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The below text is based on words I delivered at the 2025 White Stag Staff Reunion campfire. I think it pretty well summarizes the formative experience that White Stag was for me.
Good evening.
Most of us have been here for the better part of the day, but if I haven’t talked with you personally, welcome home to Camp Red Wing. It’s been fantastic to come back here for three years now. I’m eternally grateful to Neil Spotts, Holden Wright, Raleigh Witham, Max Reed and other members of our brilliant staff that had the foresight, the will, and the brains to start this reunion thing. It’s been an incredible experience every time, and I’m so honored to be a part of it.
I also want to thank our hosts, Slayd and Corry Milhollin for having us and for keeping our beloved camp basically the way we knew it. The concrete work at the old fire ring is incredible for the wedding venue though – have you seen it? It’s really a class act and a nice piece of work. If you know anybody who is wanting to get married – although I don’t understand why anybody would want to do that – this would be the place to have your funeral – I mean wedding – so book today!
For those who may not have worked with me on staff, I’m Dennis Boyle, and I serve the reunion committee as the Minister of Propaganda and Arbiter of Truth, a title graciously bestowed upon me by Neil Spotts, one of the OGs of this whole reunion thing we are doing. As I recall, Neil went through as a PT – our slang term for participant – one of my later years on staff. We must have taught him well.
Prior to my current role, on the evening of Thursday, June 12, 1997, in a brown Anchor-brand tent set up at Adventure Point at Ransburg crowded in with a group of guys I’d met for the first time the Sunday prior, I was elected permanent patrol leader of White Stag troop 973 yellow patrol, affectionately known as The Muddy Beavers. I’ve been chasing the miraculous White Stag ever since.
I wanted everybody here, if they wish to do so, to tell our staff family a little about yourself and what White Stag means to you, first as a kid, and then going out into the real world. So if you’d be willing to listen to me flap my gums for a few minutes, I’ll go first.
Transport yourself mentally, if you will, back to the late 1990s; the spring of 1997 in particular. I realize that might be a little hard for some of you that served on our staff in the twenty-teens; y’all were probably still in diapers then, maybe not even thought of yet. I’ll try to paint the picture for you. That’s pronounced “pitcher” if you’re from the south side.
The late ‘90s were a different time. Hardly anybody had a cell phone. For those that did, they were mainly analog. Most of our council’s camps were in spotty coverage areas, if not completely out of range of a network altogether. What we know as the internet was in its infancy. Most people didn’t have email and if you did and were getting it at home, it was over a dialup connection. Have you ever used a BBS? Netscape Navigator? America Online before AOL Instant Messenger? Prodigy? CompuServe? People still had wired phones in their houses and still used paper maps to navigate. Gas was cheap and we still had plenty of cornfields, six-way stops at county road intersections, and no roundabouts in Johnson County where I live. It was a good time.
On a warm weekend in May 1997, I found myself at the Order of the Arrow’s Wulakamike Lodge 21 Lobarlewhense Chapter Spring Ordeal at Johnson County Park. For those that aren’t familiar, it’s a very flat piece of land in southeastern Johnson County that houses Hoosier Horse Park. It used to be part of Camp Atterbury, but was spun-off at some point to become the county park and the Atterbury Fish and Wildlife area. Signs of its militarized past are still everywhere if you know where to look. Pathfinder District often had district camporees down there back in the ‘90s and it really wasn’t a bad spot to set up for a weekend.
Anyway, I was selected to attend the Spring Ordeal in 1997. My Friday night ended sleeping under the stars in an open field inside a Korean War-era down-filled sleeping bag that my uncle brought home in the mid ‘50s when he returned from his military service. It rained just a little bit and I remember looking at a water tower on the Camp Atterbury side wondering what the morning would bring.
In the morning, I woke up to find that my ordeal nametag, which was really a red-painted arrow-shaped plywood sign about a foot long meant to be hung around my neck on a piece of the old yellowish colored standard smelly sisal twine had been switched with somebody else’s.
Since we were all under silence, it wasn’t real easy to communicate with anyone to find out where my nametag was. As I remember, I eventually found whoever had it; I think I had his and we swapped out. The rest of that day was filled with silent service projects, cleaning up sticks and debris, running lawnmowers, picking up trash – whatever they could throw at us. We had cheap cold-cut sandwiches on white bread and water for lunch.
In the evening, after we had all completed the requirements of the ordeal and been inducted into the Order as ordeal members, we had a big open air feast prepared by one of the best council cook teams that ever was.
Back in the day, before the organization was so risk-averse about everything and you didn’t have to have a Serv-Safe Certification™ for every mess kit at every patrol site, we had these volunteer cook teams that would roll in to a scouting event with a bigass cargo trailer towed by a member’s one-ton pickup truck containing everything needed to prepare a veritable feast in the field.
These guys didn’t really need a kitchen – they brought it all with them. If you ever put them in a full camp kitchen in a dining hall – look out. These dudes were old school and knew exactly what they were doing. I’d love to see some of these guys tailgate; it would be incredible. Trust me, today’s hipster food trucks have nothing on these guys.
I don’t remember who all was on that particular cook team, but one of them was my former home troop scoutmaster, mid-‘90s White Stag course director, and, at the time, White Stag committee chair Gary Jones.
Mister Jones, or “Jonesie” as some of us kids in Troop 245 affectionately called him – not to his face, of course, told me I should go to White Stag. He said he thought I would get a lot out of it. The course was coming up the next month, in June of 1997, and he said he would get me and a couple other scouts in our troop that attended the ordeal information so we could sign up.
Naturally, it was in print format. On paper. We didn’t sign up for shit on websites back then. We had to mail in a registration form using actual stamps, envelopes, a mail box, containing a check from our parents to pay the fees. Archaic, I know, but it worked.
June 8, 1997 was a Sunday. It was a rainy, wet, muddy Sunday at Ransburg. Those of you my age and older will remember this was a pivotal year for White Stag. To the best of my knowledge, 1997 was the one and only year when the traditional course was held at Ransburg.
We had four troops, as I recall, each was on a ridge at Ransburg. The course was held the week immediately before summer camp started, so there were two full staffs in camp – White Stag and Ransburg staff, and I heard they didn’t get along so well. My understanding has always been that Red Wing’s future as a scout camp was in question that year, which is supposedly why Ransburg was selected as the site for White Stag ’97. Those that may know better, please correct me if I’m wrong. I do know that they built a parade ground complete with three brand new flag poles near the parking lot especially for White Stag, and after the ’97 course, I don’t believe it was ever used again, at least not for that purpose.
Anyway, that Sunday, I learned what Kentucky Gore-Tex is. I was issued some by an unknown staff member to whom I am eternally grateful, as my rain gear was decidedly subpar for the conditions.
That Sunday, I, and a few other guys my age from Troop 245 arrived at Ransburg to start our experience as White Stag participants. Of course we were all split up across the different troops and met our fellow patrol members – complete strangers – for the first time.
That week was a total mud fest. I remember the old beat-up GM square-body camp trucks churning through the mud around camp. They didn’t have license plates since they never left the camp, and all looked like they had seen better days. I think Rick Jackson was still the camp ranger back then, or it might have been Keith Korn’s first year. The ranger had a nice new bright red Chevy long bed four-by-four with round old school CAC logo decals on the doors that he drove around camp busying himself with preparations for the upcoming summer camp season. We were already there, though, in our vintage military surplus troop tents, learning and applying eleven tangible, articulable, practical leadership skills that were the backbone of the White Stag Junior Leader Training Conference.
Fortunately, I had good boots, but it took a lot of effort to keep the mud out of my cheap Hillary dome tent that didn’t even have a full rain fly. I remember taking meticulous notes on all the presentations in my White Stag issued steno book, which I still have, by the way. For whatever reason, I kept track of what time things were happening in my notebook using the Timex digital watch my grandmother bought me back in ‘93, and it was fascinating after the fact to compare my notebook to the course schedule when I finally got a look at it to see how well things lined up.
Reuben Pillsbury was our troop guide, and I’ll never forget the, well, guidance he gave us that week. When secret hike time came around on Thursday, we found ourselves resolute and ready for the adventure up Agony Hill and around the lake over to AP. If I remember right, the excuse was that the Russians were coming. It sounded like bullshit, but we went with it. I still remember Mom and Terry McConnell riding along the road in a full-size Chevy truck tracking our progress and looking out for the safety of the patrols as we made our way to the outpost. All in all, it was truly a mountaintop experience on par with the successful trek at Philmont which I was lucky enough to undertake three years later.
Our closing ceremony in 1997 took place at the very back section of the Quail Run campsite. It was there I received the White Stag badge and hat pin I’m wearing right now. Our patrol had gone from total strangers to a pretty cohesive team in less than a full week, and we all had a great sense of pride and accomplishment. I knew I wanted to go back.
I was hired for staff in 1998. I remember going to Belzer one cold morning in December and giving my presentation to several returning staff members. I don’t even remember what it was about or who I gave my presentation to, which is odd for me. Sometime after that, I received a letter in the mail – yes, an actual mailed letter in an actual envelope with a cancelled stamp and everything – the subject of which was “Welcome to Staff.” The rest is history.
In 1998, White Stag split into two sessions – June and July. We had great youth participation back then. I was put on June staff. I don’t know if it was something I chose, a matter of preference, or just where they needed me, but there I was. I still remember my first staff development session here at Red Wing in early 1998. I was in middle school, it was cold outside, I was at a camp I’d never been to before, and I really didn’t know anybody. I was lonely and homesick, but all that would soon change.
I met Wayne Wente, Josh Bush, and Jay Volbrecht. Josh was a couple years older than me and we both went to Center Grove. We became pretty much best friends, and years later I would serve as best man in his wedding party. We also shared common interest in amateur radio, which would actually prove useful to White Stag in the late ‘90s – again, before everybody had cell phones. We used it to track the progress of some hellacious storms that rolled through here in June of ’98 and ‘99, and it turned out to be a beneficial asset to our overall safety.
Wayne, Josh, Jay and I formed a team of food quartermasters that would last two full years – 1998 and 1999, unchanged. Wayne is a great guy. He is a Marine and served as a radioman in Viet Nam. Back then, he smoked like a chimney, and we’d always go out on smoke breaks behind the kitchen with him. We wouldn’t smoke, but we’d usually all grab a coke from the reefer while Wayne took his smoke break and relax for a few minutes, getting ready for the next volley of work. Being a food quartermaster isn’t the easiest job on staff, but we had a blast doing it. It turned into what I did most of my career here on White Stag staff, and these guys were the foundation for it.
I remember early in the morning the first day of course in 1998, Josh, Jay, and I got up extra early, probably around 4 AM, to go get showered up and ready for the day. We had to get up before everybody else and get breakfast ready for the staff because we had PTs coming in that day, and we needed to get the staff fed before they started arriving at camp.
Many of you here probably don’t remember the old shower house. My first couple years here, we had to rebuild it practically every year after the winter freeze would blow all the water lines and shoot everything all to hell and gone. It was originally the pool house for the swimming pool that was just west of BP that went in back in 1960. By 1998, the pool was filled with sand, but the pool house remained, and we used it for showers prior to the shower house that is here now, which was put in around 2000 or 2001.
That old shower house was an adventure. Like I said, we had to at least partially rebuild it every year in terms of plumbing and stalls at least. There were literally tarps strung up outside for privacy with some outside shower stalls. There is probably some rule about that today, I don’t know, but we got away with it back then.
Back then, we had so many practical resources on our adult staff. We had electricians, plumbers, engineers, mechanics, doctors, paramedics – basically any talent, skill, and know-how you’d need to patch up the camp and get it going prior to course. I think there’s a little something in the JLTC syllabus about knowing and using the resources of the group. We knew our resources and we definitely used them.
In the late ‘90s, Red Wing didn’t get a lot of love from the council. Much of that changed with the early 2000s Leadership at the Crossroads campaign, but we still played second- and third-fiddle to places like K, Ransburg, and of course Belzer.
Basically all of the improvements you see around you here today are a direct result of White Stag using this camp for years, and the constant campaigning of leaders including but definitely not limited to George DeBlois, Gary Jones, Bob Duffy, and Dick Parrott to get us better facilities. With the support of true professionals in the council office like Pam Ballard and Scott Clabaugh, we eventually got the improved facilities we needed, and it made things much easier for us in subsequent years.
Anyway, back to the shower house that early morning in June of ’98. Josh, Jay, and I were in the youth side showering up. Red Wing is famous for mosquitoes, and they loved that damn old shower house. It was basically a mosquito base. When the water started flowing, they would get all agitated down there in the drain trough in the floor that always had standing water in it. Then they’d detect fresh blood and decide it was time to go in for a meal so they could lay more eggs and make more mosquitoes to harass us with.
As we were showering and fighting off the skeeters, we started smelling cigarette smoke. Jay said, “Its probably Wayne over there on the other side smoking in the shower.” Next thing we heard was Wayne yelling over the wall, “Hey, what are you guys doing over there?”
Classic. That would probably get you thrown out of camp nowadays, but back then, it was a much more fun, loose operation.
Josh, Jay, and I were fortunate enough to rub elbows with the pure magic and old school cool that is Jim Carmichael. That man is legend. In addition to everything else he gave of himself for White Stag, Wood Badge, and scouting in general, he helped us out with numerous tasks in the food quartermaster realm, and I learned more about cooking meat from him than anybody I know of.
’98 and ’99 were years of rebuilding for Red Wing, if only so we could get through course. We fought reefer problems and water problems. I still remember being a part of a staff bucket brigade back in the woods southwest of BP someplace where a subterranean water line had busted probably because of freezing and neglect. As it turned out, we apparently had night shift excavators and plumbers on our staff that year, consisting of George DeBlois, Tim Palmer, Bruce Henry, Kenny Hall, Dick Parrott, and Chuck Sparks. They worked late into the night to dig up and repair the busted water line, working in an unprotected trench and becoming filthy in the process.
After these ordeals, Dick Parrott wrote a beaming review in his ’99 course closeout of the work the youth and adult staff did with the outstanding support of our council advisor Pam Ballard to dig a trench for a new water line from the well house to the old shower house, rebuild the rotted floor in the well house, and get the well serviced and back online at the start of the June session in '99. I remember the Delaware County Health Department coming out and giving the well a clean bill of health just in the nick of time. You can’t run a course without water, and we were glad to have it.
Gary Jones who is accomplished in HVAC work amongst pretty much every other practical mechanical skill you can think of came up one weekend to cob what looked like a residential air conditioner compressor onto the reefer to get it going for course. Just in case, we even had a refrigerated semi-trailer from Kroger lent to us for a backup just in case the reefer shit the bed on us that week. Since Gary worked on it, though, it held up just fine and we never needed the semi-trailer.
Who remembers the troop tents? Back before we had these three nice, electrified shelters, we had to erect those same vintage military surplus mess tents that I was housed in as a PT in ’97. We’d set them up in a formation roughly around the perimeter of the sand-filled pool, and every year our staff electricians had to string electrical drops from BP out to the troop tents and hang fluorescent lights up inside the tents so activities could run late into the night as they always did during course week. It was really a thing of beauty and perseverance looking back on it all now. That pre-course work list in the late ‘90s was insanity compared to pre-course many of you were probably accustomed to. Those of you that had the benefit of troop shelters, an equipment quartermaster building, and a youth bunkhouse have no idea.
In ’97 and ’98, we were led by the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, George DeBlois, for whom I will always have the utmost admiration and respect. The man is White Stag. Full stop. We would not have become what we became without him.
Dick Parrot filled those big shoes very well when he led us as course director in June of ’99. Unfortunately, he moved out of state so couldn’t stay with us in 2000, but he did a hell of a job as course director in ‘99, and we were so much better for it.
In 2000, I departed from the kitchen for a year to become a troop guide. Wayne, Josh, and Jay left staff – Wayne because he moved out-of-council, Josh and Jay because they aged-out. Being a troop guide in 2000 was a fulfilling experience, and one of those kids in my patrol, Jack Reuter, went on to become a successful senior patrol leader several years later. I guess whoever trained him knew what they were doing.
I still have fond memories of those early years on staff – the contagious, bellowing laughter of Bob Duffy and Bruce Henry at breakfast in the morning when everybody was drinking Mountain Dew or coffee just trying to wake up and get ready for the day. The improvisation and adaptation we all undertook as a staff to get things done. It was like there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish. We truly felt like the best of the best. As I recall, Tim Palmer was the June course director in 2000, and he also did a fantastic job which I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. Tim is a great delegator but yet was still very involved. He did us well as course director.
In 2001 I returned to the kitchen as a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, helping Steve Weakley and our crew of food quartermasters through another year. That was another fantastic year to be on staff. We had "Smidget" and "The Pimp", also known as Jim West. Boy, that got me in trouble one time when those ASL interpreters we had in camp that week read my lips. Since then I’ve learned to cover my mouth with my hand when saying something highly offensive in an unknown crowd.
In 2002, I was honored to return to staff as an adult – not an opportunity afforded to many youth that have aged out. I helped Laurel Duffy, Bob’s wife, in the kitchen that year, and we had another great crew of food quartermasters who got the job done. ’01 and ’02 were the It’s a Kind of Magic Duffy years. Duff loved Queen, and in retrospect, White Stag really was a kind of magic.
I also had the privilege of serving on the July session in 2002 after Joe Ward got called back to work the week of course. He had everything set to go and I just came in and made sure things ran. That was a great group of guys and I can say that my time with July was just as much fun as it was with June. Debbie Rinker was our course director, and Pass it On was the theme, as in pass on the tradition of White Stag to the next generation of scouts. I feel like we pretty much did just that.
I stayed on June staff until 2004, when I was honored to serve under the late, great Chuck Sparks. Chuck had been with White Stag at least since I was a PT in ’97. He was always the administrative guru – the analytical one, smashing numbers, keeping everything in the black, and you can see it reflected in his work in the super-secret course director pass down that was rescued by and shared with me by Tom Kear. Chuck was a great guy, personable, kind, funny, down to earth – a true leader. I’m honored to have served under his administration in my last years on JLTC staff.
Ten years after I went through White Stag as a PT and had somewhat established myself in my grown-up career, I was given the opportunity to return to staff in 2007 under the fantastic leadership of the late great Ken Benson. Benson was a cigar and coffee-loving gentleman originally from Chicagoland, and he sounded like it. He was another fantastic scouter to have worked for, and he occasionally drove his pride and joy, his Ford Model A pickup truck, to staff development weekends. We had great times hanging out back in the adult staff campsite smoking cigars and shooting the bull. Benson was one of those guys that just got it. He knew what was up. He and his fantastic assistant course director Charlie Walters kept it real and kept White Stag White Stag, despite the challenges on the horizon.
2007 and onward were a little different. We had adopted, or rather had foisted upon us, a new syllabus called NYLT. You may have heard me mention page ten. In the original NYLT syllabus, page ten states, in summary, that anybody who holds on to old local traditions – such as those of White Stag – or “outdated” syllabus elements – such as eleven articulable, practical, and usable leadership skills – basically needs to be purged from the program if they don’t fully buy-in to the national mandates of the new syllabus and forget everything they knew, whether it worked or not.
It was a kick in the teeth, a “thanks but no-thanks” to those of us who had come up with the traditions of White Stag. In retrospect, I think the adoption of that first NYLT syllabus was the beginning of the end of White Stag as we knew it.
2009 was my last year on White Stag staff. My wife and I met in 2011, got married in 2012, we had our son in 2015, and I was promoted to detective lieutenant in 2017. In the intervening years, I didn’t think much about White Stag or scouting in general until I was invited back here in 2023. Wow, did it ever feel good to be back!
I can directly tie where my life is today to my experience in scouting and particularly White Stag. I got into scouting because I wanted to earn the radio merit badge and get my amateur radio license, which I eventually did exactly twenty-eight years and one day ago, on November 14, 1997. Today, I still play radio and am responsible for maintenance of all our department’s radios, so I guess there was a benefit there.
From the radio merit badge, scouting led me to White Stag and on to White Stag staff. After I graduated from Vincennes University in December of 2004, I went up to Belzer to help with an early staff development weekend for the June 2005 course. I was there to share pass-down information with whoever was taking over food quartermaster duties that year – was it Lois Largent? Anyway, it was there that I talked to Mom and learned of certain law enforcement job opportunities. She put in a good word for me and said I should apply. I was hired on, went through my first academy in 2007, and today I'm gainfully employed as a full-time detective. I also met my wife through work. Basically, if it hadn't been for White Stag, my amazing, talented son probably would never have been born.
Chasing the Miraculous Stag is what led me here.
I think it would be impossible today to run a course the way we ran White Stag in the ‘90s and early 2000s. Every kid has a cell phone and it would be impossible to operate the course on the you’re-on-a-need-to-know-basis-and-right-now-you-don’t-need-to-know that we did back then. Nothing is secret. Nothing is sacred. Dish raids and fire runs are forbidden, and the rules. The rules!
Times have definitely changed. But, we’re all here today, and because of that its clear to me that the spirit of the White Stag lives on in all our hearts.
Through these reunions at least, we’ll keep that spirit alive, hopefully for years to come.
Because, well…
We’re a grand old staff,
We’re a high flying staff,
We’re forever the tried and the true.
We’re examples of,
The skills we love,
We’re leaders whose peers are but few.
Every learner strives for the skills we provide,
And arrives at these ideals too.
When old acquaintance be forgot,
White Stag is a part of you.
Thanks. Now, who wants to go next?
1998 photographs provided courtesy of Tim Palmer who digitized the photographic slides from the original film camera photographs.
Location: Ransburg Scout Reservation
Course Director: Mr. George DeBlois
Troop: 973
Patrol: Yellow
Position: Permanent Patrol Leader
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. George DeBlois
Troop: 981
Position: Food Quartermaster
980 Food Quartermaster: Mr. Wayne Wente
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Joshua Bush, Jay Volbrecht
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Richard Parrott
Troop: 993
Position: Food Quartermaster
990 Food Quartermaster: Mr. Wayne Wente
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Joshua Bush, Jay Volbrecht
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Tim Palmer
Troop: 001
Position: Troop Guide
Troop Instructor: Donovan Duffy
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Robert Duffy
Troop: 010
Position: Junior Assistant Scoutmaster (Food Quartermaster Assistant)
010 Food Quartermaster: Mr. Steve Weakley
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Todd Plewa, Dustin Gipson, P.J. Catania, Ben Sprout
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Robert Duffy
Troop: 020
Position: Food Quartermaster
020 Food Quartermaster: Mrs. Laurel Duffy
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Todd Plewa, Brant Gurganus, Ben Sprout, Matthew Feltrop
Session: July
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mrs. Deborah Rinker
Troop: 020
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Matt Wyrick, Daryl Mowery, Ed Smith
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Chuck Sparks
Troop: 030
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Todd Plewa, Jeffery McInnes, Keegan Sprout, Ned Flynn
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Chuck Sparks
Troop: 040
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Andy "Patch" Waltz, James Wilcox, Matt Dolan
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Ken Benson
Troop: 070
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Cody Allen, Steve Mahon, Luke Curry
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Ken Benson
Troop: 080
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Daniel Goldberg, Jack Dolan, Austin Bain
Session: June
Location: Camp Red Wing
Course Director: Mr. Charlie Walters
Troop: 090
Position: Food Quartermaster
Other Food Quartermaster Staff: Steve Mahon, Alex Wilson, Michael Waters
Page last updated 20:26 12/3/2025.
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