User:RobHoitt/About

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1 ALL ABOUT ROB... (Well, maybe not ALL about me, but enough to give you a good idea...)
2 Places I have traveled
3 Personal Tid-Bits
4 Scouting Biography
- 4.1 After 21
5 Userboxes & Memberships

ALL ABOUT ROB... (Well, maybe not ALL about me, but enough to give you a good idea...)

Places I have traveled

Countiries

U.S. States & Terrritories

Canadian Provinces

Major Cities

Personal Tid-Bits

Hello, Welcome to my page, finally I have added some personal information. Here's some things to help let you know a little bit about me... For now I have my Scouting Bio up, I will try to get more info up soon...

Scouting Biography

Growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire, Rob began his Scouting career a little earlier than most, as a "tag-a-long" of his older brother Steve at age 4. Rob was so entralled with his brother's Cub Scout Den he begged his mother to come along to every meeting, much to Steve's chagrin. When Rob's opportunity came, he took to the program quickly earning his rank and arrowpoints. Midway through his time as a Cub Scout, Rob's Cub Scout Pack had some internal issues, and Rob's parents took Rob out of the Pack. (Steve had just completed Webelos at that point.) Rob was heartbroken, and waited for his time to join the troop like his older brother.

To Rob, 10½ seemed like and eternity, but when the time came, Rob became a Boy Scout and quickly dove into the program. Almost 5 years to the day, and on the 80th birthday of Boy Scouting, Rob was presented with his Eagle Scout. While for some folks, the adventure may have ended there, Rob's love for Scouting and desire to go further led him in several different directions. Rob was blessed with a father and brother who loved the program, and guided him by both example and encouragement. (At this point, Rob's father was a member of the Daniel Webster Council's Committee, and his brother was the Lodge Chief for the Passaconaway Lodge, Order of the Arrow.)

Rob joined Exploring in the fall after earning his Eagle Scout. To Rob, Exploring was a new direction which neither of his family members had taken to. (Rob's father was an Air Explorer in the mid-fifties, but Exploring was radically reinvented in the late sixties to include many other interests, so in reality it was a vastly different program than what his father was involved in.) Rob went to his first national event, the National Exploring Conference in his backyard of Boston, Massachusetts in 1988. That event was to have a major impact on his life, in that it was there he met Beth, an Explorer from Maryland, who would eventually become his wife. (In fact he proposed to her on the way back from the 1992 National Explorer Conference in Columbia, South Carolina.) Rob was active on the Council level, serving on the Council's Explorer Officer's Association for several terms. Rob became the only person in the Daniel Webster Council to earn the Explorer Achievement Award, and was also the 1991 Daniel Webster Council Explorer of the Year.

Rob hadn't left his troop however, and was as active a Scout as he was an Explorer. He was inducted into the Passaconaway Lodge, Order of the Arrow in 1985, and went to the National Order of the Arrow conference in 1988 and 1990. He also was on the National Shows Staff of the 1989 National Scout Jamboree, where he was blessed to work with Stephen Speilburg. Despite having moved to Maine in 1988, he became the NE-1A Section Secretary in 1992.^[1]^[2]

[edit] After 21

For many youth in the Scouting program, life ends somewhere between 18 and 21. But for Rob, it really was a rebirth. He was surely at a crossroads, but inspired by his brother who had recently became a Professional Scouter, Rob knew that Scouting would be part of him no matter what direction he chose. Rob had contemplated becoming a Professional Scouter too, and had applied and was accepted to recieve the E. Urner Goodman Scholarship in 1993, which would have required him to become an employee of the BSA after graduating college. In the end, he elected to forefit the scholarship with the philosiphy that if he had to be a Scout for work, it would become work, and eventually it would lose the allure that it held for himself. Rob got married to Beth at 22, and the two of them became members of the Daniel Webster Council's Exploring Committee. Their son Gene was born in 1996, and the three of them attended the 1998 National Exploring Conference in College Park, Maryland where they were among the first to learn that the Exploring Program was being taken out of the Scouting program and moved onto Learning for Life.

Rob and Beth were without Exploring, but sometimes roads end to give us a chance to get ready nor new ones. Gene was slowly passing his toddler years, and Rob found himself running an electronics business in town. One of his customers, Walter Ardini was the curator of the Lawrence L. Lee Scouting Museum in Manchester, NH. Rob had been to the museum many times as a youth, and knew Walter and so when Walter came into the store looking for parts, the two would chat for hours about Scouting. One day, Walter asked Rob about amateur radio. Rob had worked in broadcasting for many years before going to work for the electronics store, and had become an amateur radio operator. Walter asked Rob if he could come by the museum to see if he could help the museum with their Jamboree On The Air program. Walter thought that JOTA was a great program, and he wanted to see if Rob could give it a little support. Rob came, and found another amatuer radio operator who had volunteered his day to come out and work with a half-dozen youth, and Rob gave him a hand. Rob saw a lot of potential in JOTA, all it needed was good support, and a solid promotion strategy to be a great event. Rob learned how to promote and plan for events back when he was a youth, and he knew that he had found his niche.

Rob knew for anything to work, he needed strong support, and so he first approached the New Hampshire Section Manager of the American Radio Relay League, Al Shuman, N1FIK. Al saw that Rob had unbridled enthusiasm, and he made Rob corral that enthusiasm by creating a strategic plan. The two worked on it for quite a while, when Al told Rob that he was going to appoint him to be the New Hampshire Assistant Section Manager for Scouting^[3]. Al had served as Section Manager for 5 terms, and giving Rob this mark of support gave his ideas almost instant credibility to the area's amateur radio community. Rob had a year to make the most of it, and he promoted JOTA at club meetings, hamfests, and Scout meetings. In 1999 JOTA had over 30 participants, which was a vast improvement. Seeing that Rob was dedicated to JOTA, Rob was asked to join the Daniel Webster Council's Museum Committee. Rob's goal was to see more particiaption every year, and he did. In 2004 it had nearly 100 participants, in 2005 it had 181 patricipants, and in 2006 it had 303.

As Gene got older, he joined the Tiger Cubs and Rob found himself vicariously back in the Cub Scouts. Starting as the Assistant Cubmaster, before being asked to be Cubmaster at a neighboring Pack. When Gene found his way onto Webelos, Rob became the Webelo's Den Leader. Rob and the fmaily moved to Virginia in the summer of 2007 which timed with Gene's crossing over into Boy Scouting where he became a member of the Troop Committee for his local troop. In November of 2007, Rob was asked to join the National Capital Area Council's International Committee to bring a JOTA program to the Washington, DC area.