Mr. O passed one last time in front of his boys, young and old, on Saturday morning.
They lined up in Boy Scout uniforms at attention and raised their hands in salute on either side of the main aisle as the boss of Troop 6, at age 85, was slowly wheeled past them on his final trek. It was the funeral Mass at a nearly packed St. Frances Cabrini Church for the legendary Scoutmaster, Emile Peter Oestriecher III.
A vast majority of the congregation were males of all ages who had either been scouts or adult leaders or assistant scoutmasters under Mr. O for some 50 years. At one point during the eulogy, they were all asked to stand and together recite the Boy Scouts oath. Six of his former scouts are priests, and five of them were concelebrants for the funeral service, not to mention a deacon and a seminarian with a Troop 6 connection.
One of the men in the congregation was 39-year-old Alexandria native William Watson, who traveled from Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he works for the National Weather Service. He’s one of many who achieved Eagle Scout, the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouts USA program. He did that in his final year as a scout in ’02 and then helped as an adult leader through 2014.
“He was always there for me,” said Watson, who knew Mr. O as a “friend and mentor.”
Speaking of Eagle Scouts, it was pointed out that only 5 percent of scouts nationally achieve that rank, but the number for Troop 6 is 22 percent (178), including five who received the award in a ceremony last week.
Vincent Brocato, who, as an assistant scoutmaster was given the rare honor of wearing a green hat (otherwise reserved for just the scoutmaster and the boys), went on several memorable trips with Mr. O and the troop. They went to places such as Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, N.M., and the Boundary Waters in Canada.
But Brocato fondly remembers a campfire, where some of the older boys and others who had aged out but returned, sat around and talked about old times.
“He didn’t say much, but he’d just listen,” Brocato said of Mr. O. “You could look at him and he was just beaming, listening to the boys he had helped become eagles.”
Brocato admired him for many reasons but one was the way he dealt with the boys, even in difficult times.
“If there was trouble or fisticuffs, he knew how to talk to them,” said Brocato. “He knew what to say and how to say it to make them feel better about themselves.
Words, however, were not always necessary for Mr. O.
“He had what we all called ‘the look,’” Brocato said. “If you did something wrong, he didn’t need to say a word.”
The “look” from Mr. O, Brocato suggested, could induce anything from embarrassment to an apology to a pledge to sacrifice one’s first-born male. Well, not really that last one.
When Mr. O did talk, though, he was a man of his word, said Jim Bouchie, a former scout who gave the eulogy. “His yes meant yes and his no meant mostly yes. He rarely turned down anyone asking for help.”
Honesty is one of the virtues promoted in scouting, and Mr. O, a graduate of Menard and LSU, cantor of his church choir and a family man, epitomized many of the scouting virtues, like honesty, integrity, loyalty and patience and courage. He had a distinguished business career as a certified public accountant, receiving a Lifetime Membership Award from the Society of Louisiana CPAs in 2022.
In June of ’22, Troop 6 hosted a reunion and campfire at Camp Attakapas to celebrate Oestriecher’s 50th year as Scoutmaster as well as the renaming of the camp to “The Mr. O Campgrounds at Camp Attakapas.” A generous endowment raised by his family helps support the upkeep of the camp and scouting in general.
The motto on the Troop 6 cap is “Optimus Optimorum,” which means “best of the best.”
Judging by the outpouring of respect and warmth for their departed leader, it’s evident the boys had a scoutmaster over the past five decades who epitomized that motto.