This month Camp Rotary is opening its gates to all boys who are interested in becoming scouts. Our council-wide Spring Camporee is being held May 18-20, and our scouts are being asked to invite their friends to join them, as their guest, for a weekend of scouting events and activities.

Our younger scouts will have a full-day of activities, enjoy a picnic lunch and are being invited to stay for the evening Campfire Program that will be put on by our Order of the Arrow Lodge.

Our older scouts will spend the entire weekend camping under the stars and will learn about primitive cooking, how to set up a camp site, backpacking and will even get to traverse a monkey bridge and find out how they are built.

Parents are welcome and encouraged to visit and see first hand the great experience their son will have when he joins scouting.

Scouting teaches boys how to “be prepared” for life. Studies have shown that the longer a boy stays in scouting the greater the positive impact it has on his life. Over the years, I have seen countless examples of young boys who have used the skills and abilities they learned in scouting to help others and to help themselves.

I remember a German picnic at St. Joseph Catholic Church in West Utica many years ago. We had just organized a new Boy Scout troop there and all of our new Tenderfoot Scouts were helping at this church function when a sudden rainstorm took down one of the food concession tents. None of the church fathers could figure out how to get the shelter back up again. To the rescue was a 11-year-old Tenderfoot Scout who was prepared. He had just learned how to tie all of his basic knots including a taut-line-hitch the knot needed to get the shelter up again and saved the day.

Kevin Sterne honed his first aid skills as a Boy Scout in Troop 1313 in Washington County, Maryland. He learned that you apply direct pressure to a wound first and if the bleeding does not stop a tourniquet is used as a last resort.

Last month at Virginia Tech when Kevin's femoral artery was severed by a bullet, this Eagle Scout was prepared to save his own life. He tied an electrical cord around his leg, stopping the bleeding from the most serious of his four bullet wounds. A number of U.S. newspapers showed Sterne being carried to safety by four police officers - each holding one of his limbs.

Trey Perkins became an Eagle Scout in his hometown of Yorktown, Va. where he learned leadership skills and the responsibility he had for himself and for others. After seeing his fellow classmates shot at Virginia Tech on April 16, Trey recruited two other students to hold their classroom door closed preventing the gunman from re-entering the classroom and taking more lives. Perkins then went around the room tending to wounded students. He was prepared to help save other peoples' lives.

None of us know what life will hold for our children as they grow to become adults. All we can do as parents is to help ensure that our children are as prepared as they can be for whatever life holds for them. Working together with families, churches and schools, scouting plays an important role in shaping the lives of our sons and helping them to “be prepared” for life.

Don Grillo is the scout executive for the Cayuga County Council, Boy Scouts of America located at 7235 Mutton Hill Road in Auburn