2010.01.01 10:57:35

Dear Scouting Friends,

Many of you are familiar with the traditional New Year's Eve song Auld Lang Syne. The melody is also used by many scouting organizations worldwide as a traditional end to World Jamborees and campouts. It is used as a celebration not only of the end but of a new beginning. Tonight I am celebrating not just an end... but the beginning of a new and hopeful year.

2009 has been a very tough year for many people. Each challenge we have had to face has only strengthened my believe in the importance of scouting in my life and in the lives of our scouts. There has never been another organization on the face of the planet that has more positively influenced the lives of young people. And so of that organization... I am proud to be a member and proud to have each of you as fellow scouters.

Tonight we have begun what will bring the one hundredth year of Scouting in the United States. That is one hundred years of influencing young people to be of good character, good citizens, and physically fit. Our society has gone through a great many changes during those years. Through it all... the values, skills, and leadership that we teach have not changed much at all. They are still just as (if not more) relevant and important today as they were then.

Great men have come from our scouting movement and have gone on to change the world in their own way. Presidents, Senators, Astronauts, film producers, fathers, and sons. In every industry you look, every manufacturing plant, in every career field, or battlefield, or soup kitchen you will find someone whose life was positively touched by scouting's broad influence. Each of them through their own actions have helped to defined what it means to be a Scout.

These next one hundred years will be defined by us and what we do. One hundred years from now, people will look back at scouting and see who we have become and what impact we have made. It is a great honor for me to be a Scouter especially during this historic anniversary year. Together I hope we can work together to continue the nearly century old traditions of influencing young men to become great men of character, citizenship, and physical fitness.

For Auld Lang Syne... Happy New Year.

Yours in Scouting Always,

Paul