Good Deeds

 Good Deeds

Noel Laflin

8-23-21

During a phone call with Greg Richards last night, where we spoke fondly about Fred LaVelle, and the positive impact he had made on both of our lives – as well as the lives of so many others, I mentioned that he, Greg, had been quite a role model for me as well.

I reminded him of how we met, back in the spring of 1964. The time and place is etched firmly in my mind as it was my first camporee in the old Golden Sun District of the now defunct North Orange Council.

My fellow patrol members and I were running down a steep grade – somewhere near the Santa Ana Riverbed, in what would eventually become the outskirts of Yorba Regional Park – or so I am guessing, as I was only eleven at the time.

In our haste to get to the next event, I tripped and bounced down the hill.

Within seconds, someone was lifting me up and carrying me to the first aid tent at the bottom of the hill.

The older Scout explained what he had witnessed to the caregivers and I was treated for scrapes and bloodied elbows. He also stuck around to make sure that I was alright afterward. He most likely knew about possible concussions, as I did not.

It was my first meeting with Greg Richards.  He must have been seventeen or eighteen at the time.

I believe I had instant hero worship of the man from that day forward.

Greg chuckled at the memory, recalling the incident himself.

“You know,” he said, “maybe that story should take place of the 4^th of July story you tell about me every summer instead.”  He was referring to the infamous nighttime hike up to the summit of Superstion Peak, in order to watch the fireworks over Lake Arrowhead.  What neither Greg, nor the rest of us (two hundred campers, adults and staff) knew, was that Arrowhead always did their fireworks display every July 3^rd.  So, bereft of this information, Greg kept reassuring everyone that the show was going to start any second – which of course, it never did. We all came down the two mile hike around midnight. Greg came to breakfast the next morning wearing a phony mustache and had changed his name tag to Rudy Begonia. He suddenly spoke with an Italian accent and denied any knowledge of someone named Greg Richards. And so the episode went down in history, some fifty three years ago.

“Perhaps there’s a new addendum to the story,” I told Greg; “about a camporee some four years before that.”

“That would work,” Greg laughed in reply.

So why wait till the 4^th of July, I am now thinking.