The next time you hear someone get mired in politics when discussing the Boy Scouts you should remind them that these kids still do good deeds:
A troop of Boy Scouts on a camping trip saved an 18-month-old girl who had fallen in a river upstream from them and was floating face down, officials said.
The boys were swimming in the Platte River at Two Rivers State Recreation Area, about 20 miles west of Omaha, on Saturday when 11- year-old Christian Nanson spotted something floating in the water. It turned out to be a young girl.
Nanson and John Fitzgerald, 9, both member of an Omaha Scout troop, reached the girl and brought her to shore while others called for help on a cell phone, assistant scoutmaster Matt Fitzgerald told the Omaha World-Herald.
Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputy David Brock said the little girl, Stephanie Pacheco, was treated for hypothermia and released from a hospital Monday. The child had slipped away from her mother upstream, said Duane Arp, a conservation officer with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.
I’ve done lots of shows over the years for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and they remain among my most favorite audiences. Scout families are truly into raising kids who are good citizens. Next time there are screaming headlines in your newspaper about controversies involving the Scouts show people critical of the Scouts this clip.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.