The Jamboree Fireside Stories project is recording the experiences that have made the national Scout jamboree a lifetime memory for more than a million Scouts and Scouters.
You can share your jamboree story by calling the Jamboree Fireside Story Line at 786-7-JAMBO-7. You can also record it on the Summit’s SoundCloud channel, or upload a pre-recorded audio file there.
Here’s one Scout’s story:
[audio:https://www.summitbsa.org/wp-content//uploads/2012/08/BSA-Fireside-Story-Jack-Moore-Audio-v011.mp3|titles=BSA-Fireside-Story-Jack-Moore-Audio-v01]My name is Jack Moore. I grew up as a Scouter in Clanton, Alabama, a small town in the central part of the state. My father, who was a physician, was an Eagle Scout there, as a child. He actually attended the 1937 jamboree — I believe it was in Chicago — and he was on staff helping out with medical needs. He was in college at that time.
I attended as a Scouter and I attended the 50th year jamboree in 1960 at Colorado Springs, Colorado. We camped right under Pike’s Peak and the mountain range that made that. At that time I was a First Class Scout. I went on to receive my Eagle Scout Award in November of 1961 and am very proud to say that I subsequently received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award some 15 to 20 years ago now.
But my story of the jamboree back in 1960 is that it was the first time in my life that I had ever been away from home for that long a period of time. It was a real maturation experience for me. I think I converted from a boy to a young man during that experience, meeting other Scouters from all over the United States. I had a chance to see President Dwight Eisenhower — I’ll never forget that. He was the first president of the United States I had ever seen. This was before the national public speeches that we get to see on television in subsequent years. I have memorabilia left. We traded patches, too.