avhg1

For all those who went through the ranks, how many of you ever wondered where the Webelo (pronounced we blow) name came from? It was the strangest thing, I was a webelo at one point in my life, but the question of where the name came from never crossed my mind until this morning. Did they let the older kids come up with the names and pick one off their list? Here are some others that may have been on that list

Westiks
Wesux

Anyone know for real or have others that could have been on the list?

BonesCPA

We will be loyal scouts. we be lo s. That was taught to us straight out.

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Halx

As soon as I reached the rank of Webelo, the scouts turned from an arts and crafts activity group to a bible-thumping jesus love parade. I was OUT OF THERE!

I have no idea where the name came from.

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Tophat665

Actually, until our Webelos leader broke his back in a car wreck, we had a blast. We'd go out in the woods and rebuild the old stone walls out there. One time he showed us how to shinny up trees and get them swinging back and forth so you could go from one tree to another wherever the trees were thick enough.

I know I wouldn't have stuck around lng as I did if it had turned to bible study. (I was a devout atheist from the age of three to sometime in college, when I became agnostic.)

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grendel

bones got it. i was never in cubs myself, but was a boy scout from the day i was eligible until the day i was too old. my son is a cub scout now.

Cynthetiq

same here... it was the first thing we learned when we got our Weblos book.

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absorbentishe

I learned I didn't like camping, but still had to in the weblos. One year of that, and I was done.

Fremen

I quit after Cub Scouts.
My brother and I kept getting shifted from one den to another, til it just got tiring.
Some kind of internal restructering of the dens in our area at the time.
We ended up in an all black member den and we didn't feel too welcome, so we quit.

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pocon1

Boy Scouts was the best activity, until about the age of 16. By that time, all my other friends had already dropped out and I was left talking to a bunch of 12 and 13 year olds. there was nothing to bridge the gap. So I drifted out. When I have kids, I will be an active dad and adult leader.

runtuff

Webelos was great, we could actually go camping and do fun adult stuff. No idea where the name came from. Geeze I can't remember any of the ranks; cub bear wolf and there was something about an arrow or was it arrow points??

jonjon42

Webelos...I remember those days...then I had a similar experience as Halx...suddenly I was surrounded by bible thumpers. I ran for my life and I have come out mostly unscathed...except for the cross shaped scar on my palm...

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clavus

Webelos was cool until Michael Jackson became our den mother. Then things got a little out of hand.

"But I don't want to touch your 'arrow of light'!"

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avhg1

I think I would leave about that time. I went all the way through to boy scouts, but didn't go for eagle scout. I hating the camping part. I don't like beans or slop.. err I mean oatmeal. You can't put enough sugar in that crap to make it taste okay. I spent a lot of time hungry at camp.

Drider_it

i only went as far as cub scouts heh.. super glued my fingers to a wooden car model.. ahh fun time

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ratbastid

Yep, I bailed right at Webelos, too.

I always sort of hated cub scouts, and by the time I was a Webelo, I was old enough to say what I wanted to do for myself.

Lockjaw

I liked Boy Scouts but it was hell getting my folks to pony up the cash and time for the thing so I kind of got kicked out of it right at Weblo. Looking back on it though kind of glad I didn't stay. While I like the outdoors I don't too much dig camping.

telekinetic

Back in the day, (Pre 1967), the cub scout ranks went "Wolf, Bear, Lion, Scout"...therefore "W B L S"...Webelos

Incidently, there is no such thing as a 'webelo'...Webelos isn't plural, so a single member is called a "Webelos Scout"

/Eagle Scout

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SecretMethod70

I went all the way through Webelos, but never learned that. Quit before doing Boy Scouts though. We never really had a religious aspect as far as I remember, I was just less interested in all the hands on stuff of Boy Scouts by that time.

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World's King

Eagle Scout.

Of all the ma'fuckers here...

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NeoRete

I was a Cub Scout, recieved the Arrow of Light, but stopped before the Boy Scouts. There were around 150 Cub Scouts in our pack, only 8 Boy Scouts went on for any given year. Like Halx's and jonjon42's situations, the Boy Scout master was a bible-thumping tool. You think someone higher up would have noticed those stats and done something about the guy.

Did anyone go through as a Tiger before they were in cub scouts? I've heard mention of all the other ranks, but wondered if Tiger was only a regional thing.

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Esco

I joined Webelos for two months to go on some trips with a friend. After the trip I didn't have any use for it.

telekinetic

*extends left hand for handshake*

Tigers is quasi-cubscout, but is a national thing. It's run seperately from the normal Cub packs.

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JStrider

i started as a tiger... and made it all the way thru cubs thru boy scouts... got my eagle and a month or 2 later my troop completely fell apart...

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macsmith230

I felt it then and I felt it now...Webelos has no place in scouting.

I mean, first off, the name is honestly really, really stupid. Webelos. It's not like it rolls off the tongue. In fact you kind of grimace as you say it. Webelos wobble but they don't fall down? And the fact that half the people that were Webelos don't know/remember what the name stands for offers up further proof that it's a wasted experiment.

One of these things is not like the other:
Cub Scouts
Webelos
Boy Scouts

Sorry, I'm ranting now, but I never felt like Webelos was a necessary transitional phase. Why can't you just go from being a Cub Scout to a Boy Scout? Of course, I just derailed my own thought by going to the scouting website and noticing even another designation, the Venturer, which you can be until you're 21. I also noticed this little quote on the website:

"...this is to begin promoting Boy Scouting when Cub Scouts are still in their Tiger, Wolf, and Bear dens, and to sell the sizzle of the great outdoors." No matter what they called it, they did sell me on the sizzle.

(I only made it to Life, the one before Eagle, before I got a car and stopped going to scouts, hence my bitterness)

pan6467

I was a YMCA Indian Guide, now they were cool. I was Weblo for about a year, if that and it was nothing like Indian Guides. Hal's right it was very religious, whereas Indian Guides didn't have anything to do with religion, it had to do with teaching you to believe in yourself and American Indian culture. And the friends I had from my tribe at age 6 are today my friends we are scattered but we shared something and it has stayed with us all these years.

Too bad the Indian Guides don't get the recognition the Boy Scouts do.

link on the Father-Son Indian Guides: http://www.conejovalleyymca.org/indi...ram_story.html

A weird coincidence, my wife was a Y Indian Princess in her youth.

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macsmith230

Ok, Indian Guide is a much sweeter name than Webelo. The name alone has sizzle.

Munku

What the hell is a Webelo? And I was an indian guide with my dad years ago.

dbc

After webelos I quit. In boy scouts the next closest person to me in age was 3 years older... no fun.

dy156

I had a whole lot of fun in Weblos, this guy's dad was pretty high up at the air force base in town, and we did some great stuff. I had fun, and alot of my friends were some of the few that stuck with it past cubscouts. I quit after weblos, becuase Boy scouts suddenly wasn't cool anymore.
Weblos was almost like the pinnacle of cool kids stuff. Girls weren't as important part of your life as they would soon become, and you could still be a kid and enjoy cheesey kids cubscout stuff, but you could go overnight camping, shoot guns instead of BB's, really learn about building a fire, etc.. and really get into it.

Wish now I would have stuck it out, because there are very few things you can do as a 15-16 year old that can still help you when you're 40. Only one I can think of is becoming an eagle scout. It sticks with you, and I've seen numerous resumes that throw on those two words. Has nothing to do with anything, but it's still respected.
At the time, though, middle school pressure to conform got the best of me.

God of Thunder

Yup, he has it.

I am a 27-year veteran of scouting. I also serve on my district's training and planning committees so I can veryify from the source that he has it correct.

In today's world, the name seems kinda lame. But, the concept was started quite some time ago. A lot of the concepts of Cubs and Webelos come from Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book"

As far as some of the comments of people dropping out because of bad leaders, I here it all of the time. Unfortunatly, there are bad leaders all over the place. That is why I sit of training committees to insure leaders get the proper training, but, we can't force it.



/me adds name to list of Eagles soaring here in the TFP.

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rockogre

Another Eagle Scout here. Don't recall much religion being pushed on me. Did a lot of camping and learned some camping/hiking/survival/navigational skills.

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Bill O'Rights

I was a Cub Scout, a Webelos Scout and a Boy Scout. Never made it to Eagle, though. I was one merit badge short of Eagle, and the counselor for it was a prick, and hated my guts. So goes life. I enjoyed Boy Scouts. I went to Philmont, numerous camping and hiking trips, and I went to the 1977 National Scout Jamboree. Somewhere, up in the attic, I still have all my old uniforms, handbooks, neckerchiefs, patches and other assorted crap.

I never had to put up with Bible thumpers, though. My guess is that Halx, and jonjon42, got mixed up with some asses that used the scouts to further their own agenda. Assholes.

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Cynthetiq

Interesting since my scout troop was mostly jewish.

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

SaltPork

Never dealt with religion as a Cub Scout, Webelo or Boy Scout, Halx. You probably just had some freakshow for a troop leader.

In any case, I made it to Boy Scouts and then bailed. It was a very strange group of people that I just didn't like so I said, "Sayonara, motherfuckers!".

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It was like that when I got here....I swear.

BonesCPA

Why don't I envision the scouts running to RO for their next recruitment poster.

Never made it past the Webelos here. I guess the camping aspect wasn't my thing - I was more the pinewood derby type of guy. I never ran into the religion aspect, again probably because it was a mixed crowd.

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pocon1

Did I mention I am an eagle scout? Religion was not a thing in our troop. I went to Philmont, Maine for white water canoeing, I stood in front of Senior Bush's box next to the color guard as an honor scout for his inauguration (every president is honorary head of the Boy Scouts). We shot guns every fall on the shooting trip, we went backpacking, burned everything in sight, ate bad food, fished every spring, went to summer camp, rode in an old school bus, did all the fun things you're supposed to do. Our leaders were great. Our scoutmaster was a professor at UMD and his son had left twenty years earlier. He kept at it because he liked the other adults and he liked working with the kids. We also camped once a month, regardless of the weather. During Reagan's second inauguration, we woke to temperatures at nine degrees and dropping. It dropped to -5 that day, and there was already over 6 inches of snow on the ground. It was awesome.

macsmith230

I spent a number of summers at Scout Camp and had some of the best times ever. The weekly meeting thing doesn't really bring back many memories, but some of the activities were pretty great for a kid.

viejo gringo

Spent 15 years as an assistant scout master, and 3 years as scout master...
Made some great friends and even greater memories..

MageB420666

I went through being a cub scout, webelos, and then I got up to first class scout in boy scouts. My troop wasn't a bunch of bible thumpers but it did have some assholes in it.

If I remember correctly the rankings in the boy scouts are some thing like this:

Scout
(I think there was another one here)
Second-class scout
First-class scout
Star scout
Life scout
Eagle scout

We only went camping a couple of times, except for a week at summer camp.

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arch13

Oh your not the only one OK. I was just about to make a smart ass remark about being the only one here and spotted you.


/Arch13 decides to read the whole thread now/

Damn I'm glad for the company of Eagle scouts I'm in around here.

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