Yankee Doodle Curry went to England, preserves treasures
America just celebrated its 250th birthday on July 4, and Alexandrian Dave Curry celebrated his 84th birthday last Saturday on the Fourth of July. He was born in Drexel Hill, just down the road from Philadelphia, where America’s founders signed the Declaration of Independence.
For all I know, Dave came out of the womb waving an American flag. By age 13, he was an Eagle Scout. It’s rare to achieve that highest, most prestigious rank in scouting at such a young age, but then again, scouting is part of his DNA. His older brother was an Eagle Scout. His father was an Eagle Scout. He’s had Eagle Scouts up and down his family and his grandfather, Samuel Alexander “the Great” Curry, born in 1876, was a Scouter when the scouting movement was in its infancy.
On the eve of this Fourth of July, Curry was talking with palpable excitement about a trip he and his wife, Judy, will take next month to Charleston, W. Va., to visit the World Scouting Museum, where his 1957 World Jamboree collections are being prepared for permanent display. He donated these collections to the museum last month.
Curry had 69 years of scouting memorabilia jammed in two desk drawers, gathering dust. His wife sized up the scouting stock and suggested a clearance of sorts.
“Judy told me, ‘We’re not going to be around forever. Our kids aren’t interested in this; our grandkids aren’t interested. This could end up in the dumpster. You need to do something about it; you need to give it away.”
It was a tough pill to swallow. What others see as “junk,” he sees as a treasure trove from a cherished trip he made at age 15 in August of 1957 to the 9th World Scout Jamboree at Sutton Park, Coldfield, England. It wasn’t just any old jamboree, either, it was the Jubilee Jamboree, commemorating 50 years since Lord Baden-Powell held the first scout camp in 1907 on Brownsea Island, England.
In that same year, incidentally, a month earlier, he also had the thrill of attending the National Scout Jamboree in nearby Valley Forge, Pa.
“My parents offered my brother and me the opportunity, if we were selected, to go to the World Jamboree in England,” said Curry. “I never understood how they afforded that. My dad was a mechanical engineer. But somehow, they did.”
Dave and Sam Curry applied and were chosen among some 1,800 scouts in the United States to attend the World Jubilee Jamboree. Curry’s troop was the largest of any in the country to go to England with 38 Scouts, 27 of whom were Eagle Scouts.
All the American scouts took a train to Quebec City, from where they made the trans-Atlantic trip over several days on a merchant ship leased by the Boy Scouts of America.
“We wore dark green shirts and khaki shorts and knee socks, and we all wore a red jacket,” he said with a smile and a gesture as if he was tugging at the jacket. “Handsome looking. We stood out. It was a great trip.”
Once there, the scout troops from across the world – roughly 33,000 from about 80 countries — set up camps, and the camp next to theirs had scouts from South Africa. Curry befriended one of them, Norman D. Quayle.
“We’d pal around, and one time we switched uniforms,” said Curry. “The day we switched, all the English tourists wanted to talk to the ‘American’ boy rather than me.” Dave Curry hasn’t kept in touch with Norman Quayle but they did exchange some pen pal letters for a while after the Jubilee.
One big thrill from the World Jubilee in England, Curry said, was a visit from a young Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
“We all had on our red jackets and we made two lines, 900 scouts long on each side,” said Curry, “and they walked between us. I was as far away from her as I am from you right now, and we were all taking pictures. I was using my father’s camera.
“That was a joy, a thrill of a lifetime.”
When it was over, it had been 12 days of camping, brotherhood and celebration, and he said it was a “transformative” experience for him as a young scout “immersed in a sea of uniforms, languages and traditions” from around the world.
Curry came home with 56 badges from 26 countries representing the continents of Europe, Asia,
Africa, Oceania and the Americas. These badges were special to him.
“They weren’t just souvenirs,” he said, “they were treasures, each one earned through a genuine exchange with another scout who may have traveled halfway around the world for the same reason I had.”
A graduate of Penn State with a degree in science, Curry’s past jobs with such corporations as Xerox and Vertex included work in information technology or as a business systems analyst. Not surprisingly he is still sharp working with his home
computer. With the help of artificial intelligence assistants, he designed his own web site (myscoutingartifacts.com) to preserve and display those 56 badges, documenting, he said, “a pivotal moment in scouting history.”
Thanks to this Yankee Doodle Curry, those who cherish pivotal scouting history can appreciate it at the World Scouting Museum or on Curry’s web site.