For the Good of the Program

For the Good of the Program: A Century of Middle Tennessee Scouting at Boxwell, 1921-2021 examines the history of Scouting in the middle Tennessee area over the last one hundred years.


Author Grady Eades argues that as society and Scouting have changed, so too has the summer camp program offered by the local Scout Council. In its earliest days, summer camp was a democratic training ground, building citizens from youth. Over the following decades, camp program reflected changing values in American society, from an emphasis on fatherhood and family in the 1950s to a stress on individual achievement by the 1980s.


For the Good of the Program utilizes newspaper articles and hours of personal interviews, as well as the Council's own records. It includes some big fish stories from former camp staff and explores some necessary rabbit holes, such as how the Council handled segregation and homosexuality both at the camp and in policy. It is the first book written on the history of the Boy Scouts' summer camp program in Tennessee and the second on the history of middle Tennessee Scouting in general.