Keeper of the Flame: Troop 3 Scouts

There are precious few institutions in town older than Troop 3 Scouts in Manchester.  And of those, none are youth organizations.

Toop 3 was founded in 1917, the year American soldiers were heading into World War I.  Since then, Troop 3 and its Scout House on School Street have endured for 108 years—teaching generations of Cape Ann youth how to lead, how to serve, or how to pitch a tent in the rain.  And, as it happens, how to do a whole lot more, from scuba diving to climbing mountains to dogsledding on the Boundary Waters of Canada to carving and throwing spears (before burning them in a ceremonial campfire).

The troop began as a fraternity of civic-minded boys, the traditional “Boy Scouts of America”.  Today it’s co-ed—part of Scouting America that widened membership to girls in 2018—with more than 30 members drawn from Manchester, Essex, and surrounding towns.

“In a world of politics and social media that pit people against each other as much as they connect, this is a positive message by anyone’s standards,” said Fred Rossi Jr., 63, who has been involved in scouting since joining as a 12-year-old in 1973.  He’s led 100s of Scouts across New England’s peaks, including the 4,000-footers of the White Mountains in all seasons.  And there were smaller trips, too — camping at Crane’s Beach in Ipswich, where cooking and campfires were matched with trail maintenance.

Troop 3’s unofficial historian is Tom Kehoe, 77, a 1966 Troop 3 Eagle Scout.  He can still recite the names of Eagle Scouts from the 1930s, and he recalls the troop’s peak years with clarity. 

“Each project mattered,” Kehoe said. “Each left something behind.”

Kehoe calls himself “the keeper of the flame.”  At its peak, Troop 3 counted more than 125 Scouts.  That was back in the 1960s and 70s, when demand was so great that additional meetings were added.  That popular drove the creation of a second unit, Troop 82, organized in 1974 by Alfred Rossi Sr.  His son Fred Jr. started Scouting before he was a teenager and became an Eagle Scout in 1980 by running a town-wide campaign for the March of Dimes.  Fred is still involved, leading many of Troop 3’s most ambitious and daring trips.

“I’m 63 and there isn’t much I’ve spent 43 years doing continuously,” said Fred Rossi.  “It’s amazing that at six years old these kids start as Cub Scouts.  At 12, they become Scouts.  Six years later they emerge and for many their lives have been transformed.  It sets the trajectory for the rest of their lives.”

Adventure and service defined much of Troop 3’s history.  In February 2013, Scouts traveled to the frozen Minnesota-Canada Boundary Waters for a winter dogsledding trip.  They camped on the ice, woke covered by a foot of snow and below zero temperatures, and spent five days living Arctic-style—seeing snowy owls by day, sleeping under the Northern Lights at night.  Even for boys from Cape Ann, the cold was a shock.  Three years later, they returned, Rossi said, this time in summer, canoeing the region’s complex lake system. 

The five boys from that original trip went on to careers as diverse as an Army Black Hawk medevac pilot, a PhD physicist at MIT, a vice president at an energy firm, a Delta Airlines training officer, and an international studies scholar.

The Troop’s service has also had surprises that stretched far beyond Manchester.  When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, Troop 3 “adopted” a troop in Gulfport, Mississippi, sending camping stoves, uniforms, and supplies.  It was a humbling and empowering time for the scouts in Manchester.  Seven years later, after Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey, Troop 3 adopted another troop, in Elberon, N.J.

Not every memorable night has involved faraway expeditions.

In 2014, Troop 3 held a “Carve and Throw” night as part of earning knife certificates.  Scouts carved spears, took a single throw at a hay bale target, and then consigned their creations to the flames.  (The youngest Scout, Finn Carlson now an Eagle, won “best spear.”)

For another challenge, Troop 3 held “Appliance Deconstruction Night,” where they took apart a broken washing machine, a dryer, and a stove.  Given only tools — and no instructions — the boys were told to simply, “figure out what was wrong with the appliances.”  What did they do?  Well, they organized, researched, and worked in teams.

“It was fascinating,” Rossi said.  “So powerful to watch.”

This year will bring a new milestone when Manchester’s Cia Donahoe becomes the troop’s first female Eagle Scout, reflecting a national trend.  And the Eagle badge isn’t just symbolic.  A 2012 Baylor University Gallup survey found that Eagle Scouts score significantly higher than peers in health, leadership, civic engagement, goal setting, and character — evidence that the rank correlates with lifelong personal and civic development.

“I’ve become familiar with Scouting in other regions of the country, and Troop 3 is truly uncommon,” said Chrisian Dumont, 29, a Troop 3 Eagle and outdoor enthusiast who now works from Colorado for a hedge fund.  “It shows in all the Troop 3’s challenging outdoor trips, hiking or diving.  But you really see it with the Eagle Scout projects.  They’re very impactful and very different.”

And it’s true.  In 2010, Tyler Rossi (Fred Rossi’s son, making him the family’s third generation Scout) planned a 2,000-sf vegetable garden for his Eagle Scout project.  Over the next 12 months, he with fellow Scouts and adults tended the garden, and 12 months later, they harvested their crop. 

It was a proverbial “bumper,” producing more than 500lbs of winter squash that was all donated by the troop, in person on a truck, to The Open Door food pantry in Gloucester.

In 2016, Jack Haynie’s Eagle Scout project expanded on hiking partnership the Scouts had initiated with students from the Perkins School for the Blind for his Eagle Scout.  He led a novel program to create a hiking map and trail marking system—produced entirely in Braille—of the Manchester Essex Woods with the Manchester Essex Conservation Trust (MECT) and the Perkins students.  The Braille markers remain to this day on the MECT trail.

“Working toward Eagle Scout taught me the discipline of committing to a long-term goal. Even the routine parts were meaningful as steps in a larger journey,” said Dumont.  “That experience gave me and my fellow Scouts persistence and a long-term mindset.  I still rely on today.”

To raise money for all its programming, the Scouts have depended primarily on two familiar fundraisers: selling holiday Christmas trees at the Scout House and managing summer beach parking at Harbor’s Point, collecting a portion of the day rates.  Of the two, it’s the beach parking that drove most of Troop 3’s earnings. 

The late 2010s and early 2020s brought choppy waters.  Nationally, in 2019 the Boy Scouts of America began admitting girls, and became just “Scouts,” fundamentally forcing a culture change.  Then, right after that in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic halted in-person gatherings.  For many troops, it was the end. 

For Troop 3, it proved to be a lean time.  Membership shrank to 12 Scouts.  But then, as social distancing restrictions lifted, two things happened.  First, girls were no longer “girls who could join Scouts” but simply were Scouts, naturally working alongside their male counterparts and assuming leadership just like them, without need for special notice.  Then, post-pandemic, there was a hunger for real-world community.  Many parents and kids—many from Essex, Gloucester, and Hamilton—looked beyond screens, and they found it in the Scout House at 74 School Street in Manchester.

Troop 3 grew from a shaky dozen members during the pandemic to more than 30 today, with a thriving Cub Scout pack feeding into it.  The troop has a vibe that feels decades ago, when the look of Scouting may have been different, but the energy and connection is the same.

But, early this summer, the Scouts faced a new challenge.  After more than 50 years, they learned they’d no longer be allowed to manage parking at Harbor’s Point.  It was a big blow.

Troop 3’s leaders decided they’d turn the loss into an opportunity by launching a campaign to build an endowment, securing its financial future. 

“We decided we would create an endowment and that’s how we’re going to take care of the next 50 years,” Rossi said.

In its first three months of calls, it raised 60 percent of its $200,000 goal.

Troop 3’s next century will look different from its first.  From the boys who once carved spears, to the girls who are now earning their Eagle rank, Troop 3 has changed.  And, yet, in so many ways it’s the same as it ever was: not flashy, not fleeting, one generation at a time.

Click here to see the Troop 3 Photo Gallery.