Museum seeking Scout memorabilia for BSA exhibit
By Bonnie Edwards
Published in News on November 2, 2006 1:45 PM
Boy Scout memorabilia collectors Rick Pridgen and Andy Stevens are accepting artifacts for an upcoming exhibit at the Wayne County Historical Museum.
The exhibit will be on display from January through March and will include artifacts from Eagle badges from 1910 to the present and every Boy Scout uniform ever used in the Tuscarora Council since 1911.
Mount Olive's Troop 34 is the oldest continuous Boy Scout Troop in the state and has a special place in the exhibit, which also includes every issue of the Tuscarora Council's Naya Win Rar Order of the Arrow Lodge from 1945 until the present. Naya Win Rar means "hawk that flies at night."
One of the exhibits is W.D. McRoy's uniform. He was the Tuscarora Council's first Order of the Arrow lodge chief in 1945. Another scouting advocate, Icky Peacock, also had a display.
"He silently contributed money for many scouts to go to camp over the years," Pridgen said. "He gave it with the understanding it would never be told. After his death, we told."
The men 70 and 80 years old came into the exhibit and found pictures of themselves when they were scouts. And the scouts from 50 and 60 years ago found diaries of scouting trips they had attended. They told stories about them.
"We videotaped a lot of them," said Pridgen, who started collecting when he was 17 years old. He was with Troop 3 at First Presbyterian Church.
Today he is assistant scout master with Troop 11 at St. Luke Methodist Church.
He said a reception for his son and two other boys receiving their Eagle badge sparked the idea for the exhibit.
"We had a reception at Madison Avenue Baptist Church. We set up these old items at the reception. About 300 people came. It was exciting to see those older men grab your sleeve and take me over to a table and say 'That was my Boy Scout handbook!' I said we've got to find a better way to display these items so people can go through and relive some of their history."
Tuscarora is the smallest of the Boy Scout councils in the state, with only four counties. Some have 20.
For information see the Tuscarora Council web site, www.bsanc.org.
To donate items found while cleaning out the attic call 751-5433.