by Dan Hiland

Created on: May 15, 2009

DOING THINGS THE HARD WAY

Thursday, 29 Sept 2005

The Court of Honor is finally over.

Normally this event is planned and handled by the Scoutmaster, with a little help from the Scout Committee. In our ward, though, there is no Scout Committee, meaning that the only people directly responsible for the Scouts are myself, the scoutmaster and one of the ward leaders- and since the other three were out of town most of the week, the planning duties fell to yours truly.

While I'd attended courts of honor before, I had never put one together. Clutching my only clue, a printed agenda from the previous court, I started filling in the blanks.

Early in the week I asked one of the 13 year-olds to conduct the meeting, and gave him a copy of the agenda so he could practice reading it. We would also need someone to present the awards. Poring over the bag of merit badges the scoutmaster had purchased the previous week, I could see that they would have to be organized into some sort of order before they could be passed out to the scouts.

Looking over the half-empty agenda, I realized I needed a few things:

A main speaker. Someone to lead the music. Someone to give the "Scoutmaster's Minute". People to bring refreshments. One scout- in uniform- to present and retire the colors (flags). Four more uniformed scouts to carry afore-mentioned flags. Someone to present the merit badges, patches and advancement award. Others to help set up chairs.

Then the questions really started coming:

Who is supposed to present the awards? How are they presented? Who takes the Scoutmaster's place for these proceedings? Who presents the colors? What does the presenter say? How are the color presented?

Searching the Internet for answers, I found none.

I traveled to the Scout office Tuesday morning and asked a worker at the Scout Store about it. All he could tell me was that it was up to the troop leaders, and that maybe I should contact my district representative.

So much for an established format.

Since I was there, I decided to get the district patch and troop numbers I needed for my own uniform. While doing so I discovered that the scoutmaster had forgotten to get the mother's pin that accompanies the Life rank advancement patch, so I got that as well, along with a booklet on Scout advancement, and a Scoutmaster's Minute resource book.

As it looked like I'd be doing the "minute" myself, I wanted some good material to share- a story or parable

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