Long Beach celebrates its first Scout-O-Rama since allowing girls to participate
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By JOSH ROSEN, contributing reporter
Saturday was a historic day for the Long Beach Council of Boy Scouts for America, who not only celebrated their 100th anniversary, but celebrated their first Scout-O-Rama since allowing girls to join.
The Scout-O-Rama at Long Beach City College was essentially a public showcase for the 3,000 Long Beach Scouts.
Packs and Troops each managed a booth, which may be used to demonstrate skills they’ve learned, or games they play. Throughout the day, different groups were recognized for their achievements on the big central stage, where they also staged a massive watermelon-eating contest.
New this year: The girls.
The Long Beach area BSA council was founded in 1919, and comprises scouts from Long Beach, Bellflower, Lakewood, Signal Hill and Avalon. Since February, the BSA has become co-ed nationally, and the 100 girls of the Long Beach area BSA make up a small, but committed percentage of the community.
Among the girls was young Piper Brown, a Cub Scout. She has four brothers — all in, or about to be in, Boy Scouts — and so, naturally, she wanted to join as well.
“It’s really fun and interesting, and you can learn a lot from being in Scouts,” said Piper, adding that her favorite part is going camping. Despite being one of the only girls, she says she feels welcomed in Boy Scouts.
“Boy scouts isn’t just work. If you think that it’s more fun than it is work, and you meet way more friends than you might think.”
Johnny Bradford is a fourth generation Eagle Scout, a skipper who taught a smaller group called the Sea Scouts how to safely operate boats on the ocean. He is also the proud father of Evelyn, a new Cub Scout.
“I’ve been taking her to the boat ever since she was born, so she’s always wanted to be in Sea Scouts, and then last year when they said that girls could join Boy Scouts, the first thing she said was she wanted to join Cub Scouts,” said Bradford.
“[The Cub Scout’s] meeting room, the Girl Scouts meet at the same time in the same place, and we walked in, and I asked her, ‘Are you sure? What do you want to do, Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts?’ and she said ‘Cub Scouts.’”
About half of the 15 active Sea Scouts are girls, and according to Bradford, the girls have been working even harder than the boys.
Shortly after noon, the scouts celebrated their century of history in Long Beach with a ceremony honoring around 50 Eagle Scouts, from all throughout Long Beach’s history.
The youngest Eagle scouts stood at the front, and earned their spot on stage earlier this year, but many of the older scouts like Bradford earned their rank 10, 20, even 50 years ago. The senior of them was Bradford’s father, Lee, who became an Eagle Scout in 1963, and is still involved in Sea Scouts to this day.
“I think the thing I’m most proud of is that, you go to the mall or something like that, and you see a bunch of kids, you know, you don’t put a lot of faith in those kids at the mall, who are messing around,” said Johnny, “but I know for a fact that my youth who go out on a boat with us. I know for a fact that if there’s a problem out in the middle of the ocean, they could bring us back.”