User:RobHoitt/About

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

Places I have traveled

Baseball Teams We Have Visited as a Family: Before those who know me nitpick too much, I have made a point of visiting Fenway Park many times. And I consider myself to be a Red Sox fan, my first game was in September of 1980, when I was 8 years old... My wife has joined me at Fenway a couple of times, but our son has never made the trip, so for now, we are not counting Fenway Park amongst the visited list... Stay tuned... As for those games we have visited, we've only seen one home team win, so we are running a .250 Home Team Win Average, but the one visiting team who lost was the New York Yankees, which didn't hurt any of our feelings too much... Personal Tid-Bits Hello, Welcome to my page, finally I have added some personal information. Here are 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 one of these days...

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 enthralled with his brother's Cub Scout Den that 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 arrow points. 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 an 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 that 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.

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 become 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 receive 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 forfeit the scholarship with the philosophy 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 for 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 amateur radio operator who had volunteered his day to come out and work with a half-dozen youths, 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, 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. 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 participation every year, and he did. In 2004 it had nearly 100 participants, in 2005 it had 181 participants, 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 family 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. In December 2010, Rob became the Advisor of a local Venturing Crew and became the District Venturing Roundtable Commissioner in March 2011. After a few years of success with the district level, Rob joined the NCAC Venturing Officers Association as an Associate Advisor, and later became the Council Venturing Chairman. In 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Rob moved to West Virginia, and into Shenandoah Area Council, and was asked to become the Council Venturing Chairman shortly thereafter. In January of 2024, Rob celebrated his 45th year in Scouting. Rob is still active with Amateur Radio, and served on K2BSA staff at the 2023 National Scout Jamboree.

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