Welcome to the Blue Ridge Scouting History Blog, celebrating stories from the Roanoke Area Council, Piedmont Area Council, and Blue Ridge Mountains Council, BSA. You’ll find here a good assortment of narratives, photos and artifacts from over the years, going back to our first council’s origins in 1915. This project has had many versions over the past 25 years, and has grown into a robust archive of stories, images, newspaper articles and other source documents. If you wish to contribute any of the above, please contact the editor by using our Contact Form. In the name of preservation, we appreciate your help!
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The Roanoke Scouting History Project at Year’s End
I retired from my social worker job with the City of Roanoke just over a year ago. My wife continues to work full time, and I wanted to stay busy so she wouldn’t get the idea I was laying around the house. That was the impetus for formalizing the Roanoke Scouting History Project a year…
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Hankins Tales: Remembering Brian Nunn
(Originally posted to social media on August 20, 2020) A few minutes ago I was scrolling through Facebook looking for anything that might be positive in Nature, anything that was not politics or Covid 19. Suddenly a face flashed across the screen that I had not seen in 40 years but I would know that…
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Hankins Tales: These Are Extraordinary Times
(Originally posted to social media on August 27, 2020) A lot of people were looking forward to the Order of the Arrow Conclave that was set to be at Camp Shenandoah in October. However, with the pandemic numbers remaining at dangerous levels and the projection that it will get worse this fall it was a…
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Hankins Tales: Life Moves Pretty Fast
(Originally posted to social media on August 28, 2020) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while you could miss it” Ferris Beuller’s Day Off….. Ferris was right on the money. We are so busy living life that we sometimes fail to notice what is going on…
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Hankins Tales: Coffee’s Always Better Out of a Camp Mug
(Originally posted to social media on September 10, 2020) An old friend of mine from England (Peter Hodson) sent me a message recently. He had found a bunch of old boy scout camp mugs when he was cleaning and he wanted to know what he should do with them. Nobody in his circle of friends…
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Hankins Tales: Remembering Daniel Janosko
(Originally posted to social media on October 6, 2020) I feel compelled to note another passing. Sometimes it seems like that is all I do lately. So many old and dear friends have already gone on down that long and dusty camp road. My good friend Jeff Janosko dropped us a note saying that his…
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Hankins Tales: Remembering Jim Warren
(Originally posted to social media on October 20, 2020) I have just learned of the death of yet another old friend. We went to the same elementary school and we lived in the same neighborhoods. We were members of the same Boy Scout troop and we walked many of the same trails over the years….
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Over 40 Roanoke Scouting News Clips From the ’50s and ’60s Made Available
If you’ve ever searched through the WSLS-TV news archive, available online at University of Virginia’s website (link: https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/wsls), you’ll know just how rich this vast treasure can be. When you keyword “scouts” you get an even better treasure: over 40 news videos from the 1950s, 1960s, and a few from the 1970s. These clips have…