Highlands Current Audio Stories
2 days ago
112 Years of Local Scouting
Philipstown troop founded in 1911
Jaiden Gunther of Cold Spring led a recent meeting of Boy Scout Troop 437 at the Garrison Fish & Game Club focusing on wilderness survival.
Members of the troop, which is based in Philipstown, learned what to do if lost in the woods and how to build a shelter with sticks, leaves and moss.
Gunther, the troop's senior patrol leader and a freshman at Haldane High School, has been a member of the Boy Scouts for three years. He says he loves the organization because it gives him the opportunity to learn outdoor skills while having fun with his friends.
"It's not just tying knots," he said.
Scouting has a long tradition in Philipstown, dating to October 1911, when Scoutmaster Franklin Byxbe organized Cold Spring Troop 1, according to the Putnam History Museum. Its 20 scouts met on Friday evenings at Grove's Hall, at the corner of Main Street and Morris Avenue.
Troop 1 eventually became Troop 37. By the 1930s, it had dissolved and reorganized. Troop 4 in Garrison was created during the same period. At some point, Troops 4 and 37 combined to form Cub Scout Troop 137 and Boy Scout Troop 437, according to records from the National Eagle Scout Association.
Leaders like Gunther and Tom Campanile, Troop 437's scoutmaster for the last three years, continue the deep-rooted tradition of Boy Scouts in the community.
Campanile, a partner with the consulting firm Ernst & Young, became an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in scouting, in 1989. He has been an adult leader with Troop 437 for 15 years and is the vice chair of the Greater Hudson Valley Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which represents 7,000 scouts in Dutchess, Putnam and five other counties. His vision, he said, is to leave the organization as a "scout-led, adult-guided" organization.
"Every success I've enjoyed professionally I owe to scouting," Campanile said.
Tom Campanile, the scoutmaster for Philipstown Troop 437, collected these patches from national jamborees.
In the past few years, Philipstown scouts have canoed in the boundary waters of Minnesota, traveled to South Korea to participate in the World Scout Jamboree, skied downhill at Whiteface Mountain in upstate New York, sailed in the Bahamas and backpacked in New Mexico.
The troop's members have also traveled to West Virginia for the National Jamboree, a 10-day event held every four years that draws scouts from all over the country for activities such as concerts, bike parks and ziplines.
Locally, they have organized community-service projects, such as collecting and delivering donations for the Philipstown Food Pantry, building a drop box for old U.S. flags outside the Masonic Lodge in Nelsonville and decorating Cold Spring's Village Hall for Christmas.
Scouts from Troop 437 fish at the Durland Scout Reservation in Putnam Valley
Aiden Noormae, a first-year scout with Troop 437 and a seventh grader at Haldane Middle School, recently learned how to use a map and compass while completing a scavenger hunt at the Durland Scout Reservation, the Greater Hudson Valley Council's 1,400-acre camp in Putnam Valley.
Noormae, who lives in Cold Spring, described the outing, his first as a Boy Scout, as "good for the first 10 minutes," before rain soaked the campsite for the rest of the weekend. But waking up to the smell of doughnuts and hot chocolate wafting through the cold, wet morning air made the trip worthwhile, he said.
Jude Morrison is an aspiring Eagle Scout with Troop 437.