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At 100, Boy Scouting remains a powerful force in a plugged-in society [The Sun, Lowell, Mass.](Sun (Lowell, MA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Feb. 9--Second of two parts on the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts. LOWELL -- It's boys starting fires, wielding knives, shooting rifles. If it was a video game, some adult would probably slap a sticker on it rated "M" for mature. But this is Boy Scouts, the original joy-of-sticks -- no electricity required. Founded on Feb. 8, 1910, in an Illinois suburb southwest of Chicago by William Boyce, a multimillionaire newspaper publisher and outdoorsman, the organization celebrates its 100th birthday today. According to Scouts with the Greater Lowell District and their parents, who spoke with The Sun at the recent 100th Birthday Celebration/Klondike Derby at Lowell's Shedd Park, the Boy Scouts will survive through its 200th anniversary as well. "I don't see the Scouting program going away at all. There's got to be 250 boys here," said Boy Scout dad Barry Andreasen as he watched 30 boys in his Troop 651 from Billerica, divided into "patrol" units of five or six boys, race their dog sleds across the frozen landscape of Shedd Park. "What the Scouting program mainly does is develop the boys' leadership abilities, skills they're going to use as an adult," Andreasen added. "If anything, it has become more important in the present day in light of the problem-solving situations we find ourselves in nationally and around the world." Andreasen said he and nearly all of the other 100-plus adult monitors who came to the park on Jan. 30 -- from Lowell, Westford, Wilmington, Tyngsboro, Tewksbury, Dracut, Dunstable and Chelmsford -- were Boy Scouts themselves, and have sons either currently in the program, or who aged out at 18. Having gone through the program and benefited from it, as their dads did, their sons will likely be inspired to pass on the tradition to their sons. Scouting is a world apart from today's prepackaged entertainment and youth activities dominated by overprotective parents, said Judy Dedinsky, the Greater Lowell District's activities chairwoman. "This is the old fun, things you can do without electricity," said Dedinsky, of Chelmsford, as she watched a patrol of nine Scouts laugh their way through a tug-of-war, with four older, larger boys eventually pulling five younger Scouts at the other end of the thick hemp, face-forward onto the snowy turf. "Sometimes it's hard to unplug the kid when they come out to camp for the first time," Dedinsky said. "But pretty quickly they discover a whole new world that they haven't seen. And they get to do a lot of 'firsts,' which are very exciting. Things they won't forget." Like their first tent pitched, or knot tied correctly. First pancake flipped over an outdoor fire in a pan. "A kid that's cooked his very first pancake, he'll say, 'Look at this! See how perfect it is? I did this!' You can see a lot of pride," said Dedinsky, who credits her mother for starting her on a lifetime of Scouting. Her son, Matthew, 22, an Eagle Scout who now attends UMass Lowell, learned discipline from other Boy Scouts in a way that she could not have taught him, Dedinsky said. "When kids reach a certain age, halfway through fifth grade or so, they get that attitude where they're saying to themselves, 'I don't need to listen to adults as much.' But if an older boy tells them, 'Straighten up this tent,' or 'We need to do the dishes,' they listen," said Dedinsky. "There is a reason that Scouting works. The youth are the leaders." The fact that Boy Scouting actually encourages boy-led activities scares a lot of parents, however, according to 15-year-olds Nolan Holland and Nathan Rigione, of Westford's Troop 95. "A lot of parents want to see their kids in a safe routine, and Scouting isn't really routine-oriented," Holland said as he and his fellow Scouts took a break from pulling their sled across Shedd Park. "It's more about camping and outdoor activities and some parents are afraid of that now," said Rigione. "They think it's dangerous to have kids working with knives or fire. They want more control. The thing about Boy Scouts is that kids have more control." And no, they wouldn't rather be camped on the couch indoors, playing video games. "Not really, because in Scouting you have much more reality. Whitewater rafting, shooting rifles -- you can't actually do any of them online," said Rigione. "That's why I think Scouting will always go on." Boy Scouting will live to be 300 if Chris Eckelkamp of Wilmington has any say in it. And Eckelkamp, a software engineer, Eagle Scout and father of three Boy Scouts, ages 10 and 13, could go on for hours about the benefits of Scouting. "The ceremonies the Scouts did in the early years, 1910, 1915, are still the same ceremonies they do today, because it works," said Eckelkamp. "It shapes boys into young men. I'm a product of the program. I pulled the sled, hated the cold -- I did it all anyway. And looking back at it now, the program is awesome." Eckelkamp's 10-year-old sons think so, too. "This morning, my son Connor came around that corner over there and saw Shedd Park loaded with all these kids, smoke, sleds, people waving banners and signs, and he said, 'Wow, this is what I was missing!' " No problem, Eckelkamp told his son. He has at least another 100 years of Scouting ahead of him. "There is certainly the peer pressure from some of these boys' friends who are not involved in Scouting, but I remember that from my own Scouting days, that's always been there," said Ecklekamp. "I think the biggest challenge to maintaining Boy Scout enrollment numbers is the number of options that are available to kids today: soccer and baseball programs, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs." Still, Eckelkamp added, "There's no question in my mind that Boy Scouts will endure." There are 2.8 million young people ages 7 to 20 and 1.1 million volunteers involved in Scouting in more than 290 local councils throughout the United States and its territories, according to the Boy Scouts of America. Annual fees to the national organization are $15 per Scout. Camp outings cost an additional $7 to $10 for food for participating Scouts, according to Westford Troop 95. Troop 95 also schedules some more ambitious trips for $25 to $60 each. The troop's one-week stay at "Camp Wah-Tut-Ca" costs $250. For more information on Scouting, go to www.Scouting.org. To see more of The Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.lowellsun.com. Copyright (c) 2010, The Sun, Lowell, Mass. 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