recent times as a Den leader, Cubmaster, Wood Badge Trainee, or Commissioner.  Thankfully, I was recently reminded of one of the positive driving experiences of my life as a Boy Scout.  The summer before my father passed, I spent two weeks at summer camp earning the BSA lifeguard certification.  It was hard work for a thirteen year old, and each day when my time at the lake was finished I would walk back to the campsite and collapse completely worn out.

    The second week was my chance to put my skills to work and I thought I was simply going to be watching over the other boys while they swam keeping them safe.  But I was given a different task that was much harder, but also a greater experience.  A young boy from another troop was one of the few scouts that did not know how to swim; I was tasked with teaching him how.  When I was first given the task I didn’t have a clue where to start. So I spent my time trying to figure out how to explain how to swim and learning how to motivate him to learn.  Thankfully, he wanted to learn, and once I explained to him how proud his mother would be of him I had his full attention.  For three days I worked with him figuring out how to explain the things that I had learned to do by second nature, stuff that I took for granted and could do without thinking.  After two days working with him on basic skills and asking the staff for advice, I managed to teach him how to do the crawl, float on his back and do the back stroke.  His form was bad his muscles were weak but he did it.

    Then it came time for the swim test on the third day.  I told him to relax do your best, and have fun.  Nervous and excited he walked up to the staff lifeguard and told him he was ready to take his test. The test began and I watched from the dock with my fingers crossed, hoping that he would pass, that his fear of the deeper water would not overwhelm him, and that yes, I could have an extra hour free for the remaining couple of days of summer camp.

    He passed the test, ran up to me with a really big smile and his swimmer’s tag with a strip of red on it indicating that he was now a beginner swimmer.  I gave him a high five, congratulations, and probably had a big smile on my face as well.  He ran off to show his scoutmaster and friends.   I then walked back to the Campsite, told my scoutmaster about the experience, and probably could not shut up about it for a long time.

    The next day at around the time that the young scout’s troop was at free swim, I walked down to the lake, sat on the beach and watched him swimming and playing with his buds in the Beginners Area.  I can remember no other Scouting experience as great as that one.

An act of compassion.

What I am about to write does not do the situation justice but I will make an attempt...

 This afternoon my son's cub scout pack had a show and sale for our annual popcorn fund raiser at Game's Farmer's Market on Harpersville road.  While I was taking my lunch break I was called back to my station.  As I walked up I was asked if I knew CPR.  Stunned, I looked over to see an elderly woman on the ground in a near fetal position.  Beside her with his head next to her’s was one of the scout’s fathers, and another scout parent calling 911 on her cell phone.  I took a moment to study the situation, saw that the woman was breathing and that the father was talking to her.  Realizing that CPS was not necessary but that the lady was in pain because she had tripped and fallen. I walked over to assist, but  my assistance really only amounted to ensuring she did not hit her head on the ground and making sure the boys and other passerby’s stayed clear.  Meanwhile the 911 dispatcher started asking the scout mother a string of questions about the victim, she then handed the phone to the scout father, who then acted as a relay between the injured and the dispatcher.  After the dispatcher hung up, the father then stayed with the woman holding her hand.  As we tried to make her comfortable, he engaged her in conversation.  This helped her take her mind off her pain and pass the time while we waited for the ambulance to arrive.  He then asked her if there was someone he could call for her, which she then asked him to do.  As he was doing so the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over the situation.  I stayed with them until they had the elderly woman on the gurney, at which point they turned to me and thanked me for helping.  I had to tell them that I really did nothing and that the guy they should thank was the scout’s father.   This they did but at this point he asked the paramedics where they were taking the woman. After they told him, he again called her relative and told them where they were taking her.   I turned to him and said good job!  But of course he shrugged it off as though it was nothing.  While what he did was not life saving or heroic, it was an incredibly powerful act of compassion for a stranger, and I am as glad to have witnessed it as I am to have this man and his son in my pack.   

Sharps Disposal at Busch Gardens

I was at Busch Gardens a few weeks back which for those of you that don't know this is an amusement park just out side of Williamsburg, Virginia. Anyhow while I was escorting my son into the bathroom I encountered a sharps disposal unit on the wall next to the hand dryer. Every bathroom I went into at Busch had one of these.

So I have to ask why?

But then thinking about it I remembered that my dad had to give himself injections of insulin from time to time (at least once a day) and that, that was the reason for the disposal units. But at first glance I thought "Wow is the drug problem that bad here?"
So maybe in the end it is for both reasons?

The Adventures of Rich and GC: Stories from the Journey Home

When GC and I returned to the states there where many adjustments we had to make. Namely we had to adjust to ourselves. Much of our original personalities where still inside us but there was this alteration that had been made to us that for me at least made me feel, very jumpy. It’s a hard feeling to explain unless you have been through what we had been through. But as I had unfortunately, experienced a very traumatic event some ten years prior to this, I was probably a little more jumpy than the rest of my fellow returnees. But after six months serving in the Persian Gulf area we were finally sent home.



We had arrived in Philadelphia and took a bus to Ft. Meade where we would out process. Those of us that had family come up to welcome us home, got to go off with them, GC was in that group. But many of us had to wait for our families, and I was in that category. So I spent the remainder of the day in the barracks resting, listening to the radio, and attempting to relax and overcome the jet lag. Night finally came and I fell asleep.

During Desert Storm, when the Iraqi’s fired off a Scud missile at us, the Saudi’s would use their air raid sirens to alert everyone to an incoming attack. We had spent many a night getting woken up to the alarms and having to run in to a bunker wearing our NBC gear and then waiting for the all clear before we could go back to our tents and sleep. Now, U.S. Army bases back then would also use their air raid sirens to alert the fire department that they had to scramble and respond to an emergency on base. The barracks we were in at Fort Meade was about one block away from the siren, and so that first morning at about 07:00 the fire department got a call to respond to an emergency. As I lay in my bunk half asleep, the air raid siren went off, I jumped to my feet in a state of hyper-awareness, looking for my NBC gear, machine gun and ammo as I pulled on my uniform.
Well just as I was about to go running down the hall yelling Scud to alert the others, I caught a glimpse of the leaves of a hardwood tree just outside my window, this was the first time since I had returned that I had really looked at a hard wood tree this close-up. The realization slowly sunk in that I was back in the states. I half fell, half sat on the floor as the adrenaline slowly dissipated from my bloodstream, and my heart rate began the slow process of returning to normal. I had to verbally repeat to myself “It’s OK; you’re in the states and your safe”. I must have sat there just starring at the tree for about an hour. It was so green and beautiful. After I got back to a relatively normal state I finished getting dressed and went out to get breakfast. Later that morning when I was back at the barracks all the other guys were each talking about how the siren had made them jump. I told them of my reaction and they all said that if I had gone running down the hallway yelling "Scud" they would have been right behind me looking for the bunker that wasn’t there.
A few months later when I was back at my normal unit, we had a similar incident. We were up at Ft. A.P. Hill for weapons qualification. To wake us up in the morning the NBC NCO walked out to a truck and started honking the horn just like he would if we were under a chemical attack. I woke up in an Army tent on a cot wearing a partial uniform; I flashed back to the desert and started frantically looking for my gas mask. After about 30 seconds of desperately looking for it I yelled out “Fuck-it! You didn’t issue me a mask so I’ll just stay here and die!”. But then I ran out the tent only to discover I was not in the desert. As I walked back in to the tent re-adjusting to reality, the rest of the platoon, which had not been deployed for Desert Storm, stared at me worriedly but said nothing. After I calmed down, one of my team members asked if I was OK, and everyone was still staring at me. So I smiled and explained I had just had a flash back but I would be OK. They all relaxed shook their heads and went about their business getting ready for the day. The other Gulf War Veterans in the unit all said they had had a similar experience that morning. Our NBC NCO, himself a Gulf War Veteran, was not a well liked man from that point on.

Acronyms:
NBC Nuclear Biological Chemical
NCO Non Commissioned Officer
Copyright William T. Richards 2010

Lost Treasure

Today I was cleaning out a closet and pulling things out to donate to my church. As I pulled open an old foot locker that I had not opened in many years, I found something I had thought lost. Years ago I was cleaning up my home office and I placed a number of things into two boxes. One box to be thrown away, and one to be saved. The two cardboard boxes looked exactly the same. It was the end of a semester and I think my son was on the way, so I was under a great deal of stress. At some point I said to myself I must make sure to check the contents of the cardboard box before I throw it out or I will be very upset.

Well the exam came and I had gotten confused as to which box was which. A few weeks later as my son’s birth approached, I started a hurried effort to finish cleaning up, and get his room painted. I threw a bunch of boxes into the trash bin and rolled it out for collection. The next morning AFTER the trash truck had made its collection, I realized I may have thrown out the wrong box. My heart sank, I franticly searched the house room by room even in the attic in the heat of the day. I could not find the contents of the box. A box that held some of the dearest mementos I ever owned. They were gone.

For years now I would have to tell some of my scouting friends the sad tale of my lost scouting memorabilia. My ordeal arrow that I wore during the weekend I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow. My Webelos ribbon with all 15 of the then possible achievements on it that I had earned in just one year. Even a number of neckerchiefs including a 1976 jamboree neckerchief. It even had a neckerchief slide that my dad had carved and I had painted not long after he had died. All of it lost. I was heart sick over this for a long time.

Then today, I opened this foot locker and as I opened it, the metallic box with pictures of New York City on it, that my grandmother had given me to use for storing my scouting stuff, stared back at me. I’m not sure exactly what I said but my family kept asking what was up? Shaking I carefully pulled the box out and took it into the living room, I opened it and there were all the things I thought I had lost. But even things I had forgotten about. The most important thing I had lost but now found was the letter I received from Irving Texas. A letter that was more powerful than getting an acceptance letter from any college, it was the letter I received proclaiming that I was an Eagle Scout.


Copyright 2010 William T. Richards

The Adventures of Rich and GC: Lima Bravo Sierra

At one point just before the start of the ground war in Desert Storm my team had been ordered to recon the local area. The idea was that we should follow the road back west from where we were and familiarize ourselves with the terrain. Mind you this part of the Saudi desert was flat and featureless. The road is about the only land mark there is. Now just before we deployed to Saudi Arabia our supply sergeant turned down an opportunity to order GPS’s for each of the teams as he figured we wouldn’t get them anyway, but the one he did order we got and they kept it in the Command Post. This left us to use our military map and dead reckoning to figure out where we were. Again as I said, the part of the Saudi desert we were in was flat and featureless.
We pulled off the road about 20 miles away from our camp and traveled south for about 5 miles or so and then turned back east. After a while some sand berms and some odd shapes on the ground came into view. As we pulled up to the shapes we realized that these were the spent first stages of rockets from an MRLS. Seeing as we were to report any thing out of the ordinary we called it in. Our command post asked us to give our position so we guesstimated 20 miles out, five miles south, and two miles back. Not happy with our location report the CP told us to give proper grid coordinates. Well obviously without a GPS we couldn’t, everywhere we looked was flat horizon, and we told them that. They continued to demand that we fix our location. At this point even Sgt Keefer was getting annoyed with the CP and regretted calling in the report. The request for us to report our position was so ludicrous that I finally suggested we call our grid coordinate as Lima, Bravo, Sierra, which in military speak means Lost Bigger than S***. Three times we had to repeat our position and twice the radio operator did not understand what we were saying. He kept trying to tell us that we were not sending a proper military grid coordinate. Finally after the third repeat the First Sergeant grabbed the mike at the CP and said "OK guys I understand, buy the way you may be between the launchers and the boarder so you should turn off your radio so that you don’t get targeted by the missiles do you understand?"
To which we replied “Rodger, Out" and then turned our radio off, and proceeded home.
I'm told that they continued to try and raise us for a good 15 minutes after we were told to turn off our radio.

Copyright William T. Richards 2009

The Adventures of Rich and GC: A Slight Flight Delay

At O-Dark thirty on the morning of our departure from Ft. Meade Maryland to Saudi Arabia, Joe and I got in to our hummer, started up the engine and waited for the rest of the convoy to start moving. After a while the convoy started to pull away, Joe let loose the break and gave it some gas. As we started to make our first turn, Joe suddenly starts a frantic dance in his seat as the hummer continued to move straight. "Oh shit I forgot to unlock it!" he exclaimed. After a brief pause, he gets his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the cable holding the steering wheel in place. We have a good laugh as he starts us moving again, but I had to sit there and wonder... was that a good omen or a bad one?
In the end I think it was a bit of both, nothing went as smoothly as it could have, but we did seem to manage a decent sense of humor through out operations Desert Shield/Storm. Whenever things went a bit astray, I would see the humor in it, no mater how bizarre.


Copyright 2009 William T. Richards