Local and longtime Boy Scouts of America celebrate a century

Ask Phil Smart Sr. about scouting and he'll immediately begin reciting the Boy Scout oath he learned decades ago and never forgot.

"On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and obey the Scout Law. ... "

At 90, Smart, an Eagle Scout who owns Mercedes-Benz car dealerships, has been in scouting for 80 years. It's particularly special to him, then, that the Boy Scouts of America organization is celebrating its 100th birthday Monday.

"It changed my life," said Smart, who says he has always lived by the three pledges in the oath: "... To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight."

"I've been in business for 50 years, and scouting has wiggled itself in all parts of my life," said Smart, who was past president of the Chief Seattle Council and is now on scouting's executive committee. "Millions of us have walked that scouting trail."

Today there are about 40,000 Boy Scouts and leaders in the Seattle area, and the number is growing — thanks, in part, to people such as Scott Oki, a philanthropist and former Microsoft executive.

An Eagle Scout who was a scout leader and helped his two sons earn Eagle rank, Oki said he founded the Scoutreach Foundation to help inner-city youth become Boy Scouts.

"Fundamentally, Boy Scouts has not changed in 100 years," he said. He grew up in the city and said his troop was small and scouting seemed to elude those who grew up in the inner city. Today, through Oki's efforts, the number has grown to 6,000 scouts.

"We're making a dent, but it's still a long way from where we need to be," said Oki. "Our foundation raises money to assist inner-city kids to have a Boy Scout experience."

Instead of camping and hiking, one program, which targets Hispanic youth, focuses on soccer.

Evan Skandalis is a junior at Nathan Hale High School and an Eagle Scout, a member of Troop 177. For him scouting is more than a gathering once a week at troop meetings.

"As far as being an Eagle Scout, the badge is just fabric," said Skandalis. "But what it stands for is so much more important. The program has allowed me to go canoeing in Minnesota and Canada, build trails in Mount Shasta and backpack in the mountains that I have come to love. The scouting movement still has relevance to this country, and it has a distinct imprint on the American experience. It really turns boys into men."

Boy Scouts of America was founded on Feb. 8, 1910, by Chicago publisher William Boyce, who was visiting London and met an unknown scout who helped him and refused a tip. (Scouting had took off in England in 1908 when Robert Baden-Powell published his manual "Scouting for Boys.")

When Boyce returned to the U.S., he and two others incorporated the Boy Scouts of America and applied for a congressional charter, which was approved in 1916.

Today, there are nearly 3 million youth and more than 1 million adults involved in scouting in the U.S.

Last year, the Seattle Boy Scout office, which was founded in 1917, produced 469 Eagle Scouts, the top scout rank. The local BSA operates four camps, including Camp Parson on Hood Canal, which is 91 years old and one of the oldest Boy Scout camps in the country.

Bill Montgomery, 70, leads a scout troop in Wedgwood and joined Boy Scouts in 1948 at age 8. He has been scoutmaster for Troop 166 since 1961.

The retired Kent Meridian High School teacher said he began mentoring youth while in college, and when he moved back to Seattle, he wanted to be a scoutmaster so he established his troop. He said he enjoys the outdoors, working with kids and helping them earn their Eagle badges, which he, to his regret, never pursued.

Kent Brooten has been a scoutmaster in Kent for 33 years, and every year he takes a group of scouts to the top of Mount Rainier. He said he had a great experience in scouting as a youth and, after college, thought he had an obligation.

"I said I'd give it a year, and the year went by and I just loved it," Brooten said. He's taken scouts backpacking in the Yukon, canoeing in Ontario, biking in Hawaii and sailing in the Bahamas.

He recalls leading an 11-year-old on a 50-mile backpacking trip in the Cascades. And although the boy found it challenging, Brooten urged him to the finish.

He has a later picture of the same boy atop Mount Rainier.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting, Brooten is working on a project in which scouts will perform 100 community-service projects this year, such as planting flowers at a public-housing project.

The organization is looking for nominations for these projects, said Brooten. "We want people to tell us whether we can paint something or build something."

It's all part of honoring the Boy Scout centennial and doing what Skandalis said is the ability to get to know people better.

"Once you have those abilities, the ethics and morals, you take those and apply them to the rest of your life."

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com