From July 23 to 25, Cub Scouts from Elizabethton Pack 39 were able to experience the lives of shipmates on the USS Yorktown, a World War II Air Craft Carrier located in the Charleston Harbor in Mount Pleasant, S.C.
The scouts ate breakfast and dinner aboard the ship in the “Chief’s Mess”and then spent the night in bunk beds stacked four-high and hanging from floor-to-ceiling chains.
During the day, they participated in the Yorktown’s flight academy, tested their climbing skills on a rock climbing wall, visited a private den aboard the ship, toured the two-and-a-half acre Vietnam Experience Exhibit and went on an educational scavenger hunt where they learned about the legacy of the “Fighting Lady.”
They also toured destroyer USS Laffey and submarine USS Clagamore.
Cub Scout Seth Whitehead said that astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon splashed down near the USS Yorktown and were recovered by helicopters to the air craft carrier.
Whitehead said he had a good time and would like to go again, but that living on it for months as an enlisted man would be “horrible.”
“I think it really opened their eyes to the history of our nation,” said Bear Den Leader Greg Whitehead. “These young scouts of Pack 39 understand better today that freedom isn’t free.”
For this reason, they would like to express their sincere gratitude for military veterans, both past and present, who have served our country so that Americans may enjoy the freedom they have today.
Pack 39 is sponsored by First Free Will Baptist Church of Elizabethton. They meet every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. September through May.
If anyone age seven or older is interested in joining Pack 39, please call the Sequoyah Council office at (423) 952-6961, or visit www.scbsa.org.