I hosted several friends from the Book Obsessed Chicks (BOC) (link). On Saturday, we attended the Washington Romance Writers (WRW) Reader Luncheon (link). On Sunday, we enjoyed the beautiful fall day with a walk around Washington, DC. Above is the White House.
We stopped in the White House Visitor's Center.
I chuckled at this historic photo from August 1945 in which Navy boys join a conga line to celebrate the end of WWII.
During the 50th Anniversary Year of Scouting (1959), a proposal was made to establish the memorial on a site in Washington, DC. Lyndon Johnson, who was the Senate majority leader at the time, introduced the measure to the Senate. It was constructed at no expense to the government. The funds were raised from Scout units and each donor signed a scroll that was later placed in the pedestal of the statue. The memorial was eventually unveiled in a ceremony on November 7, 1964. The statue was accepted for the country by Associate Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who noted it was his fiftieth anniversary as an Eagle Scout.
The statue itself consists of three figures (pictured at right). Each figure, a Boy Scout, man, and woman, symbolizes the idea of the great and noble forces that are an inspiring background for each Scout as he goes about the business of becoming a man and citizen. The male figure symbolizes physical, mental, and moral fitness, love of country, good citizenship, loyalty, honor, courage, and clean living. He carries a helmet, a symbol of masculine attire and a live oak branch, a symbol of peace and of strength. The female figure symbolizes enlightenment with the light of faith, love of God, high ideals, liberty, justice, freedom, democracy, and love of fellow man. She holds high the eternal flame of God's Holy Spirit. The figure of the Boy Scout represents the hopes of all past, present, and future scouts around the world and the hopes of every home, church, and school and that all that is great and noble in the nation's past and present will continue to live in scouts and through them for many generations to come.
The sculpture marks the location of the first National Scout Jamboree held in 1937.
Do you have any Boy Scouts in your family or neighborhood? One randomly selected commenter from this week's blogs wins a book choice from my convention stash. Comments are open through Saturday, October 7, 10 pm in Baltimore. I'll post the winner on Sunday, October 18.
Mahalo,
Kim in Baltimore
Aloha Spirit in Charm City
