Eagle Scouts thrive for 50 years thanks to Spokane man

By the time you knock on the door of Howard Pettibone’s house, on the South Hill, you have a pretty good idea about the man inside.

Staked in the front yard, much like a For Sale sign, only bigger, is a promo placard for the Boy Scouts of America. The window on the door is splashed with multiple patriotic stickers including one of the American flag and others supporting the U.S. Army and American troops in general.

Howard’s wife, Joan, opens the door, wearing an apron because she’s busy baking cookies for the annual church bazaar.

A slender man of 76 years, with a light mustache, Howard leads you into his den where he offers a seat on a folding chair, and an interview begins with a man who’s closing in on a 50-year milestone, and counting, as a volunteer scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America.

It’s quickly oblivious that Howard Pettibone, gregarious and outspoken, just as easily could be speaking about Joan, their three children, his church, his ongoing 50-plus year career as a civil engineer, or the 32 years he spent, concurrent with his civil-engineering career, as an Army Reservist.

But today’s topic is Boy Scouts, and Pettibone has many tales to tell.

He talks about camping trips with Scouts; five canoe trips down the Missouri River with Scouts; teaching Scouts how to appreciate, and stay warm, safe and comfortable in the outdoors; and he talks a lot about Eagle Scouts.

Becoming an Eagle Scout is the pinnacle any Boy Scout can aspire to, a height that only can be reached after earning 21 merit badges before age 18, and Pettibone has mentored 37 Eagle Scouts through the years, 26 of them in Spokane since moving here in 1967.

Pettibone says, on a national scale, less than 2 percent of all Boy Scouts become Eagle Scouts. Yet, when he last counted a couple years ago, 14 percent of the Scouts he’d worked with since 1958, when he volunteered as an assistant scoutmaster for a year before becoming scoutmaster of a troop in a Denver suburb, had become Eagle Scouts.

Scott Adams, Pettibone’s first Eagle Scout in Spokane who later was assistant scoutmaster to Pettibone and now is a volunteer officer on Boy Scouts of America’s regional Inland Northwest Council, speaks highly of the man he first met when Adams was 13 and Pettibone was his scoutmaster. “Howard is a great guy. You have to have a leader to develop leaders, and he certainly fits the bill.”

Because Boy Scout troops generally are small – Pettibone’s current troop has seven Scouts and his largest ever had 18 – the total number of boys he’s mentored ages 11 to 18 through the years isn’t that great. Still, what Scouting has done for each of them, or at least the majority of them, is what keeps him motivated.

“I’ve never been paid a penny for what I do, but what you see right there on that wall is priceless,” he says, pointing to a wall decked with 50 years worth of engraved plaques and memorabilia. “Seeing those guys getting their Eagle Scout medals and running into 40-year-old former Scouts who remember you, even if you can’t place names to their faces right off the bat, that’s what it’s all about.

“I enjoyed Scouting as a boy, and thought I wanted to help other young fellows experience some of the good things I did,” Pettibone says, adding that he received his Tenderfoot rank in 1944 in Ludlow, Ky.

Since moving to Spokane, Pettibone’s troops always have met at his church, Central United Methodist, downtown. Of the church’s location on West Third, he says, “I always say McDonald’s is across the street from us, because we were here first.” He adds that the downtown site has allowed his troop to accept Scouts from all over Spokane County.