The Amazing Green Bar Bill
As Boxwell 2014 enters Week 3 of Scouts, we here at VirtualBoxwell continue our trek through the decades. This week we’ll be looking at the 1980s.
The 1980s are often referred to as “the Silver Age,” or more appropriately, the Barnett-Ragsdale Era. This decade was considered the second great period of program and staff at Boxwell, with the 1960s being “the Golden Age” or “The Jackson-LeFever Era” after Program Directors Jimmy Joe Jackson and Chester LeFever.
While there are MANY things that we could look at for the 1980s (and will in the future), this week we focus on a unique experience. In the summer of 1986, “Green Bar” Bill Hillcourt came to Boxwell and stayed for a while. For those of you who don’t know, Green Bar Bill was a modern legend in Scouting. Much like Baden-Powell, Seton, or Boyce, Hillcourt was giant name in Scouting for the modern era. Indeed, if you have a Scout Handbook that was written through the 1980s, then you have a Green Bar Bill product!
Hillcourt came and stayed at Boxwell in 1986, bringing the focus on Scoutcraft to camp that he had also brought to 9th Edition of the Scout Handbook. Craig in particular saw Hillcourt demanding monkey bridges built around camp as well as other Scoutcraft projects. Hillcourt is pictured here working with Scouts on one of the many projects that he pushed for that summer.
Indeed, a living legend at Boxwell…
Green Bar Bill works with Scouts at Camp Craig, 1986.
Is there any additional details on the time he spent at Boxwell?
I was asked a while back by a fellow scouter to relay the story about meeting Green Bar Bill and I was so young at the time I’d remembered the event at a state park instead of at Boxwell. And as much as I’ve searched, I can’t find any other blog posts, pics or writings from anyone else about his time here.
It would’ve been the summer of 86, and he was at a ceremony I was taken to as a young scout and there he presented that year’s Wood Badge class with their beads. My father was one he gave beads to along with a cutting from his neckerchief for their wood badge one. He was an impressive man and signed my handbook that I still have.
I’d love to get more details and find pictures because the only ones that seemed to have survived from what I had are just random pics of scouts and families.
To our knowledge, it was only the one summer in 1986 that “Green Bar” Bill Hillcourt was at Boxwell.