Some 200 Troop 5 Maplewood Boy Scouts, leaders, family and troop alumni celebrated 95 years of high adventure, community service and building leaders on Saturday, Nov. 14 at The Woodland.
The evening included a presentation by Assistant Director of the U.S. Marshals Service Michael J. Prout, a former Troop 5 assistant scoutmaster and an Eagle Scout who grew up in Maplewood.
Prout told the crowd that he considers earning his Eagle Scout rank one of the most important achievements of his life, and his framed certificate remains on his office wall in Washington D.C.
Prout, who is in charge of the U.S. Marshals Witness Security Program, has worked in various security details of the service, traveling the world and protecting world leaders. He showed the scouts and their families a video about the job of a marshal, and told the scouts he has a “very cool job – chasing bad guys and protecting good guys.”
He also told the crowd that while he has had the privilege of meeting and protecting the world’s leaders, he has never seen anyone who “gives so selflessly to the community” as Troop 5 Scoutmaster Roger R. Brauchli, who has been in Scouting for 59 years and has been leading Troop 5 since 1969.
Troop 5 became chartered in 1920 just 10 years after the Boy Scouts of America began. Since then, Troop 5 has distinguished itself as one of the finest Boy Scout troops in the country, turning boys into leaders, including nearly 100 scouts who have achieved the rank of Eagle, including Brauchli and his son, Daniel.
Troop 5 is the largest Boy Scout troop in the Lenape Trail District and one of the largest in the Northern New Jersey Council with about 60 Scouts, ranging in age from 11 to 17. The troop is a “boy-run” organization, whose youth leaders are elected by the scouts. In addition to monthly camping trips and high adventure trips to Philmont, New Mexico and to the Caribbean, the troop performs hundreds of hours of community service every year and spends two weeks at Scout camp in the Adirondacks every summer.
Brauchli thanked the numerous assistant scoutmasters, committee members, parent volunteers, returning scouts and current scouts for making Troop 5 a successful organization. He also thanked his family including his 94-year-old mother, Ruth, who had the wisdom to sign him up for Boy Scouts as a child and who, for 46 years, has hand-sewn each scout’s Troop 5 red-and-yellow neckerchief.
“I can’t thank mom enough for getting me involved in scouting,” he said.
For more information about Troop 5, visit its website www.troop5.us.
Click on any photo below to see a brief slideshow from the celebration.
