Welcoming the Inaugural Class of Honorees on the Camp Cachalot Wall of Fame
Saturday, July 10th, 2010, beginning at noon, the Camp Cachalot Alumni Association will gather at Camp Cachalot for our sixth-annual Homecoming Day. Homecoming 2010 is an exciting time for the Alumni Association, as we prepare to honor our first four inductees to the Camp Cachalot Wall of Fame, and we're hoping that our fellow alumni turn out in force to help recognize them!
The day begins with a cookout lunch of burgers, hot dogs, and accoutrements in the pine grove across from Tom Cullen Field and an opportunity to catch up with the other alums in attendance. At 1:00pm we'll have an informal update on what the Association has done in the last year and what we plan to do over the next year, followed at 1:30pm by the Wall of Fame Induction. After the induction ceremony concludes, you'll have until 5:00pm to mingle with your fellow alumni, have a look around camp, or maybe even cast a fishing lure into Five Mile.
About the Wall of Fame
The Camp Cachalot Wall of Fame is modeled after other “Hall of Fame”-type institutions, and is intended to be a lasting memorial to the people and organizations that have been instrumental in the success of Cachalot and the experiences of those who have attended Cachalot over the years. Nominees must have had their first involvement with Cachalot at least 20 years prior to their nomination, and are subject to a strict vetting process that concludes with voting by the members of the Alumni Association. More complete information on the Wall of Fame, including the nomination process and our plans for a permanent memorial, can be found here. A roster of past inductees will always be available on this web site.
The 2010 Class of Inductees
Our members have voted, and we're thrilled to announce our first-ever Wall of Fame honorees! The four individuals and organizations here represent some of the best the Cachalot family has had to offer over the last 64 years, and they set the bar high for what will be expected of our future nominees. Our sincere congratulations and heartfelt thanks to all of them!
Albert “Al” Hall, a veteran of four Scout units in
the New Bedford area, and a highly-decorated Scouter (recipient of
the Silver Beaver, the Pelican Award, Scouters Key, St. George
Award, Wood Badge, and a Vigil Honor member of the Order of the
Arrow), has been a fixture at Cachalot from the late 1960s to the
present time. He has served on the staff of many district
and council events at Cachalot, and as both a unit leader and a
commissioner during the summer Al was a tireless volunteer at
camp. Along with serving as a member of the Restoration Committee in
the 1970s, Al was always on hand at "Beaver Weekends" tackling
service projects, and spent a good deal of his own time to help with
plumbing projects out at camp, whether it was replacing toilets or
completely redoing the hot water system at the shower house. He even
came out to help the ranger shut down the seasonal water system at
the close of summer camp through much of the 1980s.
Mr. Hall also provided instruction and leadership to a large number of young men during his Scouting career. Many of Cachalot's summer camp staffers counted Mr. Hall among their unit leaders, thanks to his involvement with several units, and many Scouts built their first hobo stoves or got their first taste of dutch oven cookery under his tutelage.
Sumner H. Morse served two separate stints of his career as a
professional Scouter at Camp Cachalot, with very different impact
each time.
His first service to Cachalot came as a professional in the Cachalot Council, in the early 1960s. Sumner was employed by the Council at the time of the 1964 fire that destroyed much of the forest canopy over Camp Cachalot. As the fire occurred mere months before the opening of summer camp, something had to be done to ensure that a summer program took place for the Scouts in the Cachalot Council. This took the form of a joint operation of the Cachalot and Squanto councils at neighboring Camp Squanto, and Sumner was very involved in operating this joint program, as its assistant director in 1964 and as its director in 1965.
He returned to the newly-formed Moby Dick Council as Scout Executive in the late 1970s, right at the height of the "Save Our Camps" campaign, with protestors on the lawn of the council's offices on his first day on the job! He helped to defuse that situation and helped prevent the sale of Cachalot, and in his decade-long tenure, his efforts helped to transform the Moby Dick Council and Camp Cachalot from nearly-broke entities to financially-sound ones. He retired, leaving a legacy of a substantial permanent endowment to help finance Cachalot into its future.
L. Fred Prefontaine, member and sometime Scoutmaster of Troop 1 New
Bedford, began his long service to Cachalot in 1958, and made many,
many contributions to camp, right up until his death in 2001. He was
a recipient of many of Scouting's highest awards, including the
Scouters Key, Scouter Training Award, the District Award of Merit,
the Silver Beaver, Woodbadge, the Bronze Pelican, and the Vigil
Honor of the Order of the Arrow. His service to Cachalot and its
people was varied: helping to evacuate units and fight the fire of
1964, running the small resident program at Cachalot in 1964 and
1965 whose sole purpose was to clear debris from camp after the
fire, to serving many years on both the Restoration Committee and
the Cachalot and Moby Dick Camping and Properties Committee. He was
a member of the Catholic Committee on Scouting, the Woodbadge
Training Committee, an active adviser to Agawam and Neemat Lodge,
and served as Cachalot's summer camp director from 1971 until 1975.
He was a frequent participant at Beaver Weekends, and once led the
Council's contingent to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, helping
provide local Scouts with a backcountry adventure.
His skills as a carpenter and cabinetmaker also served Cachalot well. He coordinated the construction of the Trading Post across from Tom Cullen Field that was used from the mid-1960s until its destruction by fire in 1987, designed the current kitchen area for the camp's Dining Hall, and, leveraging his role as an instructor with New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School, helped keep the camp supplied with tent platforms, picnic tables, and other carpentry projects with the help of his students.
The George W. Magee Memorial Trust Fund was established upon the
death in 1939 of George W. P. Magee, the former manager of the
Boston Opera House, who left a substantial portion of his estate to
establish this permanent trust fund in his name, to "distribute the
balance of the net income of the said Trust Fund to such of the
councils of the BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA as are located in the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as, in the opinion of said
Trustees, are performing the most efficient service, the said net
income to be used, so far as possible, for the purchase and
maintenance of summer camps or training camps in New England for the
use of Boy Scouts." Through the fund's contributions, Mr. Magee's
name appears on buildings at Cachalot (and at other camps in
Massachusetts) and on "Magee Night" competitions held during at
summer camp.
Since its establishment, the Magee Fund has contributed more money towards the ongoing maintenance, program, and expansion of Camp Cachalot than any other single entity, well in excess of $500,000, and they continue to make contributions today. This money has enabled the construction and repair of many of the buildings at camp (almost every building at camp has benefited from monies from the Magee Fund), has purchased program equipment, bought and repaired vehicles, and has recently helped enable the replacement of the camp's main power line in from Wareham.
Homecoming Info
Homecoming 2010 is a free event for members and non-members alike. Lunch is optional, with a suggested donation of $5 to help us defray the cost.
The Wall of Fame induction ceremony will begin at 1:30pm, in the Bill Joyce Memorial Flag Field. While we'll have some seating set aside for our honorees, if you'd like to be able to sit down during the ceremony we strongly suggest bringing along a camp chair for yourself. We expect the ceremony to take about an hour. Camp will remain open after the induction ceremony until 5:00pm. If you'd like to have a look around but don't quite remember the way, members of the Alumni Association will be on-hand to help you find your old haunts.
As always, our History Committee will be on-hand to scan your photos and slides or photograph any memorabilia that you'd like to show off. Bring along your items to be scanned, or bring your digital pictures in almost any format. Contact curator@cachalotalumni.org if you have questions about this. If you have a large number of photos or slides, we may not be able to handle them at the event but would still like to make arrangements to capture them, so please contact us at that email in that case.
Registration Details
Even though this is a free event, we'd still appreciate it if you'd let us know you're coming, especially if you plan on joining us for lunch. If you're a Facebook® user, and would like the event to show up in your events list there, you can RSVP via the event's page on Facebook®, otherwise you can:
Click here to register online right now!
There's no need to register via both methods. If you do register on Facebook, please be sure to let us know if you'll be dining with us.Additional Information
If you have questions that aren't answered here, please drop us an email message at homecoming2010@cachalotalumni.org. The Narragansett Council office may also be able to answer some questions via telephone at (401) 351-8700.
We hope you'll be able to join us and help us recognize this year's Wall of Fame honorees and their efforts to make “the place we know so well” what it is today!
See you in July!
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