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The history of Troop 235 is a brief outline that has been obtained from interviews with some older scouters, an original scout, and an early Eagle Scout. The first troop assembly was in 1960 with two brothers, William, Jr. (Buddy) about age 15-16, and Steve, about age 13. Mr. William Vandal was the scoutmaster and father. He came from St. Louis. Apparently the boys were active in scouts before their father moved. The family joined Red Hill Lutheran Church. Mr. Vandal formed the original troop to further his sons scouting. He was scoutmaster for the first four to five years. The boy scout troop was chartered by the Orange County Council, in about 1962. This information is from Bruce Radomski, a scout with the troop in 1961 or 1962 to about 1966. The boys sang songs for about ten minutes at the end of meetings, which they enjoyed. The meetings were in the fellowship hall and much like our meetings today. The days of the meetings changed from Mondays to Thursday and then to Tuesdays. The troop sang in church often and the church enjoyed them. Bruce was about 12 when he joined with about 15 to 20 other scouts in the troop with two patrols. The troop was very active with two camp outs per month, every month including the winter and the summer. The trips included going to the desert, the river, the mountains, and the beaches. Snow trips and high sierra mountain trips were included. Bruce was in the troop 3 to 4 years and reached the star rank. He remembers the Sierra back packing trips the best. These trips were one-week trips with little food taken along and drinking water taken from streams. He recalls that Steve Vandal was the SPL for most of the early years. The troop remained about the same size. His father, Stan Radomski, became the next scoutmaster in the middle of the 1960's. Stan had been a boy scout and enjoyed the camping. He may have been an Eagle Scout. The next part of the history comes from Mr. Don Kragenblink, who became the scoutmaster in 1967 until 1988(??). He recalls Stan Radomski as one of the first scoutmasters but was not sure if he was the first. He recalled a banker (Mr. Vandal?) being a scoutmaster. Charlie Cox was scoutmaster before Mr. Kragenblink for a year or two. Mr. Kragenblink had five boys in the troop with one becoming an Eagle. During this period, Mr. Elmer Diebert had the idea for the Christmas Tree Lot. He believes the first year was 1967 at the corner of Irvine and Prospect (now Columbus Tustin Middle School). Danny Diebert is his oldest son and Barry Diebert, a member at Red Hill Lutheran Church, and occasional helper with tree lot work, etc., knows the history as well as anyone for this period. |
When asked about attendance, Mr. Kragenblink's response was scouts were expected to be at all events. During this time, the annual Colorado River trips were started. This included inviting other troops along. The troop had grown and had five or six patrols plus an patrol for older boys. Mr. Rex Cantrell was an Eagle in 1969, and a core group of about five
Eagles started an explorer group that survived
a couple of years. Rex now lives in Loveland, CO. and has photographs
of being on top of Mount Whitney. Mrs. Sandy
Jurkowski provided rosters to me that included Mr. Cantrell's name and
number. A lot of other eagle names are
listed, but only a few have been called so far. This is an on-going project
for the next historian. |