1984 PTR-Camp Cedar Valley Patch
| Description: In the summer of 1984, one of our own
became our next camp director. Brad Gallop, an Eagle scout, former lodge
chief and long time member of the camp staff under retired director Jack Roy,
took the leadership of our camp. Brad would continue in this role through
1986, until he assumed a professional scouter role in Tyler, Texas.
In the late fall of 1984, a fire originating in a kitchen exhaust fan did major damage to our dining hall complex. The kitchen and parts of the storage area were heavily gutted and the roof to the dining room burned away. The prior afternoon cleaning was being done to winterize the kitchen with an exhaust fan left on overnight to exhaust fumes from the cleaning. It appeared that during the night the fan overheated and started a fire. The fire burned unnoticed until the next morning when our camp ranger was returning to finish the clean up work. In addition to the kitchen equipment destroyed, most of our dining tables (which had been custom built by Singer Company in Trumann) were also lost. Fortunately, the large wooden roof arch trusses in the dining area were saved and usable, by encasing them to cover the scortches. Ironically, some our camp memorabilia such as trophy mounted fish and large replicas of our camp insignia were largely undamaged by the fire, yet still hanging on the walls. Jack Roy came out of retirement to help oversee the rebuilding process for the council and thanks to a lot of hard work by everyone, the rebuilt dining hall was open for business in time for the 1985 camp season. It was during this reconstruction that our all-electric kitchen was converted to gas in an effort to reduce operating expenses in the future. Later the "staff" or back porch of the dining hall was enclosed to provide more storage space. |
| Camp Location: Viola, Arkansas Designation: RT-47 Characteristics: White twill; Green rolled edge; 76mm. |
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