The Founding Fathers of Boy Scouting

Suppose three famous guys, say, Michael Jordan, Troy Aikman and Kevin Costner, got together to form an organization for boys. You would be curious about it, right? Well, something like that happened a 100 years ago.

Five famous men of the day got together to build the brand new Boy Scouts of America. Boys couldn't wait to join. Those who did were rewarded with skills, friendships, and knowledge of the outdoors. One of the celebrities was a war hero named Lieutenant General Robert S. S. Baden-Powell. The other four were Daniel Carter Beard, William D. Boyce, Ernest Thompson Seton and James E. West.

These five men became Founding Fathers of Scouting. Let's look at each more closely, along with William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt and Edward Urner Goodman, both who made significant contributions to the Scouting Movement in America.

Sir Robert Baden Powell

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell), also affectionately known as B-P. Lord Baden-Powell, was a Lieutenant-General in the British Army, writer, and founder of the Scout Movement.

After having been educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the city in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and Scout training in his African years, were also read by boys. Based on those earlier books, he wrote "Scouting for Boys" published in 1908 by Pearson, for youth readership. During writing, he tested his ideas through a camping trip on Brownsea Island that began on 1 August 1907, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.

After his marriage with Olave St Clair Soames, Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes Baden-Powell, actively gave guidance to the Scouting Movement and the Girl Guides Movement. Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died in 1941.

The Scouting Movement

Upon his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organizations. Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its Scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership.

In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys of mixed social background to test out the applicability of his ideas.

Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout Troops and the Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as a national, and soon an international obsession. The Scouting Movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guide Movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend, Juliette Gordon Low, was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to America, where she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA.

His final Letter to the Scouts

In his final letter to the Scouts, Baden-Powell had written:

I have had a most happy life and I want each one of you to have a happy life too. I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life. Happiness does not come from being rich, nor merely being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy, so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man. Nature study will show you how full of beautiful and wonderful things God has made the world for you to enjoy. Be contented with what you have got and make the best of it. Look on the bright side of things instead of the gloomy one.

But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. Try and leave this world a little better than you found it and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best. 'Be Prepared' in this way, to live happy and to die happy, stick to your Scout Promise always, even after you have ceased to be a boy and God help you to do it.

William D. Boyce

William Dickson "W. D. Boyce was an American newspaper man, entrepreneur, magazine publisher, and explorer. He was the founder of the Boy Scouts of America and the short-lived Lone Scouts of America. Born in Plum Township, Pennsylvania, he acquired a love for the outdoors early in his life. After working as a schoolteacher and a coal miner, Boyce attended Wooster Academy in Ohio before moving to the Midwest and Canada. An astute businessman, Boyce successfully established several newspapers, such as The Commercial in Winnipeg, Manitoba and the Lisbon Clipper in Lisbon, North Dakota.

With his first wife, Mary Jane Beacom, he moved to Chicago to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions. There he established the Mutual Newspaper Publishing Company and the weekly Saturday Blade, which catered to a rural audience and was distributed by thousands of newspaper boys. With his novel employment of newsboys to boost newspaper sales, Boyce's namesake publishing company maintained a circulation of 500,000 copies per week by 1894. Boyce strongly supported worker rights, as demonstrated by his businesses support of labor unions and his maintenance of his newsboys well-being.

By the early years of the 20th century, Boyce had become a multi-millionaire and had taken a step back from his businesses to pursue his interests in civic affairs, devoting more time to traveling and participating in expeditions. In 1909, he embarked on a two-month trip to Europe and a large photographic expedition to Africa with photographer George R. Lawrence and cartoonist John T. McCutcheon. Over the next two decades, Boyce led expeditions to South America, Europe, and North Africa, where he visited the newly discovered tomb of King Tutankhamun.

Scouting Comes to America

One day in 1909 in London, England, an American visitor, William D. Boyce, lost his way in a dense fog. He stopped under a street lamp and tried to figure out where he was. A Boy approached him and asked if he could be of help. "You certainly can," said Boyce. He told the Boy that he wanted to find a certain business office in the center of the city. "I'll take you there," said the Boy.

When they got to the destination, Mr. Boyce reached into his pocket for a tip, but the Boy stopped him. "No thank you, sir. I am a Scout. I won't take anything for helping".

"A Scout? And what might that be?" asked Boyce. The Boy told the American about himself and his brother Scouts. Boyce became very interested. After finishing his errand, he had the Boy take him to the British Scouting office. At the office, Boyce met Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the famous British general who had founded the Scouting movement in Great Britain.

Boyce was so impressed with what he learned that he decided to bring Scouting home with him. On February 8, 1910, Boyce and a group of outstanding Leaders founded the Boy Scouts of America. From that day forth, Scouts have celebrated February 8 as the birthday of Scouting in the Trooped States.

What happened to the Boy who helped Mr. Boyce find his way in the fog? No one knows. He had neither asked for money nor given his name, but he will never be forgotten. His Good Turn helped bring the Scouting movement to our Country. In the British Scout Training Center at Gilwell Park, England, Scouts from the Trooped States erected a statue of an American buffalo in honor of this unknown Scout.

One Good Turn to one man became a "Good Turn" to millions of American Boys. Such is the power of a Good Turn.

Daniel Carter Beard

Daniel Carter "Uncle Dan" Beard was an American illustrator, author, youth leader, outdoorsman, and social reformer who founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905, which Beard later merged with the Boy Scouts of America.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 21, 1850, Daniel was a gifted artist and a bookworm as a child. He loved the great outdoors and formed a club called the "Boone Scouts" with his friends. Beard graduated from Worrall’s Academy in Covington, Kentucky in 1869 with a degree in engineering and worked as a surveyor and engineer.

In the early 1870s Beard and his family moved to Flushing, Queens. After working for a few years at the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, he made his living as an illustrator. Beard’s drawings graced the pages of dozens of newspapers and popular magazines, from the New York Herald to Harper’s Weekly, and from St. Nicholas to Godey’s Magazine . His work attracted the attention of Mark Twain, who hired Beard to illustrate "The Prince and the Pauper" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court".

Beard became interested in the plight of urban youth while touring tenements in the Lower East Side in 1878. Upon reading a sign with the words "No dogs or children wanted," he wrote: "I thought to myself that the fools have built an immense city without any place for the young at all." He actively campaigned to create new urban parks and playgrounds for healthy outdoor recreation. As editor of Recreation and later of Woman’s Home Companion magazine, Beard founded a nationwide Scouting program for boys, known as "The Boy Pioneers" or the "Sons of Daniel Boone," in 1905.

Beard’s group merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. More than one million boys joined the Scouts while he served as National Commissioner for thirty years until his death in 1941. Beard’s other accomplishments included teaching at the Art Students’ League of New York, serving on the Board of Education, establishing an outdoor school for boys, and writing dozens of books.

He loved to explore the Queens countryside, and he first met the woman he married, Beatrice Alice Jackson, while hiking through Newtown. This property was acquired by the independent Town of Flushing in 1875 and named Flushing Park. In 1898 jurisdiction passed to New York City when Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens were incorporated into Greater New York. From the 1870s to the 1940s, the park was home to the beloved cast-iron and zinc Neptune Fountain depicting the Roman god of the sea and a bevy of mermaids. According to the 1913 Annual Report of the Department of Parks, this was the site of the first public Christmas tree erected in a Queens park. On Christmas Eve in 1913, Flushing residents gathered to light the tree and hear a concert by a 26-piece Parks Department band. In 1942 the western portion of Flushing Park was named for Beard by local law. Four monuments stand in the two parks: a Spanish-American War Memorial Flagpole (1950), a Civil War memorial obelisk (1865), an ASPCA horse trough (1909), and a World War I memorial by Queens sculptor Hermon A. MacNeil (1925).

Volunteers from the North Flushing Neighborhood Association and the Flushing Local Development Corporation install holiday displays throughout the year and work with Boy Scout Troop #461 and students from the Daniel Carter Beard Junior High School to plant, maintain, and clean the park. Their efforts keep one of the oldest parks in Queens festive, green, and clean.

Ernest Thompson Seton

Ernest Thompson Seton  was a Scots-Canadian (and naturalized U.S. citizen) who became a noted author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians, and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America. Seton also heavily influenced Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting. His notable books related to Scouting include "The Birch Bark Roll" and "The Boy Scout Handbook". He is responsible for the strong influence of American Indian culture in the Boy Scouts of America.

Seton met Scouting's founder, Lord Baden-Powell, in 1906. Baden-Powell had read Seton's book, "The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians", and was greatly intrigued by it. The pair met and shared ideas. Baden-Powell went on to found the Scouting movement worldwide, and Seton became vital in the foundation of the Boy Scouts of America, and was its first Chief Scout. His Woodcraft Indians, combined with the early attempts at Scouting from the YMCA and other organizations, and Daniel Carter Beard's Sons of Daniel Boone, to form the Boy Scouts of America. The work of Seton and Beard is in large part the basis of the Traditional Scouting movement.

Seton was Chief Scout of the Boy Scouts of America from 1910-1915 and his work is in large part responsible for the American Indian influences within the Boy Scouts of America. However, he had significant personality and philosophical clashes with Beard and James E. West. In addition to disputes about the content of and Seton's contributions to the Boy Scout Handbook, conflicts also arose about the suffrage activities of his wife, Grace, and his British citizenship. The citizenship issue arose partly because of his high position within Boy Scouts of America, and the federal charter West was attempting to obtain for the Boy Scouts of America required its Board Members to be American citizens. Seton drafted his written resignation on January 29, 1915, but he did not send it to Boy Scouts of America until May.

In 1931 he became a Trooped States citizen. Seton was associated with the Santa Fe arts and literary committee during the mid 1930's and early 1940's, which comprised a group of artists and authors including author and artist Alfred Morang, sculptor and potter Clem Hull, painter Georgia O'Keefe, painter Randall Davey, painter Raymond Jonson, leader of the Transcendental Painters Group, and artist Eliseo Rodriguez.

He died in Seton Village in northern New Mexico at the age of eighty-six. Seton was cremated in Albuquerque. In 1960, in honor of his 100th birthday and the 350th anniversary of Santa Fe, his daughter Dee and his grandson, Seton Cottier (son of Anya), scattered the ashes over Seton Village from an airplane.

The Philmont Scout Ranch houses the Seton Memorial Library and Museum. Seton Castle in Santa Fe, built by Seton as his last residence, housed many of his other items. Seton Castle burned down in 2005; fortunately all the artwork, manuscripts, books, etc., had been removed to storage before renovation was to have begun.

James E. West

Dr. James E. West was a lawyer and an advocate of children's rights, who become the first professional Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America, serving from 1911–1943. Upon his retirement from the Boy Scouts of America, West was given the title of Chief Scout.

The new Boy Scouts of America office on 5th Avenue in New York City opened in January 1911 with West at the helm and the movement began to grow at a rapid pace. Sixty local Councils were organized in January and hundreds of Scoutmasters were commissioned. The office grew from six to thirty-five employees by May. One of his first tasks was the first edition of "The Official Handbook for Boys".

West was instrumental in expanding the third part of the Scout Oath: To help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight. He also pushed to add three parts to the Scout Law: brave, clean, and reverent.

West dealt with many early issues. Labor Unions protested over wording in the original Official Handbook that had been copied from the British Scouting for Boys that was perceived as antiunion; this had already been removed from the first edition. West also dealt with those who protested against the inclusion of African Americans. West held that they should be included, but that local committees should follow the same policies that they followed in the school systems. Thus, much of the American south as well as many major northern committees had segregated programs with "colored Troops" until the late 1940s. Southern Councils were not fully desegregated until 1974. Since the Boy Scouts of America had early and enduring ties with the YMCA, a firmly Protestant organization, the Catholic church forbade their boys to join. West successfully argued that Scouting was non-sectarian and the Catholics accepted the Boy Scouts of America program in 1913.

As early as 1910, Daniel Carter Beard and Ernest Thompson Seton had various arguments over who was the founder of Scouting. Programs for boys had been advanced by Seton in 1902, Beard in 1905 and Baden-Powell in 1907. Since Baden-Powell had based parts of the program on Seton's work, Seton claimed to be the founder. By 1915, the conflicts between had escalated and West attempted to defuse the situation. Beard and Seton did not get along with West. Seton had different goals for the program and views of how Scouting should develop. Both Seton and Beard saw West as a city lawyer and administrator. Seton often challenged West's authority, often to his own detriment.

The National Executive Board did not re-elect Seton as Chief Scout in 1915 and he soon stopped publishing in Boys' Life. By early 1916, Seton was officially out of the Boy Scouts of America program, and most of his contributions were removed from the 1916 edition of the handbook. West also clashed with the Boy Scouts of America's founder, William D. Boyce, who eventually left the Boy Scouts of America in January 1915 to found the Lone Scouts of America. The Lone Scouts of America initially flourished but had to merge back into the Boy Scouts of America in June 1924.

West even had Boyce's name erased from Boy Scouts of America records for years. Competition from Lone Scouts of America caused West to seek a Federal Charter for Boy Scouts of America. This Federal Charter for Boy Scouts of America was granted on June 15, 1916. James E. West at the Oval Office with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Walter W. Head, Boy Scouts of America National President in 1937.

In the years before World War I, pacifism and patriotism often came into conflict, and the Boy Scouts of America was sometimes in the middle. Some thought that the Boy Scouts of America was too militaristic, especially as characterized by their military style uniforms and discipline, while others felt that the Boy Scouts of America was unpatriotic in their stance against military training. In 1912, a member of another organization, the American Boy Scouts, shot another boy by accident. West quickly distanced the Boy Scouts of America from the American Boy Scout program and any military training or discipline. He refused to allow the Boy Scouts of America Supply group to sell the Remington rifle endorsed by the ABS and de-emphasized the Marksmanship Merit Badge. The National Rifle Association lobbied the Executive Board to issue the badge.

In 1914, Colonel Leonard Wood resigned from the Board after a pacifistic article was published in Boys' Life that he considered to be "almost treasonable". After Theodore Roosevelt admonished West, he toned down the rhetoric and later began to issue the Marksmanship Merit Badge. West fiercely defended the use of the term Scout and the right to market Scouting merchandise. By 1930, West claimed to have stopped 435 groups from unauthorized use of Scouting; both as part of an organizational name and in the use of commercial products.

When the Girl Scouts of the USA started, West discouraged the program. In 1911, West worked with Luther Gulick when the Camp Fire Girls were established and always considered the them to be the sister program of the Boy Scouts of America. When the Girl Scouts refused to give up their name in 1918, West appealed to Baden-Powell with no results. Lou Henry Hoover became the president of the Girl Scouts in 1922 and First Lady in 1929; West stopped his campaign to rename the Girl Scouts.

West negotiated the purchase of Boys' Life in 1912, making it the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. He began a campaign against pulp fiction and introduced a library of recommended books.

The Boy Scouts of America celebrated West's 25th year as Chief Scout Executive by commissioning a portrait by Albert A. Rose. The portrait was featured on the July 12, 1937 cover of Time in recognition of the first National Scout Jamboree.

While West created a well-organized national structure that was a key to the Boy Scouts of America's growth, reputation, and highly respected national organization, he was not popular with the Scouts. West for many years resisted the creation of a Cub Scouting program for younger boys, feeling that they would take focus away from the main program, Boy Scouts youths aged 11-17.

However, the popularity of pilot programs in America similar to Wolf Cubs in England and Canada was such that he eventually was won over to the official introduction of Cub Scouting in 1930. After James E. West retired as Chief Scout Executive, Dr. Elbert K. Fretwell succeeded him.

Upon retirement, West was given the title of "Chief Scout" of the Boy Scouts of America, the same title that Seton had held. Dr. West served on the World Scout Committee of the World Organization of the Scout Movement from 1939 until 1947. International Scouting honored West with the Bronze Wolf award.

In 1993, the Boy Scouts of America created the James E. West Fellowship Award for individuals who contribute $1,000 or more in cash or securities to their local council endowment trust fund.

William Hillcourt

William Hillcourt, also popularly known within the Scouting movement as “Green Bar Bill” and “Scoutmaster to the World”;, was an influential leader in the Boy Scouts of America organization for much of the twentieth century, acclaimed as "the foremost influence on development of the Boy Scouting program". Hillcourt is especially noted as a writer and teacher in the areas of woodcraft, Troop and Patrol structure, and training.

He was a prolific writer; his works include three editions of the Boy Scouts of America's widely-circulated official Boy Scout Handbook, with over 12.6 million copies printed.

Hillcourt developed and promoted the American adaptation of the Wood Badge program, the premier Adult Leader training program of Scouting.

Hillcourt was Danish, but moved to the Trooped States as a young adult and worked for the Boy Scouts of America. From his start in Danish Scouting in 1910 though his death in 1992, he was continuously active in Scouting. He traveled all over the world teaching and training both Scouts and Scouters, earning many of Scouting's highest honors.

His legacy and influence can still be seen today in the Boy Scouts of America program and in Scouting training manuals and methods for both youth and adults. Hillcourt worked at a Boy Scouts of America camp at Bear Mountain in Harriman State Park, New York in 1926, where he became an instructor in American Indian dance. He then worked for the Boy Scouts of America Supply Division where he broke his leg when a crate fell on him.

He met James West while working at the National Office. West solicited Hillcourt's thoughts on Scouting in the Trooped States. Hillcourt later sent West an 18-page memo detailing issues with the lack of Patrol structure and Leadership. He recommended that the Boy Scouts of America write a handbook for Patrol Leaders, and that it needed to be written by someone who had been both a Patrol Leader and a Scoutmaster.

West hired Hillcourt as a writer and editor and was later persuaded to commission Hillcourt to write the first Handbook for Patrol Leaders. Hillcourt, with a totem pole made by Ernest Thompson Seton, on his lawn, featured in an 85th birthday Scouting magazine tribute.

From 1932 until his retirement in 1965, Hillcourt became a major contributor to Boys' Life, the magazine for Scouting youth. Each monthly issue included a page on advancement, Scoutcraft, outdoor Scouting skills, and included his signature superimposed over the two green bars that are the emblem of the Patrol Leader, which led to his nickname "Green Bar Bill" and its adoption as the logo of his regular Boys' Life column. Hillcourt was tasked to write a new manual for Scoutmasters in 1934 and worked with his good friend and colleague E. Urner Goodman, the National Program Director of the Boy Scouts of America.

He and his wife moved to a house in Mendham Borough, New Jersey to be near Schiff Scout Reservation, the Boy Scouts of America's National Training Center, so he could be in place to put this theories to a practical test. In order to do so, he founded Troop 1 of Mendham in 1935 as a Troop directly Chartered to the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

As the Scoutmaster, he used Troop 1 to test and validate his work for 16 years. The Baden-Powell’s visited Schiff in 1935 and began a steadfast friendship with the Hillcourt's. Olave Baden-Powell, widow of Robert Baden-Powell, allowed Hillcourt to edit Scouting for Boys" and "Aids to Scoutmastership" into the World Brotherhood Editions to help the Scouting movement recover from the war. She then allowed Hillcourt access to all of Baden-Powell's letters, diaries and sketchbooks when she and Hillcourt co-authored the narrative biography of Baden-Powell, "Baden-Powell: The Two Lives of a Hero".

The National Office moved from New York City to North Brunswick, New Jersey in 1954, and the Hillcourt's moved with it. He completed the sixth edition of the Boy Scout Handbook in time for the Boy Scouts of America'50th anniversary in 1960.

Edward Urner Goodman

Edward Urner Goodman, more familiarly E. Urner Goodman, was an influential leader in the Boy Scouts of America movement for much of the twentieth century. Goodman was the National Program Director from 1931 until 1951, during the organization's formative years of significant growth when the Cub Scouting and Exploring programs were established.

He developed the Boy Scouts of America's National Training Center in the early 1930s and was responsible for publication of the widely read Boy Scout Handbook and other Scouting books, writing the Leaders Handbook used by Scout Leaders in the Trooped States during the 1930s and 1940s.

Goodman is best remembered today for having created the Order of the Arrow, a popular and highly successful program of the Boy Scouts of America that continues to honor Scouts for their cheerful service.

Since its founding in 1915, the Order of the Arrow has grown to become a nationwide program having thousands of members, which recognizes those Scouts who best exemplify the virtues of cheerful service, camping, and Leadership by membership in Boy Scouts of America's Honor Society.

As of 2007, the Order of the Arrow has more than 183,000 members.

The Order of the Arrow

As the Philadelphia Council's newly hired field executive in 1915, one of Goodman's assignments was to serve as director of the Council's summer camp at Treasure Island Scout Reservation on the Delaware River. He believed that the summer camp experience should do more than just teach proficiency in Scoutcraft skills; rather, the principles embodied in the Scout Oath and Scout Law should become realities in the lives of Scouts.

Along with his assistant camp director, Carroll A. Edison, he started an experimental program to recognize those Scouts best exemplifying those traits as an example to their peers. Goodman and Edson were strongly influenced by the use of American Indian culture by Ernest Thompson Seton in his Woodcraft Indians program. They decided to create an honor society of their own at camp that summer, in a manner befitting a boy's interest and understanding.

Goodman utilized the appeal of Indian lore and recognition by a Scout's peers as motivational tools. He devised a program where Troops chose, at the camp's conclusion, those boys from among their number who best exemplified the ideals of Scouting. Those elected were acknowledged as having displayed, in the eyes of their fellow Scouts, a spirit of unselfish service and brotherhood.

Edson helped Goodman research the traditions and language of the Lenni Lenape also known as the Delaware, who had once inhabited Treasure Island. E. Urner Goodman as a young Scouter in 1917. The brotherhood of Scout honor campers with its American Indian overtones was a success and was repeated again the following summer at Treasure Island. Those Scouts honored at Treasure Island in 1915 and 1916 would eventually become members of the Order of the Arrow's Unami Lodge.

By 1921, Goodman had spoken to Scout Leaders in surrounding states about the OA, and Lodges were established in a score of Scout Councils in the northeast. In October 1921, he convened the first national meeting of what was then called the National Lodge of the Order of the Arrow in Philadelphia, and Goodman was elected Grand Chieftain. Committees were organized to formulate a constitution, refine ceremonial rituals, devise insignia, and plan future development.

Reflecting Goodman's ongoing interest in music, he composed the words to the Order of the Arrow's song, "Firm Bound in Brotherhood", set to the stirring melody of a hymn found in the Presbyterian hymnal of the 1920s, "God the Omnipotent" in 11.10.11.9 meter, which was adapted from the Russian National Anthem, "God Save the Tsar!", composed by Alexei Lvov in 1833.

In the early 1920s, many Scout Executives were skeptical of what they called "secret camp fraternities". By September 1922, opposition to the Order of the Arrow was such that a formal resolution opposing "camp fraternities" was proposed at a national meeting of Scout Executives. Goodman argued against the motion: "Using the Scout ideals as our great objective", he said, a camp activity that will "further the advancement of those ideals" should not be suppressed.[1] The motion was narrowly defeated, and the fledgling Order continued as an experimental program throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Goodman maintained his active support of the OA's National Lodge, as it was then called, during his years as Scout Executive in Chicago and then Boy Scouts of America National Program Director. In observance of the 15th anniversary of the brotherhood's founding, the National Lodge presented Goodman with a medal in 1930 formally recognizing him as founder.

In 1940, the National Lodge presented him with the first Distinguished Service Award on the OA's 25th anniversary. The citation said, in part, "As the founder of the Order of the Arrow, through his ability, wisdom, and foresight, his vision of service to others was transformed into a National Honor Brotherhood which has been a positive influence in the lives of thousands of boys".

When he was first appointed as director in 1931, there were OA Lodges in seven percent of Boy Scouts of America Councils nationwide. By 1948, about two-thirds of the Boy Scouts of America Councils had established OA Lodges. In that year, three years before Goodman's retirement from the Boy Scouts of America, his "Honor Society of Scout camping" innovation was fully integrated as an official part of the Scouting program. Kenneth Davis, in his book "The Brotherhood of Cheerful Service: A History of the Order of the Arrow", concludes that the National Council's approval in 1948 "was due largely to Goodman's personal efforts and recommendation".

Over the decades since the Order of the Arrow's founding, more than one million Scouts and Scouters have worn the OA sash on their uniforms, denoting membership in the Brotherhood of Cheerful Service. There are presently 183,000 members of the Order of the Arrow in all but two of Boy Scouts of America Councils nationwide.

Summarizing what he felt the order signified, E. Urner Goodman wrote in the foreword to the "Order of the Arrow Handbook" from the perspective of more than a half century after the brotherhood's inception: "The Order of the Arrow" is a 'thing of the spirit' rather than of mechanics. Organization, operational procedure, and paraphernalia are necessary in any large and growing movement, but they are not what count in the end. The things of the spirit count:

Brotherhood: in a day when there is too much hatred at home and abroad.
Cheerfulness: in a day when the pessimists have the floor.
Service: in a day when millions are interested only in getting or grasping rather than giving.

These are of the spirit, blessed of God, the great Divine Spirit.