I recently came upon these 60+ year old photos of my 5 years as Scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 981, composed of higher-functioning boys at Chicago State Mental Hospital (formerly called "Dunning") on Chicago's far west side. While at Northern Illinois University, I had volunteered at Dixon State School, and after graduation, while I was teaching in inner-city Chicago, I recalled the great times at Dixon and began volunteering at Children's Ward 5.
We were given hand-me-down uniforms by the Chicago Council. The mothers of the boys gladly sewed all the patches on the uniforms, the nurses happily dressed the boys, and this is what the group effort accomplished. The boys loved their uniforms!
Dr. Ted Beck ran the ward and got us commissioned as an official Chicago Council scout troop...
The first few times, we camped just outside the grounds in the back yard of one of the houses the hospital owned (at Reed Center), and the boys loved being outside the fence. Had the weather turned ugly or if any of the boys had become frightened overnight, we had access to the house, but all went well and we only used the house for washrooms. The teepee was a tent I had acquired when a troop at my church disbanded, and you see the other adult volunteers who had joined my group. We also camped five times in the official Chicago Council Boy Scout camping facility called Camp Fort Dearborn which granted us special permission for female volunteers to camp overnight (the first time women had ever been allowed to stay overnight.)
We didn't often wear the uniforms because it was time consuming to dress the boys, but once we wore them as we hiked in nearby Schiller Woods Forest Preserve (photo below.) Once I took them to Foster Avenue Beach on Chicago's far north side (no uniforms) where we got some looks of surprise from beachgoers, but no comments, as my mixed-race group of boys went swimming. Another favorite activity of the boys was when we walked on railroad tracks on a siding for a company and where the boys were able to climb into an empty boxcar. How I wish I had had a cell phone with an ever available camera back in those days -- oh, the photos I could have taken of our activities!
