Last night there was a tornado touchdown at a Boy Scout camp 40 miles north of here. Four of my brothers lost their lives in this incident. I had never met these four boys, but they are my brothers none the less.

My father passed away when I was a year and a half old. I was the youngest child of a widowed mother, and grew up in a house with her and three older sisters. When I was eight years old, a man from the neighborhood named Ray came to our house one night. He told my Mom that his son had told him that there was a boy without a father in the house. He told my Mom that I needed to come to his Cub Scout meeting and that he would be happy to stop and pick me up the next evening. I went to the meeting.

Over the next ten years, a group of men, committed to the Scouting program, taught me many things. Often, what was being taught on the surface was much deeper than I realized at the time. I learned many skills that have served me well over the years. Along with the skills, I learned how to cooperate with a group, how to be a leader, a follower and what it meant to part of a greater whole. I learned how to plan and carry out my plan. I learned to be prepared. For a fatherless boy from a very poor neighborhood, the Scouting Program was essentially my Father.

As an adult, I spent the next twenty five years working as a volunteer leader. Often, I worked with Ray, the man who came and picked me up for my first meeting. I spent time at the Troop level as an assistant Scoutmaster, then Scoutmaster and a Troop committee member. I moved onto the District staff, and worked at the organizational level. I finally ended up at the Council level as a member of the training staff. I stepped aside about ten years ago to allow a new generation of men to take their turn.

It is very hard to explain what this experience is like, and the effect it has had on my life, to some one on the outside.

Last night, a young man of eighteen was the first to see the tornado approach. He made sure the camp siren was sounded, got a group of younger kids to shelter. Too late to get to the shelter himself, he took a couple of young men into a ravine just in time to avoid the storm as it passed through. When the tornado has passed, a pick up truck had been picked up and blown into a building, knocking over the stone fireplace. This young man, along with others, immediately started to dig the younger boys out of the rubble. When He was interviewed later he was bare chested because he had taken off his shirt and laid it over one of the boys who had died. Thomas White is his name.

Other boys set up a first aid station and were taking care of the injured. A couple boys took an ATV out of a utility shed and went to get the Ranger and his family out of the wreckage of the Ranger’s cabin. When the rescue forces arrived, the young men were taking care of one another, and doing the best they could to get the injured to safety.

I am very proud to say that these are my Brothers…..