Troop 20 History

As recounted by the late Donald Foust of Centre Hall, a community leader who was personally committed to Boy Scouting for over 70 years.

In 1914, a small Boy Scout troop was formed in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania. Known as Troop 2, it lasted until its numbers became too small due to the economic hardships of the Great Depression. In 1936, leaders of the Centre Hall Lions Club saw a need for scouting in the community and organized a new Troop. The Lions Club was the first Charter organization for the reorganized Boy Scout “Troop 20," which had a few more than a dozen boys and Benny Wagner as its first scoutmaster. Centre Hall resident Donald Foust, a 16-year-old, became a scout in the newly formed Troop 20 in 1936, and he continued to serve the Troop as its chartering organization representative until 2006--though he continued to be a friend of scouting and especially Troop 20. St. Luke Evangelical Church became Troop 20’s chartering organization in the 1950s.

Always adhering to the values and teachings of scouting, Troop 20 took on the task of helping the victims of the 1936 Lewistown flood. They delivered eggs and milk to folks in Lewistown to help them through their tough times.

Another Troop 20 project was the creation of the Cleveland Trail. Named in honor of the airmail pilot who crashed on top of Nittany Mountain in 1931, the trail followed a logging road. The scouts cleared small brush along the trail that leads to a small monument commemorating Cleveland’s life. To this day, Troop 20 maintains the Cleveland Trail, making it accessible to hikers.

Troop 20 charter member Donald Foust ( Photo at left is Mr. Foust during his WW II service with US Army Air Corps, 8th Air Force) remembered when in the 1970s there was a reform movement in the Boy Scouts of America to urbanize scouting. This essentially eliminated many of the outdoor activities such as camping and hiking that Troop 20 used as its core for building young men of character and old-fashioned know-how. Eventually, however, the BSA, Foust explained, “saw that it didn’t work, so they came back to the old scouting ways.”

Today, Scouts BSA Troop 20 continues to provide an exciting and enriching program of adventure and advancement for boys and young men in Penns Valley. Scouts BSA now also welcomes girls and young women into the program and new troops are forming in Centre County to accomodate the interests of families who wish to extend the full Scouts BSA experience to girls.

Through the years, Troop 20 has been led by outstanding and dedicated scoutmasters. Benny Wagner was the first Scoutmaster for Troop 20 after it was re-organized in 1936. In the 1940s, Bob Rhoades was the scoutmaster; his name is the first on the Troop 20 Eagle Scout roll of honor. Donald Foust served as scoutmaster from 1967-1972, and there were 54 boys in the troop at that time. Foust was followed by Reeder Sharer, Ronald Grove, Van Jodon, Daryl Doty, Eric Myer, Richard Hedden, Jeff Ayers, Marty King, Sal Nicosia, Art Gover and today's Scoutmaster, Mike Pase.

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Dedicated to the memory of Donald Foust (Sept. 5, 1920 - Sept. 22, 2011).