This is a great article from the Muskogee Phoenix newspaper website. Unfortunately, the three pages of online article are so littered with ads and pop-ups as to be nearly unreadable. So here below is the text of the original article.
Muskogee surgeon Dr. Tim Robison says his experience as a Boy Scout took him to Japan, Germany — and medical school.
“When I applied for medical school in 1977, there were 3,000 applicants interviewed,” the Oklahoma City native recalled. “I walked into my interviewer’s office, and he said, ‘Were you an Eagle Scout?’ and I said, ‘Yes I was.’ He said, ‘That’s all I need to know.’”
Robison, 54, said attaining the rank of Eagle Scout gave him all sorts of advantages.
“I see all these parents struggling to get their kids’ ACT scores higher to give them an advantage in college or the military,” he said. “Being an Eagle Scout improves your rank in the military. My son got Eagle Scout, and he’s getting letters from branches of the military. In a world where parents do anything to give their kids a leg up, being an Eagle Scout is three legs up.”
Robison said scouting ran in his family.
“My father had been a Boy Scout in the Great Depression, but he had to quit before he got to be an Eagle Scout because he had to get a job,” he said.
Robison said his older brother, who died at age 12, was a Boy Scout; his two younger brothers became Eagle Scouts.
Robison’s son, Muskogee High School Senior Matt Robison, recently earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
“I think being a Boy Scout gives you a good framework to live by,” he said. “And I’m still helping little old ladies across the street.”
Monsoon in Japan was an adventure
When Robison joined other Oklahoma Boy Scouts at a worldwide Jamboree in Japan, the Scouts were treated like stars.
“When we got to Japan, we all had numbers on our sleeves and insignias that said Oklahoma,” he said, recalling that he and the other scouts were all around 6 feet tall. The Japanese were much shorter.
“They’d all see Oklahoma on our sleeves, and they’d all break out into ‘Oklahoma,’” he said. “In Japan, the longest running play is ‘Oklahoma,’ so we were all like celebrities.”
Very wet celebrities, it turned out.
“We camped out on Mt. Fuji for 10 days, and we were hit by a monsoon when we were camping out,” he said. “It rained 23 inches in 24 hours, and of course we were on the side of the mountain where there was a meadow. But, when you’re a teenager, what could be better? It’s an adventure. A typhoon is just another day in Oklahoma, just another bad storm day.”
The Scouts also spent four nights in Tokyo and four nights in Kyoto, he said. “And these were all little native hotels, not the Marriott.”
“The floors just had tatami mats,” he said. “The quilts were for people who were four and a half feet tall. It was a complete cultural experience. We rode the Bullet Trains when they were still new.”
Robison said he camped out with Scouts from around the world and discovered “boys are about the same everywhere.”
“We would play pick-up baseball games or soccer games. We had organized activities, see who could build towers the fastest, knot-tieing, orienteering,” he said.
Most memorable scouting adventure
The year after his Japan adventure, Robison and other Scouts visited one of the most memorable Olympics in memory — Munich, 1972.
“Our boy scout troop won an award in the U.S. Explorer Olympics, and we got to stay in the Olympic youth village,” he recalled “I saw Mark Spitz win all seven medals in swimming, I watched equestrian events, boxing.”
He also recalled the surge of patriotism people showed during the events.
“Everyone was waving flags,” he said. “It was almost as much about one’s country as it was about the athletes. Everyone was cheering for their country, the Cold War was going on.”
While watching Mark Spitz swim, Robison sat next to crooner Bing Crosby and got his autograph. He shook hands with Boston Celtics star Bill Russell — huge hands, he recalled.
Robison recalled being in the alleys of the Olympic village during the most harrowing hours of those September games.
He said he went into the Olympic village to buy something only to find “the Olympic village was empty and helicopters were landing.
“It wasn’t long to figure out I needed to leave,” he said. “I headed through an alley and jumped a fence. I got stopped by a guy with a gun who wanted to see my papers.”
The Scouts left for home — early — the next day.
Robison said that when he got home, he read about what happened: Arabs had killed 11 Israeli athletes.
Scouting provided lifelong work ethic
Robison also remembered the specific path he took to become an Eagle Scout.
“There is a list of things to do,” he said. “You start at Tenderfoot, Second Class, then First Class, then Star, Life, then Eagle.”
Scouts also must earn 21 merit badges.
“The merit badges give you such an exposure to things you’d never otherwise do — flying, shooting, camping, canoeing, water skiing,” he said.
Scouts also must do a community service project. Robison’s was to help clean up a church.
“It’s not so much the project that’s important, it’s that you can get people to show up, do a task and finish a task,” he said.
“The church had a large fellowship room where the congregation had accumulated everything,” he said. “The old minister had passed on. So I got scouts together and we moved the furniture, all the accumulated memories and stuff from the congregation. When that was all done, we cleaned the room and had pizza.”
The purpose was to show leadership, he said.
“It is finding a project that serves a need, determining what has to be done and getting people to do it,” he said. “It’s the same with the Eagle Scout projects now.”
Robison said he originally got into scouting not to become an Eagle Scout but to have fun.
“Achieving my Eagle Scout really came about because of things I enjoyed,” he said. “I wanted to be a Scout, because I wanted to camp and swim. In the end, the reward came from work. And that’s how my life is now.”
