Camp Yawgoog in Rhode Island is a summer haven for scouts, especially those at a recent Troop 414 Honor Court who went there to have fun and earn some of the Merit Badges needed to achieve the top rank of Eagle.
South Shore Press reporter Robert Chartuk attended the ceremony at the VFW hall in Center Moriches and shared stories of his time at the camp a half-century ago.
“They all had the Leatherworking badge from Yawgoog, which was an easy one to check off the list,” Chartuk said of the troop’s three new Eagle Scouts: Joshua M. Schultzer, Noah L. Reed, and Anthony G. Ortiz. “They also had the Mile Swim award, earned by making it across Yawgoog Pond and back,” noted the reporter, who remembered having trouble with it as a scrawny 12-year-old. “I was able to earn the Swimming Merit Badge and learned all the different strokes—crawl, backstroke, butterfly, and sidestroke, which l used to get across the lake. We went fishing, rowing, shooting, made fires—everything you could ask for as a kid.”
The camp required everyone to attend church and someone in Chartuk’s group heard that the Jewish services were the shortest, so they all went there. “It was the first and last time l ever wore a Yarmulke,” he pointed out.
Troop 414 was unbeatable in water polo back in the day, defeating their arch nemesis, Troop 2 Barrington, two years in a row. “Chip Tyson was our secret weapon. He would swim underwater with the ball and pop up right at the goal and throw it in,” Chartuk said. Two of the troop’s Eagle Scouts were on the team, Mike Meyer and Dean Newins, who are among the 125 scouts from 414 who achieved the top rank. As they did back then, the latest group of Center Moriches scouts stayed at the Wuttah cabins in the Medicine Bow section, among the many at the 2,000-acre camp.
“They’re still doing the things we did in the early 70s—earning Marksmanship Badges at the Yawgoog range, going on Polar Bear campouts in the winter, and learning skills and guiding principles that will serve them their entire lives,” said the former scout. “I regret that l never made it to Eagle, getting only to Star. I would really have cherished that to this day.”
Chartuk brought a gift for a Troop 414 scout, offering it with one proviso. It was a Camp Yawgoog neckerchief he had stashed away for 51 years, and he asked the recipient, T.J. Forster, if he would wear it during his visit to the scouting paradise this summer. The Mastic Beach Tenderfoot made a Boy Scout promise that he would.