The year I turned eleven years old I moved into the Guide Patrol class in Primary. It was the class to prepare boys for the Aaronic Priesthood, but it was also the class to prepare boys for the Tenderfoot and Second Class ranks in Scouting. Mom was the Guide Patrol teacher and had been for a few years and continued to be for many more years after I got out of Primary. She made sure we learned the material and she influenced the lives of a lot of boys who are now the leaders in Heber and other places.
Mom was an excellent teacher. The Guide Patrol class was held at our house where there was plenty of space for the different activities. She presented the lesson in our front room and then we could go outside to practice what we had learned. She had to go to an early teachers meeting before Primary but the boys were instructed to go on into the house and wait for her to get there if the weather was bad. Usually we just waited on the porch.
Mom usually had my older brother, Terry, help with the scouting related activities when I was in the class and then I helped her when I had graduated from Primary, but she knew all the information as well as we did. We learned First Aid, hiking, use of a map and compass, cooking, knot tying, fire building and many other skills and we learned them well. Mom wasn’t satisfied until we knew them well. She went on five mile hikes with us. She taught us to make trail signs and to follow them. She liked to set up tests for us in the yard and see if we could pass the tests. If we did, there was usually some tasty reward. Almost all of the boys in the class earned their Tenderfoot and Second Class rank in Scouting and most became active Aaronic Priesthood holders. It broke her heart when a boy would wander away from a pathway she knew would help them in life. She never quit loving them though.
After Primary, I moved with the boys my age into the Scouting program which was not as well organized. We had lots of different Scoutmasters and none lasted very long and few did much about teaching us Scouting skills. We did go camping a few times. I was probably thirteen when the Worthington family moved to town from California. Mr. Worthington had boys scouting age and he was a trained Scouter. He became our Scoutmaster for a year or two and that is the first time we found out what being a Scout was all about. He took the responsibility seriously. He divided the boys into Patrols and he trained some of us to be Patrol Leaders and how to hold Patrol meetings. We did things as Patrols and we competed with each other. We went camping on a regular basis and learned those skills and we advanced in scouting. Unfortunately he only stayed in Heber for a couple of years and then the family moved back to California. I was fortunate, I guess, because Mom and Dad pushed me to keep working on scouting so I progressed through the First Class and Star Ranks in Scouting. Several others of my age group also made progress.
When I was seventeen years old Leland Shelley decided that he wanted his son Craig to be an Eagle Scout so he became the Scoutmaster. He wasn’t too much of a Scouter himself, but he was a good organizer. He would organize others to teach us the merit badges and slowly we progressed through the Life Rank and were closing in on Eagle. He stayed with us until we finally completed all the requirements. I can remember that he took us all the way to Flagstaff one winter night to pass off some of the swimming requirements because a school there had a heated indoor swimming pool. He arranged for someone in Flagstaff to teach us and pass us off.
I would probably have never made it to the rank of Eagle Scout without Leland Shelley’s help. In the end, ten boys from Heber all earned their Eagle Scout Rank at the same time. I was one of them. It was quite a Court of Honor. I don’t know whether or not anything like that has happened in Heber since, but Leland Shelley made it happen at least once for those of us in that group of boys. It demonstrated to me what one determined father of a boy could accomplish in not only the life of his own son, but also in the lives of his son’s friends. I will be forever grateful for what he did for us.