CubWorld Staff

Gaylord CubWorld began its life as a wholly separate camp, Camp Murrey. Camp Murrey was a family camp, making it a complete oddity today and a rarity then. Murrey opened in 1960 with Stahlman and Parnell and for a good fifteen years served as the summer home to adult staffers and the families of Scoutmasters. By the mid-1970s, the number of families staying for the summer or even a week began to drop sharply. By the 1980s, Murrey was a shadow of the camp it once had been. Surprisingly, it had incredibly stable leadership. Elizabeth Nicholson ran the camp it's opening summer, but from 1961 to 1970 Elizabeth Jackson (wife of Parnell's Jimmy Joe Jackson) was the well known face of the camp. Gladys Roberts ran Murrey from 1973 to 1979 and then Christy Willhite oversaw the camp from 1980 until its last days in 1994.

The 1994 Capital Development Campaign literally redrew the map of Boxwell, replacing Camp Murrey with Gaylord CubWorld. Cubbing had been around since the 1930s, but it was clear by the early 1990s that Cubbing was going to be (quite literally) the future of Scouting. With family camping done, a camp for Cub Scouts offered some real opportunites. The new camp expanded the old dining hall, built proper campsites and a campfire area, and erected several shower and washstand facilities. Most importantly from a physical features point of view, CubWorld offered some really fascinating play sites: a pirate ship, a fort, a Native American area, and a castle. In later years, it would add boating as well.

But what has made CubWorld so special and unique has been the program and its staff. The program was wildly ambitious, running two complete sessions a week by the 2010s. This meant a Webelos session Monday afternoon to Thursday morning and then a Cub Scout session Friday through Sunday. By 2020, CubWorld had moved to "Family Camping," where Webelos and Cub programs were all run at one time. It is still a grueling schedule, jam packed with two complete programs run every week. But ask just about any staff member of CubWorld--a group far more integrated in terms of gender than anywhere else on the reservation--and you will find a tight family. Even staff members who have worked on other parts of the camp staff are quick to say that CubWorld Staff was the best group of folks they ever worked with. And a good staff leads to a good program, and that is a Boxwell tradition!