Longtime scouts and their families gathered together to share stories and Camp Delezenne experiences at the camp’s decommissioning ceremony on May 6.

Commissioner of the Coastal Waters District committee Mike Stamon said he saw the decommissioning ceremony as a funeral, but not the kind people may be used to. Recalling from his experience working for a Native American tribe, whose funerals he said were more about sharing stories than sharing sadness, his hope was to implement the same mentality for the ceremony.

“What it does is slowly replaces the sadness of the loss with memories of all the different relationships the person had with so many people,” Stamon said, “So the next time you feel the sadness of the loss, you slowly start to remember the wonderful stories.”

Wonderful stories were certainly shared by those who came to bid farewell to Camp Delezenne, which has served the Boy Scout community since 1963.

Of the 19 people who attended, almost all could tell stories about the Klondike Derby, where scouts would race wheeled sleds in an effort to build on the Patrol Method. The Patrol Method is the way scouts are grouped together and instructed to work together and overcome obstacles as a team.

Stamon recalled later in an email how at the first Klondike event, it was apparent that the scouts needed more direction and instruction.

“So we introduced Pre-Klondikes to show scouts what Klondike was going to be all about,” he said.

“It was always raining and always muddy, but organizers always did a great job,” John Allen, council commissioner, said.

The Order of the Arrow, the national honor society of the boy scouts, is also an important part of Camp Delezenne’s past. Scouts who were chosen to join the Order of the Arrow got to be a part of a unique ceremony that took place in a secluded part of the camp.

“We wanted some place off the road to honor the scouts, some place that wasn’t just on the beaten path,” Allen said about the unique area constructed for induction ceremonies.

Having trekked through the woods surrounding the camp for five minutes or so, Order inductees would come to a clearing where they would be permitted through a large entrance gate decorated with art and glowing in the dark.

“I remember when I got elected, the entire path to the gate had tiki torches lining it,” scout and Order of the Arrow member Cody Robinson said.

While Camp Arrow has not been used for close to three years, the group walked to visit it perhaps for one last time. Those who made the short trip were in agreement that even though the Camp Arrow’s glory days had past, it was still interesting to see where so much scout history had happened.

According to scout executive Ralph Voelker, the primary reason for closing the camp and combining, in total, five camps into one, is financial concerns.

“The camp was not breaking even, it was losing, as were the other properties. So we decided to pick the best one and subsidize that,” he said.

The “best one” in this case, is Camp Thunderbird on the shores of Summit Lake.

“Camp Thunderbird is very central. For the people of Grays Harbor it takes about the same amount of time to get there as it does to Delezenne and it’s also a larger property and is more suitable,” Voelker continued.

The idea, according to Voelker and other scout leaders at the ceremony, is to put the time and effort into giving scouts the best camp experience possible at one camp instead of spreading their resources thin across numerous camps.

“We want to make it so we can serve scouts for a long time, so we’re making an investment in once place rather than five,” Voelker said.

The estimated price for the investment into Camp Thunderbird is anywhere from $10 to $15 million according to Voelker, taking into consideration that the price of septic, water and power improvements alone could total about $2 million. Voelker hopes that through grants, fundraising efforts and the support of the community the funds will come in.

“We hope that other youth groups will be able to use the facilities as well, hopefully this becomes a location not just for scouts, but also where kids can come learn to become better leaders,” he continued.

The payoff, in addition to educating the community’s youth, will be updated facilities and the opportunities to engage in activities that just weren’t available anymore at Camp Delezenne.

“Thunderbird has a wonderful lakefront area, a nice climbing area, preset BB gun and archery ranges and we’re looking to expand program capacity through housing and programs like a metallurgy lab,” Voelker said.

While Camp Delezenne may be decommissioned as an official Boy Scout camp, the property may still be put to use by Boy Scout patrons. As reported in a March 24, 2016 issue of The Vidette, the property is leased from the timber company Weyerhaeuser, and stipulations in the lease state termination will occur if the camp sits idle for 5 years. Representatives of the scouts at the decommissioning ceremony noted that they would like to thank Weyerhaeuser for sharing their property through the years, and that they would still like to put the Delezenne property to use perhaps once a month.

“I’m sad that we had to do it; I understand the heart, the emotion of how wonderful of a place it was for scouts to hike the trails, but at the same time, things have changed,” Voelker said.

“It’s time for us to find a way to help the next group of scouts.”