SCOUT EXECUTIVE'S MINUTE

Dear Fellow Scouters:

For this month’s “Scout Executive’s Minute” I am posting a quote from one of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt. Relatively unknown to the current generation of Scouts, Roosevelt led the “strenuous life.” He served as a New York State Assemblyman, Police Commissioner for New York City, Assistant Secretary of the US Navy, Colonel of the First US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, Governor of New York, Vice President, and the youngest President of the United States at age 42. He was the author of 35 books, a renowned conservationist, became the first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, a Phi Beta Kappa and Harvard graduate, successfully mediated the resolution to the Russo-Japanese War, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his leadership of the charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War.

As a child he suffered severely from asthma. He took up boxing to deal with bullies. His first wife died directly following childbirth on the same day that his own mother died. He was an accomplished historian, naturalist, and explorer of the Amazon Basin. As President he was a “trustbuster” taking on 44 major corporations at once through as series of lawsuits, started our national park system, and had the West Wing of the White House constructed. He is the only person to hold the title “Chief Scout Citizen” from the Boy Scouts of America.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly ; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

When you play, play hard; when you work don’t play at all. In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The next best thing you can do is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Best regards,
Stephen J. Taylor, CFRE
Scout Executive
staylor@bsamail.org