Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 18:45:43 -0600

Poster: Cliff Golden c60clg1@CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU

Subject: Saying Goodbye

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 Max Clark

This isn't in regards to me saying goodbye to the list (Scouts-L). It deals with me saying goodbye to some boys.

Monday night I received a Christmas card and a long letter from one of my old Scouts, now a pediatrician at Fort Knox, Kentucky. I always love hearing from "my boys". I recieve many such letters this time of year.

Tuesday I read a local weekly newspaper during lunch. As I cruised the paper my eyes were brought to the obituaries where I recognized two names. Max Clark lost a 3 year battle with Ewing's sarcoma bone cancer on December 13, 1995. Max was not in my troop, but a cub scout in a local pack. They noticed him limping during a Scout pancake breakfast three years ago, when they took him to the doctor his cancer was diagnosed. He was only 10 years old when he died.

Paul A. Heide died at Rush Presbyterian Medical Center in Chicago on December 11, 1995. I do not know the cause of his death. He was 29. Paul was a Scout in my troop, joining in May 1977.

I ran into Paul a few years ago. I was leaving a convenience store when someone called out my name. I turned to see a young man that looked familiar. I knew who he was on the second glance, it was Paul. We talked of Scouting, especially a trip to Philmont he had attended with me. On that trip we slept under the stars on all but one night. A New Mexico sky is still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, clear, bright, and filled with stars. He said that was a very special time in his life. Paul had made it as far as Life before succumbing to other interests and leaving Scouting half way through high school.

He told me then how much Scouting had meant to him, how he wished he'd stayed in the program, how he wished he'd finished Eagle. He thanked me for everything I'd done so many years ago. It was the type of thing that raises a Scoutmaster's spirits; to hear a past Scout, now grown, say that the program had made a difference and was important to him. He said he didn't appreciate Scouting half as much then as he appreciated it now. He said he was beginning to better understand some of the lessons he'd learned.

I didn't realize it then, but that was our goodbye. That's the last time I saw Paul. It meant a great deal to me. This afternoon I wrote sympathy cards to the families of Max and Paul. On one of the cards was a poem that I thought was appropriate for a farewell to those who leave us at such a young age.

We can't know why the lily

has so brief a time to bloom

in the warmth of sunlight's kiss upon its face,

 Before it folds it fragrance in

and bids the world good-night

to rest its beauty in a gentler place,

 But we can know that nothing

that is loved is ever lost,

and no one who has ever touched a heart

can really pass away,

 because some beauty lingers on

in each memory of which they've been a part.

 Ellen Brenneman

YIS, Cliff Golden