They denied him a special rite 60 years ago. Now, Black Eagle Scout will get his due
By all standards, Sam Jones is an accomplished man. He grew up in public housing, raised by a Black single mother. He graduated from college, raised a family, retired from the Navy as a commander and now mentors youth at his Edgewood church.
He also, at the age of 15, earned the Boy Scouts of America’s highest honor: Eagle Scout. Only 3-4 percent of all scouts achieve the rank.
But for 60 years, Jones hid a mental wound inflicted by uncaring adults who let prejudice and stereotypes color their view of him. A few weeks after Jones earned his Eagle Scout rank in 1962, he visited the offices of his troop’s sponsor — a Rochester, New York-based community outreach nonprofit.
Jones wanted to know why he had not received his award and the ceremony that goes with it. A white man working in the office told Jones there would be no ceremony.
“He says, because your family doesn’t represent what we’ve been looking for,” Jones recalled.
Jones, stunned, walked wordlessly out of the office. He soon quit scouting altogether, burying the hurt deep inside him.
On Monday, the Boy Scouts of America will help heal that injury by officially making Jones, now 75, an Eagle Scout.
Life in the projects
Jones’ mother was 17 when she had him. The young mother was determined to provide for him, Jones said. She and her siblings were forced to fend for themselves after their mother died and their father threw them out of the family home in Georgia.
“My mother said this to me, ‘I knew I was pregnant. I knew I was going to have a boy and I knew I’d be able to raise it.’ And that never left her,” Jones said.
“My first remembrance of life is less than 2 years old, holding on to my mother’s skirt walking across the railroad tracks,” Jones said. On his first day of kindergarten, Jones’ mother dressed him in a three-piece suit.
“I didn’t worry about anything,” Jones said. “I always felt loved. And I didn’t feel like I was lacking anything.”
A vision
Jones was 11-years-old when he saw images of something that forever altered his course in life: a forest.
It was just in a film, a moment when the sun shined through a grove of trees. For an urban kid growing up in the projects in Rochester, New York, a forest might have well been on Mars.
“When I saw that light I heard in my head, ‘If God exists, He exists in the woods.’ So, I started looking for God, in the woods,” Jones recalled. “I wanted to go to those woods, but I didn’t have a way. I didn’t know how to do it. But I knew Boy Scouts.”
Jones soon joined a Boy Scout troop based at the housing project where he lived. Most of his fellow troop members were, like Jones, Black.
When the troop participated in jamborees, the boys were the subjects of intense fascination for the other, white troops.
“All eyes were on you,” Jones said.
Jones thrived in the Boy Scouts, earning about 25 merit badges in a number of subjects, from canoeing to first aid to citizenship. In a few years he qualified for the rank of Eagle Scout, the first for his troop.
After appearing in front of a board of review and being approved, he couldn’t wait for his mother and fellow troop members to witness the tradition-filled award ceremony called a Court of Honor.
“That’s what I’m looking for,” Jones recalled. “So I can say, ‘Mom, we made it.’”
After a few months of silence, Jones visited the office of the troop’s sponsor, the Baden Street Settlement, which was in charge of setting up the ceremony.
“Nobody gives me an answer,” Jones said when he asked about his award. “This one guy was sitting there doing something. I said, ‘Where’s my eagle?’ He goes in his drawer, pulls it out, and throws it across the table.”
Jones asked about the ceremony. The man told him a Scout raised by a single mother didn’t match the model Black youth the nonprofit wished to promote.
Then, the man put his head down and went back to work.
“No more conversation ... and I stood there for a minute,” Jones said.
He took the eagle home and soon drifted away from scouting.
Jones told his mother nothing. But, he did tell his white scoutmaster.
“No words came from him,” Jones said. “But I don’t fault him. He was between a rock and a hard place. I have been blessed by a number of white Americans that have absolutely been in my corner. But I also know they are in difficult places themselves for doing so.”
Career path
One of those people was Jones’ high school biology teacher, Charles Perham. The teacher took Jones under his wing and continued to foster Jones’ love of the outdoors, taking him and other young men on summer-long camping trips to Canada where they would work on fire crews and train in search and rescue.
“He thought that I was worth spending time on,” Jones said. “And he poured into me lessons of acculturation that primed me for life in America.”
Eventually, Perham advised Jones to attend the University of Michigan.
While at Michigan, Jones joined the Navy ROTC. After graduation, he made the Navy his career and retired in 1991.
Discovery
For years, fellow Mountain View Lutheran Church member Darel Roa had been urging Jones to volunteer with the church’s sponsored Boy Scout troop. Each time Roa brought it up, Jones politely declined. Although Jones had been using his Boy Scout skills all his life, the group was still a sore subject for him.
Roa didn’t know about the decades-old insult and found Jones’ response odd. But Roa is tenacious and eventually he talked Jones into attending a fundraising dinner for the BSA’s Pacific Harbors Council in March. Near the end of the dinner, a pastor asked anyone who was once an Eagle Scout to stand.
“So I stood,” Jones said. “But when I stood up, it was like a dam burst. The emotion began to pour out. And it’s still coming.”
Roa could tell something had changed in Jones, but he didn’t know what.
“Sam’s retired Navy so he controls his emotions,” Roa said. “It wasn’t until the next day when we had a followup conversation that he spilled the beans.”
Then began Roa’s determination to learn the full story and right the wrong for his friend.
The Baden Street Settlement is still in existence. Staff there, generations removed from those that worked there in the 1960s, were chagrined to learn about Jones’ story as was the BSA council that now oversees Rochester, Roa said.
The New York Scouts were able to find records that confirmed Jones’ Eagle Scout status. The group has since mailed a package of memorabilia that will be presented to Jones on Monday.
Living in a forest
Today, Jones and his wife Cindy live in a forest of sorts. Mature Douglas firs surround the homes on their quiet street in Puyallup where they moved in 2015 to be closer to family. An American flag flies in their front yard. Family pictures and military mementos fill their home.
On Monday, seven Boy Scouts will be presented with their Eagle Scout medals. One of them will be considerably older than the others and wearing a Scout shirt emblazoned with both New York Scout patches and one from Pacific Harbors Council.
“It validates a life that I have earned,” Jones said of the coming ceremony. “What a boy needs early in life is to know that he is valued, and he has value to offer.
“Boy Scouts gives every boy an opportunity to be somebody. At some level, it doesn’t say you got to be the best. It just says you can be proud of who you are.”
If you go
What: Court of Honor for Samuel Lynn Jones.
When: 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 19.
Where: Mountain View Lutheran Church, 3505 122nd Ave. E., Edgewood
Information: pacificharbors.org/
This story was originally published June 18, 2023 at 7:05 AM with the headline "They denied him a special rite 60 years ago. Now, Black Eagle Scout will get his due."
