First of all, you may have trouble finding Arlington, NJ on the map. It's not a town. It's just a section of Kearny, NJ. Nevertheless, Troop One was chartered in 1916 as Troop One of Arlington, and nobody wanted to jeopardize the claim to the number 1, so that's the way it stayed.
The troop was sponsored by the First Baptist Church of Arlington/Kearny, NJ and that's where we met. In the 1950's, Scouting Coordinators were called Institutional Representatives or I.R.s for short. Ours was appropriately named I.R.Smith. What distinguished him was that he was on the original troop committee... in 1916! I don't remember that much about him personally, but, looking back on things, I can see that he was probably a great influence in keeping the troop on the right track. He knew the intentions of the B.S.A.'s"founding fathers"! When I see changes in Scouting that seem to be straying from the original intentions of Scouting, I just think about how things were done in Troop One. Now that I have a collection of old Scouting books, I can see that we had a GREAT Scouting experience.
The key to our troop's success in those years was sticking closely to the principle of having a boy-led troop. The Scoutmaster was always there, but he was primarily the chief advisor to the SPL, who was always the one in charge. The other key to our success was having a Leadership Corps before the term was invented. We just had lots of JASMs. Almost all of my friends stayed in Scouting throughout our high school years. One reason we all stayed was the tradition of activities (skiing and canoeing) which were reserved for those over 14 years of age. You couldn't go until you were 14, but then you were welcome on the trips for the rest of your life. Despite moving to Kansas, I went on 14 of the canoe trips, mostly on the Delaware River.
The troop was part of the Hudson Council which later merged with the Hamilton Council to become the Hudson/Hamilton Council and now is part of the Hudson Liberty Council..
Hudson Council had a camp, called Rock HIll Scout Reservation
a few miles west of Dingmans' Ferry, PA. I don't know how many years I went there,
but it was quite a few.I must admit I never made Eagle. This was largely due to the fact that Physical Fitness MB was an Eagle requirement in those days and there were NO options to that one. As a result, I was one of those with about 25 merit badges, but only a Life Scout.
If you were a member of Troop One, please e-mail me at : don@shorock.com.
Return to Don's Scouting page.