Booted Out

I volunteered as a scoutmaster for Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in the early 2000s, when BSA still held to biblical standards of conduct among its members and leaders.

As part of my ongoing training, I attended a class on how to teach boys the proper use of knives, axes, hatchets, and saws. The instructor for the class stressed safety more than anything else, so he told us a story of what not to do. He shared about a troublemaking boy who had gone with a group of young scouts on a weeklong summer trip to the premier Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

The boy was always being mischievous. In fact, on his first day at Philmont, the boy decided to show off his chopping skills. Without permission, and with a disregard for rules, he grabbed an ax, hopped on a log, and began chopping it between his legs with long, careless, overhead swings.

He was doing it for the laughs.

But with one swing, the boy’s ax missed its mark on the log and cut into his boot. The blade sliced open the boot right between his toes. Fortunately, the ax stopped just before hitting flesh, but it left the boot with a large, gaping hole.

Leaders from the boy’s group learned what had happened and were tired of his antics, so they decided to send him home on a bus the next day.

The point of the story was that the use of an ax should be taken seriously.

Fast forward to 2005. 

Brother Don and I were on a trip to Dallas, Texas, to promote AFA’s boycott of the Ford Motor Company and meet with the largest Ford dealership in America. On our ride to Memphis International Airport, we were talking about scouting. Brother Don knew I was a scoutmaster, and I knew he was an Eagle Scout, so it was a natural topic of conversation.

“Brother Don, have you ever been to Philmont?” I asked.

“Yeah, I went as a boy,” he said. “Ruined a brand-new pair of boots the first day I was there.”

I was stunned.

He contineed. …

I was a cutup as a kid. I didn’t listen to anybody. I knew what I wanted to do, and I was going to do it my way. I was stubborn, and I was always playing practical jokes. I was always getting in trouble.

I got up on a log, swung that ax, and it chopped into my brand-new pair of boots. Scout leaders came to me and told me to go to my cabin, that they were going to put me on a bus home tomorrow. That’s how serious it was.

I sat on my bunk and did a lot of soul-searching that day. It was a defining moment in my life.

I realized back then that a lot of people had given a lot of money to help me get to Philmont. It wasn’t cheap. I realized how hard my mother worked to buy me that brand-new pair of boots so that I could go. All those people who helped me get to where I was that day, and especially my mother, were going to be very disappointed and a little bit embarrassed by my actions.

That day I decided I was going to quit being a cutup, and I was going to make something of myself.

I went to the scout leader and promised him that if he would not send me home and let me stay, he’d have no more trouble out of me. Fortunately, he gave me another chance, … and I kept my word.

 That story has stuck with me all these years because I knew who Don Wildmon was. I saw the outcome of that “defining moment” in his life.

If you want to know a lot about Don Wildmon’s character, just hang around his children and grandchildren for a little while. I think you’ll all agree with me: There’s a lot of Don Wildmon in them, and what a blessing it is to know that his legacy continues today.