Listen to These Admonitions…

The Order of the Arrow, Scouting's "Honor Society", was founded by E. Urner Goodman and Carroll A. Edson at Treasure Valley Scout Reservation in 1915 as the Wimachtendienk program. In 1938, the Fall River Council formed Noquochoke Lodge 124, which has become, after multiple mergers of local councils and lodges, the modern-day Abnaki Lodge 102 of the Narragansett Council. 2013 will mark the 75th anniversary of the Order of the Arrow in our area, and the Abnaki Lodge has been spending considerable time and effort to document the history of the various lodges that combined to create it.

So, on January 26th, 2013, starting at 11:00am, representatives from the lodge will be on-hand at our annual Winter Gathering to talk about the history of the Order of the Arrow locally, and show off the memorabilia and artifacts they've collected that help make up the physical history of the lodge. We know many of our Association have been very active in the Order of the Arrow over the years, and we count multiple past Chiefs among our membership, so we hope people will stop in and help share their own memories of their time in the OA, whether that's a story about getting their arrow "notched" during their Ordeal, the most clever way they disguised their script for a ceremony, or even their favorite "fellowship weekend" service project at camp.

The Gathering this year will take place at Our Lady of Grace Parish Hall at 569 Sanford Road in Westport, Massachusetts. We'll get started at 11:00am, with some time set aside to catch up with old friends as you arrive and check out some of the ephemera collected by the Lodge and the Association. Lunch will be available at noon, followed by a quick update on what the Association has been up to and what's coming up in the near future, capped with the Lodge's presentation as our main event. Things should wrap up by 3:00pm.

We'll have food and drink available for lunch. This year's event is free, although we'd appreciate a small donation ($5 is suggested) if you join us for lunch, to help cover costs, if you're able.

If you do plan on joining us for lunch, please RSVP either on the event page on our Facebook group, or by visiting our registration page.

Share Your Memories

We are especially interested in any old photos and slides of Cachalot and Noquochoke that you might have. If you have pictures, feel free to bring them with you – we plan to have a computer scanning station set up and staffed by a member of our History committee to scan in prints and slides. Our ability to scan things in will be limited by the time we have available, so if you are able to scan things in yourself, feel free to bring them along in electronic form (CD- or DVD- recordable, USB or Firewire drive – contact curator@cachalotalumni.org if you have any questions about the formats we can cope with.) The higher the resolution, the better.

Thanks to our members, we've already collected over 1,500 photos covering the 1920s right through to modern times, although we're still missing photos of many notable figures from the past. We are especially interested in any photos of the old Quonset Hut at Cachalot.

We look forward to seeing you (again)!

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