December 2008 Holiday Greetings

December, 2008

Here it is, almost the end of the year and time to give thought to writing that end-of-the-year letter that brings family and friends up-to-date on what the Drake family had been up to the previous twelve months. I thought that maybe I should get one off to my blog also but finally decided that I would merely submit the one I wrote fifty eight years ago in December of 1950.

I am attaching a photograph of me at the US Boy Scout Jamboree at Valley Forge with Colonel Gus Wilson, Chief Scout of the World Association of Scouting. A year earlier I was visiting the Boy Scouts of Nicaragua and there met the other Gus Wilson, a black scouter who told me that he was the photographic negative of the other Gus Wilson that I was to meet the following year. So you can see both Gus Wilsons. I am also posting a copy of a picture of me with three Nicaraguan scout leaders at the Managua airport in March of 1949.

From left to right is Pablo Steiner, myself, Julio Pinel (who worked at the airport) and Gus Wilson. One of these days I will spend some time on the world wide web to see if I can track them down.

In January of 1950 I did enlist in the army for three years. While at Fort Devans, Massachusetts in training to be a high speed Morse code intercept operator I worked on my scout badge collection in my free time.

Here is a picture of me working on the collection and a picture of one of the panels of scout pins from various countries.

May you all have a good holiday season. George