A walk down memory lane and the Graduate.

Thirty six years ago Marla and I were freshmen at BYU. The latest addition to the University that year was the J. Rueben Clark Law School. Little did we know that three and a half decades later we would be attending graduation ceremonies for one of our daughters. We had a great time with family and friends. It brought back many memories for me of our years there and a great sense of gratitude for a wonderful institution that is a blessing for anyone who can spend some time there.



To my knowledge, Sara is the first one of the Whitakers, Grovers, or Baileys to wear one of those hoodie things they give out in Law School.


A little photo shopping to get rid of the couple about to fall in the creek and this is suitable for framing.

Guess who the next college grad in the family will be?

Sisters


Dinner after the graduation ceremonies at the "Chefs Table" in Orem. Roomies and Law School buddies.

Family too.



Convocation ceremonies in the de Jong Concert Hall.


Fun times with the WII at Sara's house.

100th blog and a quick weekend visitor

Marla flew Jesse and Eden in for the weekend. They attended a meet the author and book signing of Annie Barrows. Grandpa and Eden hung out while they went to the book signing. It is so nice to have them closer than the North Pole where they used to live. They are now in Phoenix.

We also had a family night at the Aces ball park. The Aces beat Colorado Springs 15 -2. We even saw a grand slam. The Jacksons were there with there four boys and a couple of friends. Dave and Danelle Crossman were there and Grandpa and Grandma Paterson were there. I think we had 12 kids under the age of 10 there.

Bo and his Triple Decker. Do you think he could finish it?

The Selection

As part of my responsibilities as a BSA board member and Vice President of Administration, I was on the selection committee for a new Scout Executive of the Nevada Area Council. This week we made the selection. It all started a few weeks ago when we started screening resumes. We didn't feel we had a big enough sample so we had the national office send us some more to review. We had previously met to create a profile of what we needed in the council and the type of person we were looking for. We narrowed it down to four candidates that we wanted to interview in person.

Candidate One had worked for the scouts in Fort Worth Texas for 24 years. The Long Horn Council is very large, much larger than Reno. He had held pretty much every position in the council except the Scout Executives position. Most professional Scouters move around a bit and have different experiences in different areas. It is pretty unusual for an individual to have his whole career in one area.

Candidate Two had been working as the Scout Executive in El Paso for four years. There had been a lot of problems in El Paso. It had been discribed as one of the most difficult areas in the country. He turned things around and got things growing again. It didn't hurt his prospects any that he was a BYU grad and Return missionary.

Candidate Three was currently working in the National Training Center for BSA teaching classes in how to be a professional scouter. He had this position for two years. Prior to this he was the Scout Excutive for eleven years in Casper Wyoming. he is also a return missionary and BYU grad.

We had referrences to call on all of the individuals. All of them checked out very well with the references that were called. They all recieved glowing reviews. They all came into town with their wives and on Thursday night we had a brief reception and then a lengthy dinner. On Friday we divided the 12 members on the selection committee into three groups. Each group interviewed each candidate for 90 minutes. We then all got together and heard a ten minute presentation from each candidate. They were all highy qualified, capable individuals. It was going to be a very hard decision to choose just one. It is interesting to note the thing that really decided the thing was one of the candidates inability to find fault in himself and cite examples of being coached or corrected. It was a case of confidence versus arrogance. The ability to find fault in one's self to seek improvement, to humbly except correction, to find ways to become a better person was the deciding factor.

Time with the kids

This past week I have spent a fair amount of time with young people. Brent Eddy is one of the Government teachers at Douglas High School. He asked me to come and talk with five of his government classes about personal finance. I spent most of the day on Thursday and Friday morning with his classes. It was fun to be with the kids. They were all Seniors and will be graduating soon. They seemed interested for the most part. Some of them seemed to be very interested. Some didn't seem like they would be interested in anything.

Saturday I had about six young men and their dads at the hanger of Hutt aviation to work on the Aviation merit badge. This was an assignment after the merit badge clinic a couple of weeks ago. I let everybody climb around in the Musketeer and showed them how a pre-flight inspection goes. Then we drove around the airport and learned about how things work at a municipal airport.

All told I probably spoke with 90 to 100 young people this week.