SCOUTING HISTORY 1980 ~ 1989

1981:
Members of the 505th Engineering Battalion of the North Carolina National Guard, North Wilkesboro, work at Camp Raven Knob to grade roads, to add space to the Babcock Dining Hall, to construct a new Rifle Range building and to rebuild a retaining wall at the Waterfront.

August 18, 1983
"Their motto is 'Be Prepared.' But executives of the Boy Scouts of America admit that they were not really prepared for the crisis they faced four years ago. Membership had declined to 3 million from a high of 5 million in 1972. The scouting movement is now on the rebound. For the last three years, there has been a steady rise in Boy Scouts enrollment figures...What has happened is partly a consequence of the Scouting movement's decision to change with changing times. Scouts today are as likely to get merit badges for expertise in computers or consumer values as for canoeing...In the 1970's, the scouting movement declined, for many reasons. Chief among them, said Barclay M. Bollas, national news editor of the Boy Scouts of America, was the unpopular Vietnam War. 'People connected the Boy Scout uniform with the military. It was the age of the hippies. It wasn't "cool" to belong to anything. It was "do your own thing" and anything organized suffered....' In 1980, with the aid of haute couture designer Oscar de la Renta, they [the BSA] redesigned the Boy Scout uniforms. Scouts no longer look like underage Marine grunts in green fatigues. They more nearly resemble preppies in khaki...."

The High Point Enterprise, p. 4B

[from the Orlando Sentinel]

1985:
Harold T. "Hal" Murray, Jr., becomes the Old Hickory Council Executive.

1986:
Units of the Old Hickory Council begin the sale of Trail's End popcorn to aid in the funding of Boy Scout activities and operations at all levels.

1986:
The offices of the Old Hickory Council move from the Hanes Community Center on Coliseum Drive to the Tobacco Square office complex on Oak Street near downtown.

1986:
The National Scouting Museum opens on the campus of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky.1987: The Boy Scouts of America launches an educational campaign entitled "Drugs: A Deadly Game" to make all Americans aware of the harmful results of drug abuse.

1987:
The Felix C. Hege Memorial Fund is established by his estate to provide scholarship funds to deserving Old Hickory Council Scouts. Hege joined Scouting in 1924 in Clemmons as a member of an early Boy Scout troop in the Winston-Salem Council.

1988:
The Boy Scouts of America and the Old Hickory Council launch a "Scouting for Food" program to help meet the needs of the hungry in the United States. This "good turn" becomes an annual project for Scouts and Scouters in northwest North Carolina.

1989:
After the completion of the successful capital "Campaign for Raven Knob," construction begins on the expansion of the Babcock Dining Hall and on the new Zeb Barnhardt Training Center at Raven Knob.