What a wonderful weekend to take a moment and give thanks for America’s years of both peace and conflict, but especially for the countless millions of lives who have served to keep her free. Many thanks as well to the 30 + participants from T648 who joined hundreds of other scouting families planting flags Saturday morning at Phoenix National Memorial Cemetery. Every year something new tugs at my heart, and renews my passion for this holiday. Our first year planting flags as an entire Cole family, the solemn speed and efficiency of 48,000+ flags being planted in 40 minutes overwhelmed me. A subsequent year, a treasured photo of my two youngest scouts in a tree resulted, complete with a sea of flags flowing out for what seemed like miles beneath them. Three years ago, the haunting sight of a mother laying on a freshly buried plot, devastated over the loss of her son in Afghanistan. Two years ago, a picture of two generations of  scouting Harness men standing next to the grave of their third generation Lieutenant Colonel father and grandfather. And this year, the fierce protectiveness of a tiny mother bird, sitting on her four eggs at the head of Korean veteran D. Welty’s headstone, as a quiet sea of people and flags swept by her, gently placing a flag next to her home. I am not one to often quote President Bill Clinton, but he once said ‘There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America’. We are members of a nation founded under God, with liberty to believe in our God. We are blessed every day to have hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women willing to lay down their lives to protect those freedoms, while millions more across our great land give of their time today to say thanks. Happy Memorial Day!
This week as schools let out we begin to lose a number of our scouts at various times throughout the summer. This year we have a number of scouts working at scout camps, attending council or national leadership training, or attending our scouting National Jamboree at its new location in West Virginia. Best wishes to all of you in these most excellent endeavors! The rest of us will soldier on as we have a troop meeting tomorrow night, C. Williams’ Eagle Court of Honor at 7PM on Thursday night the 30th, at the Elks Club at Acoma and 32nd Street, and both Patrol Leaders’ Council at 6PM and the Troop Committee and Parent’s meeting at 7PM on June the 4th (this is the correct date – I mistakenly gave another date last week). The focus for the Committee/Parent meeting will be Summer Camp, which is a mere 7 weeks away as I write this. Yeeehahhh! Please also be looking ahead to our June outing at Lake Roosevelt on June 7-9, and our Summer Court of Honor on June 18th at Scottsdale Worship Center. We may be missing a few scouts for a week here or there, but we certainly won’t be missing out on activities for those of us still here in the valley!
See you tomorrow at the troop meeting!
Mr. Cole