Boxwell Greats: Russ Parham

Russell L. “Russ” Parham joined the Stahlman staff in 1970.  The fifteen year old found himself as part of the kitchen staff where he made two lifelong friendships: camp cook Pearl Schleicher and his director, Jerry Barnett. Hired for Camp Murrey in 1971, Parham was pulled back to Stahlman as Kitchen Director, a position he held through 1973. By 1974, he was ready for a different challenge and served as a Stahlman Camp Commissioner for two years.  His Commissioner site was Shady Oak.  Parham was in college by time at Tech and used his engineering knowledge to help run the Pump House.

In 1976, Parham’s fortunes changed dramatically.  A payroll change led to a walk-out of upper leadership, leaving the new Reservation Director Tom Willhite without a Program Director at Stahlman.  The freshly 21-year-old Parham was given the position and Willhite never forgot the young man’s act of loyalty that summer.  In a period when the program director had traditionally been an older adult, the young Parham soldiered through often leading much older staff members.  He returned to the post in ’77 and ’78 and when Stahlman closed for the first and only time in 1979, Parham led the Stahlman Staff to become the Parnell staff.

Parham had been bitten by the Boxwell bug.  For several summers as Program Director, he had quit his outside world job to return to camp.  By 1980, he had a real job that he enjoyed, but still wanted to help. Parham moved into the Business Manager position, recently vacated by Michael Seay, and moved into a new life with camp.  Parham kept bizarre hours, often coming very late at night to check on the Trading Posts and restock while he continued his real-life, full time job. He planned t-shirt designs, ordered all the stock for the Trading Posts as well as Council Jamborees in addition to editing the Leaders’ Guide and incompletes.  With an eye for details, he stayed on through 1996.

Parham’s involvement grew.  He was part of the Brownsea staffs 1980-1982.  In 1985, he joined the staff of MT-28 and remained a member of Wood Badge staff through MT-40. Parham’s close connection with the Council and Willhite brought him into the orbit of a group of former District Executives and camp staff members, who met every Memorial Day to celebrate their time at Boxwell.  Along the way this group decided to have a staff reunion and Parham became integral to supplying the staff rosters and building the computer lists (it was the 1980s after all, not everyone had a personal computer!) to made the 1983 Reunion possible.  Parham became deeply embedded in this group of friends, and has been involved in some capacity with every Reunion since.  Parham was integral in scanning early camp photos and getting VirtualBoxwell off the ground.  To this day, he remains involved in the program as an Assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 55 in Nashville.

Troop 156 Scoutmaster Russell Parham on a campout with his troop in July 1975.