"How
can he NOT have the “Grand Pooh-Bah Award”...and what can I do about
it?"
It is
true: Mike Walton is NOT the holder of the BSA's Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope,
nor Silver Buffalo (given to volunteers for service at the regional
area/regional, and national levels, respectively) Awards. He is also NOT a Vigil
Honor member of the Order of the Arrow. Nor will he
be eligible for those awards anytime soon!
Why not?
In order
to become eligible for those awards, a volunteer must be registered in the local
Council which is recommending him for the award; must have rendered service to
youth over a period of time (either intensively over a short period of time or
during a longer period of time; the BSA does not establish a set time period in
writing but informally the period of service should be between three to ten
years), and some percentage (depending on local council, it could be as much as
70 and as little as 30 percent) of that service given to BSA units, a local
council or districts of that local council.
Because Mike Walton moves around frequently as a member of the
Army, it has been extremely difficult for him to "reside in the
boundaries of one local council" for longer than two years.
The longest he's ever stayed in one location was when he was a youth
member, living and working within the boundaries of the then-Old Kentucky Home
Council, Louisville, Kentucky.
With
regard to the Vigil Honor: Mike was
recognized as a “nominee” or whatever it’s called, for the Vigil Honor
before he left Germany in 1986. However,
the Council where he landed in the States (in Georgia) refused to honor it,
saying that “he had to be registered in THEIR Council for at least two years
and would have to be reconsidered by THEIR Council.”
Mike was told that he could appeal it, but he simply told the man, “It
was great being considered; it’ll just make the time when it will happen that
much exciting for me. I’ll wait
my turn.” Mike is a
Brotherhood member of the O.A.
This has
not stopped several people from recommending Mike for one of those service
awards anyway, and you are welcome to "join in the fun."
Here's the information you will need to complete the application; all of
this information between the two thick lines has been approved by Mike to be
included in any award recommendation you desire to produce.
The only items that are not available here or somewhere else within The
Tree is personal data concerning Mike's children nor their mothers, and data such as
social security or Army payroll numbers. Normally,
such information is not needed and not necessary in the award nomination
process.
There are at least three awards which the BSA does not require a person to be "currently registered". The Silver World Award is an award to recognize service to youth on a national or worldwide basis by those individuals who are NOT registered with the BSA. The Distinguished Eagle Scout Award recognizes Eagle Scouts -- whether or not they are registered with the BSA -- who have given public service and have been an Eagle Scout for at least 25 years or more (Mike became an Eagle Scout in November of 1975). The Red Arrow Award recognizes individuals for their service to the Scouting program or to the Order of the Arrow. Mike does not hold either of those awards as well.
As a
gentle reminder, the BSA's policies on nominating/recommending someone for one
of their awards calls for not notifying the person of his or her nomination or
recommendation. The BSA wants to avoid potential embarrassment if the
person was turned down for an award or if the level of the award would be
increased (for instance, instead of Mike receiving the Silver Antelope Award, the
BSA may consider him for a Silver Buffalo instead). The BSA also reviews
the awards to insure "program consistency".
BACKGROUND
Mike L.
Walton became a member of the Boy Scouts of America in March of 1968 in
Ludwigsburg-Aldingen, Germany. He
has been a member of a Cub Scout Pack, several Boy Scout Troops, and several
Explorer Posts before he turned 21 (ask for list if you need it). The
majority of his Scouting experiences as a youth member were split between the
Transatlantic Council, headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany; and the Old
Kentucky Home Council (now called the Lincoln Heritage Council), headquartered
in Louisville, Kentucky. He was
also a Lone Boy Scout while overseas with the former Direct Service Council,
headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
As a youth
member, Mike Walton earned the Arrow of Light, the Eagle Scout Award (with
Silver and Gold Palms) and was one of the first holders of the Exploring
Achievement Award. He also earned
the God and Country Protestant religious emblem, the William T. Hornaday gold
medal for service to conservation, a Certificate of Heroism (which was later
converted to a Heroism Medal), eleven trail medals, a Transatlantic Council
camping award medal, nine 50-Miler Awards, three historic trail awards, and
other awards for service to youth given from the American Legion, the Military
Order of the World Wars, and the Reserve Officers’ Association. Fort Knox, his
hometown, presented him with the Army's Commanders' Award for Public Service in
1977. At Fort Knox High
School, since 1991, the senior award for community service by Junior ROTC
students is called the "Walton Community Service Award". He received four Young American Awards for community service
and leadership from two local Councils and was recognized as a primary
contributor toward Fort Knox’s newspaper receiving the Keith Ware journalism
award in 1978.
He
participated in the 1973-East and 1977 National Scout Jamborees as a youth
member; and was a selectee to attend the 1975 World Jamboree.
Mike
Walton has been registered in a number of local Councils for periods longer than
two months:
National
Capitol Area (Washington D.C./Bethesda, Maryland)
Georgia-Carolina
(Augusta, Georgia)
Buffalo
Trace (Evansville, Indiana)
Audubon
(now Shawnee Trails, Owensboro, Kentucky)
Bluegrass
(Lexington, Kentucky)
Lonesome
Pine (Pikeville, Kentucky)
Old
Kentucky Home (now Lincoln Heritage, Louisville, Kentucky)
Four
Rivers (Paducah, Kentucky)
Black
Beaver (now Last Frontier, Lawton, Oklahoma)
Scioto
Area (now Central Ohio, Portsmouth, Ohio)
Transatlantic
(Heidelberg, Germany)
Direct
Service (National Office/Dallas, Texas)
Indianhead/BSA
(St. Paul, Minnesota)
Baltimore Area
(Baltimore, Maryland)
Mike
Walton was employed in May 1978 under Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA)
grants given to the Boy Scouts of America, Southeast Region, for the development
of in-school, vocational (Exploring) and external community based Scouting
programs in rural/urban areas of Tennessee and Kentucky.
He served as a Community Aide in Lexington, Kentucky; as a
Paraprofessional to two local Councils in Tennessee (Great Smoky Mountain,
Knoxville; and Sequoyah, Johnson City); and as a Paraprofessional Executive with
the former Lonesone Pine Council, the former Old Kentucky Home Council, and as
Senior Paraprofessional Executive with the current Bluegrass Council. At the
time of his exit from the Paraprofessional program, Mike Walton was one of three
remaining Paraprofessionals still employed under the grant program from an
initial pool of 31 in 1978. Mike
Walton exited the Paraprofessional program in March 1981. He was accepted for
employment upon graduation with the Birmingham Area Council, Alabama under the
Professional Placement Program (PPP); however, because he was ordered to active
duty with the Army, he had to turn down the appointment and also withdraw from
the regional Paraprofessional program in order to meet academic and military
education requirements toward a commission in the United States Army.
Mike L.
Walton has served as:
- Assistant Den Leader, Den Leader, Den Leader Coach, WEBELOS Den Leader,
Pack Committee member and Pack Commissioner within the Cub Scouting programs. He is the holder of the Cub Scout Leader Training
Award, the Den Leader (Training) Award, the Den Leader Coach Training Award, the
WEBELOS Den Leader (Training) Award and the Cub Scouter (Training) Award.
- Assistant Scoutmaster, Scoutmaster, Troop Committee member and Troop
Committee Chair, and Unit Commissioner within the Boy Scouting programs.
He is the holder of the Boy Scout Leader Training Award, the
Scoutmaster's Award of Merit, the Scoutmaster's Key Award and the three-bead
Wood Badge. He has served on
the staff of several training courses, Universities of Scouting and holds
several training diplomas. Of
note, Mike has served as Scoutmaster of two of the Troops in which he was a
youth member (Troop 225, Ludwigsburg-Pattonville, Germany; Troop 801, Fort Knox,
Kentucky).
He was Scoutmaster of the Transatlantic Council’s contingent to the
1985 National Scout Jamboree and served on staff to the 1988/89 World Jamboree.
- Coach of Varsity Team 7, Georgia-Carolina Council.
The first non-LDS chartered Varsity Scout Team in that Council. Team 7
was a Quality Unit in 1987 and 88. Mike
participated in several Varsity Scout training courses but no training honors
were earned.
- Associate Advisor, Advisor, Skippers' Mate, Skipper, Post Committee
Chair, Consultant, Ship Committee Chair within Exploring/Sea Exploring units in
several local Councils. Mike was
the first advisor to come from the membership of Post 294, Fort Knox, Kentucky,
a television/radio communications post that received several awards during its
period of service. Mike also served as Advisor to Post 77, Goeppingen, Germany
(an outdoors Post which was one of three outdoors Explorer Posts to receive
Quality Unit honors in the Transatlantic Council during 1984) and as Skipper of
land Ship 184, Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He was key in the organization of several College Scouter Explorer
Posts around the nation, including the flagship at Eastern Kentucky University,
Post 379 (also called the "Blue Grass Scouting Alliance Club"). He was
the second Post President, and ten years later served as Advisor to the
Post. He is the holder of the Exploring Leader Training Award,
Advisor's Key Award, Skipper's Key Award, the one-trident Sea Badge, the
Exploring Leadership Institute (ELI) gavel, participated in an Exploring Wood
Badge course and several other Exploring training
awards. He has been certified three
times as a National Exploring Instructor and team-taught at Philmont's Volunteer
Training Center. He has received
the Silver Scouter Award (Eastern Kentucky University), Bronze and Silver Big
Horn Awards (East Central Region), Silver and Gold Bulldog Awards (Southeast
Region), three local Council Exploring Leadership Awards; two Regional Exploring
Leadership Awards, and a national Exploring leadership award for his service as
a member of three National Exploring presidents' cabinets.
He is also the holder of the Young Service Award.
- Mike was a member of fourteen District committees, nine local Council
committees, regional area committees in the former Southeast, East Central and
Northeast Regions, and a member of the Regional Committee of the Southeast and
Northeast Regions. While working
within Exploring primarily, Mike was also a member of committees dealing with
communications, public relations, relationships and commissioner service. He received the Commissioner Award of Merit award twice
(District Commissioner, Assistant Council Commissioner), several adult religious
service awards, the District/Division Award of Merit and other awards for his
service. In two Councils (Bluegrass and Buffalo Trace), Mike was their
Council's International Representative.
- Mike served as a member of the BSA's national Communications and Public
Relations, Uniform and Insignia, and Volunteer Training committees for several
years in the 70s and 80s. In most
cases, he was the youngest member of those committees, excluding the youth
membership of some committees.
- Finally, Mike was honored
by scouting associations in the Netherlands, El Salvador and Germany and by the
British Scouts of the Rhine (BSOR) in southern Germany for his Scouting service and leadership. It
was on this basis that Mike Walton was given the “title” “sekkettummanque”,
which in the Order of the Arrow language means “black eagle” (and which Mike
shortened by taking out the two “ks” and an “e” to make “settummanque”.
The letter removal was required in order to shorten the name to fit the
Eastern Kentucky University email requirement that user IDs be less than 16 characters in length. Even though the Black Eagle O.A. Lodge in Europe honored Mike with
that name, Mike says it is NOT a “Vigil name”).
IMPACT:
"Mike did this and did that and got some award" you're probably
saying at this point. What impact
did this have on the program? After all, anyone can earn those awards or
medals....
The largest impact Mike Walton made (and continues to do so) on Scouting is his willingness to
travel just about anywhere to assist Councils to raise monies, recruit youth
and/or adults, and to inspire and motivate volunteers and in some cases,
professionals, toward continued service and participation in the programs. Since
1989, Mike Walton has logged an average of 4000 miles each year (except for
three periods of service in which the Army had him overseas performing the
missions he gets paid to do as an Army officer) in support of Scouting.
He has been compensated for less than 20 percent of that each year.
This means that 80 percent of his travel, food, lodging, and of course,
his time away from work was "on his dime and his time".
He says that "it'll come back to him someday" but let's face
it: you and I both know that he
does all of that stuff not for the money, but because he truly believes in the
programs and what it stands for... What turns him on is his way in getting
people from standing still toward action. Whether
its a Troop meeting in Minnesota; a roundtable meeting in the middle of Iowa; a
Council training course gathering in Texas; or a Scout Show in North Carolina --
wherever Mike Walton goes to speak or just to visit, Scouts and Scouters leave
with a warm place in their hearts after hearing him -- and parents sign their
kids up and write those checks!
Someone told Mike after an appearance at a Scouting event, “You know,
the Council did us a great favor by bringing you in.
We get so tired of hearing the same old story told by someone in our
Council or by someone with no Scouting background.
You give us the same story, but we all feel that it’s real because –
we can hear it in your voice and the way you act – we’re getting a real
Scouting story…” That’s the largest impact he has, why people ask him to
speak, why when you read something he wrote you sit and say “wow”, and why
he will drop just about everything else to go and deliver a talk to anyone who will
sit and listen!
The second largest impact Mike Walton has had on Scouting is his writings
and personal encouragements. Since
1990, he has been a mainstay on a mailing list called "Scouts-L", the "daily international Roundtable Meeting which NEVER
ENDS". That's
since 1990, folks -- more than 15 years! Much
of Mike's responses and postings are available even now on the Internet, which
was why Mike started writing and posting his information here...it's there: the
good stuff and the occasional bad stuff too.
It's mostly good, which is why Mike doesn't get as much sleep as he needs
-- he's answering between 400 and 500 (and this is not an exaggeration; Mike is
a part of four mailing lists, each with 50 messages (that's 250 by itself); plus
he's on America Online (tm) with between 75 and 125 messages there a day
directly to him asking policy, uniforming and advice questions; and then there's
the two military accounts where he receives Scouting mail through...and that's
about 420-490 personal messages EACH DAY (it slows down around summer camp and
December holiday periods...but Mike's out either helping to raise monies, award
medals, or talking with volunteers and Scouts anyhow...)).
Many people have wrote to Mike over the years, thanking him for those few
electrons of encouragement, of hope, of congrats, of cheer...and they have
stayed with the program longer than if a fellow volunteer from their Council had
done the same things. It's the fact
that Mike has "been there, done that, gotten the tee-shirts and have had
them cleaned and willing to share" with others in the same boat out there
-- that is what made "settummanque, the blackeagle" so popular.
Mike’s writings have also appeared in the BSA’s professional journal,
called “Professionally Speaking,” (“Pro Speak??”), in two scouting
magazines (Scouters’ Journal and American Scouting Digest) and in
military journals in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Minnesota and in Germany
In 1995, Mike wrote a series of editorials and was successful in getting
nine newspapers to print them during Scouting Anniversary Week that year. Those “Days of the Week” articles are also available for
reading and sharing via “The Tree.”
There's another smaller impact that Mike Walton has had on local
Councils: the interaction he's had with professionals.
Mike somehow finds them early in their careers and have coached and
encouraged them to continue their service to the profession of Scouting and to
the volunteers they represent. Many
of those professionals are now mid- and senior-level managers, giving continued
leadership to Scouting and they are the ones that Mike encourages.
Through his interaction with the professional cadre of the Boy Scouts of
America, Mike Walton has been able to take their concerns, their successes and
their challenges and share them with volunteers nationally.
It has become not a “we-them” thing when Mike speaks: he has the
experience and knowledge of being a paid field employee, a unit-serving
executive working those things that today’s professionals struggle with: how
to get and retain quality volunteers? How
to work them into the “existing structure”?
How to not stress out too much while working the various tasks volunteers
ask of their professional counterparts? Why
is professional education so important?
While
these things are taught at the BSA’s professional academies, having a
volunteer who have “been there, done that, and know what you’re going
through” – as a reinforcer to the formal education and field mentoring --
that makes the difference in continued support.
Mike Walton has been a volunteer with other organizations as well.
He served as an officer with a chapter of the Association of the United
States Army (AUSA), spends two afternoons each month at a local school in Edina,
Minnesota under a young people’s reading program, and until the current
security level situation, served as tour guide to Fort Snelling, where he is
currently stationed at.
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT:
Mike Walton is a military technician with the Army’s 88th Regional Readiness Command at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, whereby he provides community relations support to Army and Army Reserve units in seven states in the upper Midwest. He has close to 25 years of active, National Guard and Army Reserve service and currently holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel ("O-5"). He has recently completed a tour as commander of a public affairs operations center working in Kuwait and later Iraq and did the "embedding program" of the Department of Defense during his time. He has lots of photos and things from his time there, and is quite proud of the soldiers that he was in charge of -- many of them with very little previous public affairs experience. He also talks about the two Colonels who were over him -- he views them as important personal and professional mentors and he's always talking about "how would Colonel H (Howvatter) or (Colonel) Guy Shields" do something relating to public affairs or how would General Kirkland handle a situation with some officer or soldier or somebody. Mike has been in some 20 countries performing public affairs missions, including some countries many people only hear about. Like Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras, Ivory Coast, and El Salvador. He recently received a Bronze Star (pretty important medal) for his leadership overseas in Iraq. He is currently in training for yet another deployment to Kuwait or Iraq or somewhere in the central asia "theater".
SUMMARY:
Okay. Now you know more
about Mike Walton than the average person.
But don’t take the words of what’s printed here.
Ask Mike to provide you with the names of people who know him personally
and who don’t mind responding to an email.
Because of spam and other nastiness, the names and email addresses are
not listed here.
Final words: I have seen Mike tear up when people out there just send him
a posting or a letter letting him know that he’s appreciated or to thank him
for some inspiration or comforting words. He keeps those things, and when life
has gotten him down or when people aren’t being nice, I’ve seen him open up
and re-read one of those letters or postings.
He’s not the only person out there doing these things – and God knows
that he screws up like the rest of us human beings. A couple of Councils don’t like him – he’s got a chest
full of awards, tells volunteers things kept from them from “those in
charge”, he “thinks he knows everything about Scouting”, and there’s
that thing about his heritage and skin coloring that some people STILL haven’t
gotten over. The Mike Walton I know
has never cared about getting “something” (although I feel embarrassed for
him when he tries to back out of telling people why he hasn’t “got the
Silver” whatever…), never let the fact that he’s the “only black” or
“one of a few black” people at some event bother him… won’t fret over
it, and in a lot of instances have taken his own life into his hands to “be
there” for the “whatever event" miles or states away.
He doesn’t know everything – that’s why he surrounds himself with a
room full of books, manuals, papers and lots of emails.
When he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll post someone or call someone
who does (which is why telephone costs are high at the Walton household) or
he’ll go out and get whatever it is he needs to learn (which is why a lot of
times he may only have enough money to get the “small sized” coffee). And instead
of saying “I found this…”, he shares his “sources” with others (unless
they have asked him not to do so, which he’s also have honored).
He tried
to live a good life, loves and proudly talks about his kids, stays in touch with
both wives, and surrounds himself with people from all walks of life, all racial
and ethnic groups, all skin tones, all ages and sexual preferences.
He has never shied away from expressing what he believes in from his
heart, from leading in open prayer before sharing a lunch or dinner meal with
friends, and loves his job and the people he works with and for.
More than anything, Mike Walton simply loves Scouting – his mom said
that he has “found two things he has always been good at: talking and
writing” – and has been using what he’s “good at” for the betterment
of a program he loves to be a part of. He promised to “do his best” in and when he says “Scout’s honor,” you know that however painful his
revelation would be, that he’s telling you with as much honesty and
forthrightness that he can muster up.
“You
make everyone feel that if they are not a part of Scouting, they should be; and
if they are a part of Scouting, they should be proud of whatever it is they or
their children are doing in it.”
This is ALL I know about Mike and Scouting. I hope that
this helps you and provides some more insight into Mike; but he’s not shy –
not in the least; ask him questions not covered here!!
(Wow, this
reads like a Mike Walton posting! heeheehehee.)