Boy Scouts explain how program affected their lives

The Shawnee District of the Boy Scouts of America hosted the annual Dr. James A. Kinder Jr. Good Scout Community Dinner on Tuesday night at the Plaza by Ray's.

At the dinner, local Scouts shared stories how their time in scouting affected them, and community members donated money to fund Boy Scout activities in the coming year.

Cape Girardeau Eagle Scout Davis Deimund gave a presentation about the programs Scouts can provide to local youths and explained how the skills he's honed have helped him achieve success in daily life.

He said he wouldn't be president of his class at Cape Girardeau Central High School or vice president of Central's National Honor Society without the leadership and perseverance Scouts have taught him.

"Scouting makes a difference. It helps build our community," he said. "It's like a brotherhood. We can count on each other and learn things along the way."

He said the benefits of being involved in Boy Scouts are observable in his peers as well.

"A lot of my friends are Scouts and are also emerging leaders in their own activities," he said.

The evening also paid tribute to former Scout and community member Joseph J. Russell, who recently died. His son, Dr. John Russell, shared a story of how his father came to be involved in Boy Scouts after his father, William Clark Russell, died. Several of the colleagues of Joe Russell's father, including Rush Hudson Limbaugh, took him under their wing and urged him to join the Boy Scouts.

"These men decided, to use a cliché, to pay it forward," he said, explaining how they helped shepherd him toward the organization that would teach him important life lessons. "And [my father] tried to do the same, whether it was in his church or in the Scouts -- pay it forward.

"He started when he was 11 years old, and something just clicked with him," Russell said of his father. "He received a lot of guidance as a young man. He was trustworthy, loyal, kind, reverent ... all those things were important to him and they were reflected in the Boy Scouts."

Russell would later come to embody the principles the Scouts hold dear and continue to do so for the rest of his life.

"There are things that didn't get remembered because he didn't write them down," he said. "He was humble, not the kind of guy to shout it on the street corner. But [people] can still see the benefit, and that's really what this is all about."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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