My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop.
I was in the Boy Scouts for about four years until my troop disbanded. It is really one of the best activities youths can get involved in and nearly every scout I have known has been a class act due to the discipline the Scouts have instilled in them.
Actually, as that first association continued, we got a little more legitimate. In those days, they asked Boy Scout troops to act as ushers during the football games. So we signed up and I went to many games in full Boy Scout uniform as an usher.
I still remember the entire Boy Scout motto. I don't remember the serial number of my gun in the army. I don't remember the number of my locker in school. But I remember that Boy Scout code.
Dad had great people investing in his life at a young age. His mother, his stepfather, his Boy Scout leader, his football coach. That's where integrity is planted, like seeds that are harvested later.
My father also encouraged my love of nature. He urged me to become a Cub Scout, and later a Boy Scout, and I found I really liked being outdoors.
The process of my transformation came to a head with my discovery of St. Francis of Assisi during a pilgrimage I went on with a scout troop from my school.
With a growing number of one-parent families in the country, the Girl Scout troop can be an indispensable and powerful positive factor.
I think the single most important political distinction today is actually between open-minded versus closed-minded, and that's why I think this crosses the boundaries of traditional - center-right and center-left have much more in common with each other right now than the right does with the center-right, and the left does with the center-left.
How did Mike Bibby get on the team? Any Cub Scout with Boy Scouts can do Boy Scoutish things. When Bibby was in the Cub Scouts, he was a Cub Scout. When he was with Vancouver, nobody heard about him. Now that he's with Sacramento... he's on the team. I ain't going.
I am an Eagle Scout. I am very proud of that. When I was in college I worked summers in a Boy Scout summer camp. I was a nature conservation director.
We need to stop spending so much of our time trying to make the right decisions and instead start spending our time making decisions and then making them right.
I look for a quarterback who can run and not a running back who can throw. I want a quarterback who can beat you with his arm. We are not a Tim Tebow type of quarterback team. I am not going to run my quarterback 20 times on power runs.
I demand that every Storm Troop Leader, just as every political leader, should be conscious of the fact that his behavior and conduct must be exemplary. . . . I wish every mother to give her son to The Party without fearing that he may be ruined morally. . . . Storm Troop Leaders who behave unworthily in public are to be mercilessly removed.
If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together.
When I started on scout team, I wanted to be scout player of the week. So when I got that, it was, 'All right, what's the next goal?'