Frank Heiss and Scouting: The Golden Age – Part I: The Beginning

Times were different in the 1960s and 1970s. America was brushing off the façade of the 1950s where life was seen through a glass darkly. The world of Leave to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and the simplicity of Lassie was over.

These weekly television classics gave way to The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and All in the Family.

Opa and Scouting: The Beginning

I had the occasion to spend some time with Dad recently to get his input on the connection the Heiss family has with scouting. I knew it started with Opa, but I didn’t know how or why.

When Dad was about to turn 12, the bishop of the ward asked Opa to serve as Scout Master. Now, Opa had no experience with scouting. In fact, he didn’t know the first thing about the organization or the history the church had with this program. But the calling came as a perfect storm.

Scouting and the Church: My Perspective

I will not try to recite the long history the Church has had with scouting. It is has been a 100 year relationship.

To be fair, scouting advocates many positive things – faith, loyalty, honesty, service, and so on. So it made sense that a Church, trying to find a vehicle to engage its young men that was positive and exciting, turned to scouting.

Scouting had its heyday in the church up until about the 1960s. But from the 1960s to the 1980s, the nation’s attention towards scouting as well as that of the young men of the Church began to wane. Life changed and scouting fell behind. That is not to say the values of scouting were any less important. These are still great values.

Scouting: Time to Face the Abyss

The Heiss family has a rich and lengthy tradition when it comes to scouting. But I have a feeling this tradition will end in the next generation. To be honest, I don’t think that will be a bad thing. I feel that Church has outgrown its need for scouting and in the years to come, I hope we will wean the North American Church from chokehold of this antiquated programs.

So, if we have such a familial connection to scouting, why am I such an advocate for abolishing this vestige of the past? First, I feel scouting takes a lot of church, resources in time, manpower, and money, to support this program with a very small return on this investment.

Tanner Larsen

Now that I have completed my posts about the bishops in my life, I can return to the chaotic ramblings of my history. As you may have noticed by now, I do not do to well in sequentially presenting events in my life. That is why I chose to use this blog. I feel this blogging medium is a forum that is open to the chronological as well as the immediate posts.

To that end, I am now including a post about an experience I had with a young, sick boy named Tanner Larsen. First, let me provide you some background.

I'm in the New York Times!

I realize this blog is dedicated to Heiss History, but in this fast-paced world, sometimes history happens fast.

 Here is a portion of an article published in the New York Times about young women, Jessica Sagers, who was recently accepted for a PhD program at Harvard.

 Jessica was in my BYU Singles Ward for a year as I served as bishop. She was interview by the Times as part of an article to help paint a picture of the changing role of Mormon women. Here is what the Times wrote: