A Winter breeze sweeps across a 17-acre lake at the Scout’s Camp McKee in Montgomery County. It’s peaceful and quiet except for the occasional sounds of ducks and geese.
Come Summer laughter and joy will fill the air here. Since the mid-1940’s, hundreds of thousands of scouts have camped and enjoyed Camp McKee’s woods and water. Through the decades, scout leaders have added new facilities to help make a week at camp a lifetime memory.
Among the upgrades were a new dining hall in 2003, a 50-foot climbing tower in 2002, and, in 2015, the McKee Aquatics Pavilion was built. New Scout Executive Jessica Moses says Camp McKee represents the past and the future of scouting in the Blue Grass Council.
“Absolutely, we stay very true to our roots here. I think if any of the alumni come back, they remember it just as it is. But we're also staying up to date with all of the new things that we can offer the scouts. We're always looking for the future and trying to stay up with making sure we're keeping things fun for them. We're making sure that they have everything they need. But we also want to keep that sense of home. And people remember Camp McKee as it is and can get that feeling of nostalgia when they come back here.”
Moses became the first woman Scout Executive to lead the Blue Grass Council. This past December, she officially took over the job of leading the scout council that comprises 55-counties from Lexington to Pikeville, and Maysville to Somerset.
Moses is one of only seven women holding the Scout Executive title among the 230 councils nationwide.
“I think it's amazing, because I have a daughter, and I want her to always know that any anything that you want to do, you can do it. It doesn't it. It's not something that you have to be a man. You have to be a woman. I think is if you work hard and you do what you're supposed to be doing, and you do your job well, then you can do anything that you want to achieve.”
As the number of scouts has dropped significantly across the country, the program has pivoted to become more inclusive and family friendly. In 2018 girls were allowed to join the boy scouts and form their own troops. Then last year the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) re-branded and became “Scouting America.” And in January this year the Blue Grass Council opened the door to boys and girls together joining a “family troop.”
Longtime board member and Scout Commissioner Bill Beach of the Blue Grass Council is encouraged by the new direction.
“So, boys and girls, brothers and sisters, and of course, moms and dads were already in the program, helping out, so it worked really well. It's a very good family-oriented program now. You've got girl programs, you've got boy-only programs, and we just recently introduced the family troop program. So that was just introduced January 1 of this year.”
Beach believes Moses is the right person to lead the council amid the changes. She worked for nine years for the council in various development and program positions.
“There were many things we saw in Jessica, but just to name a few, her management skills over the last 20 months of being an interim council executive far exceeded our expectations, and we were very pleased with how she handled all of that, her operational skills from the three positions she's held for the past nine years in the Bluegrass Council, which was district executive, then director of development and then interim counselor, Scout, executive, all three of these, she reached in her goals each year. The next thing that really showed out is her ability and her relationship building talent that she has throughout the 55-county area that we serve as a bluegrass Council. She not only has great relationships with the staff that she manages, but she also has great relationships with the 1000 volunteers that we have throughout the council, adult volunteers.”
As Moses sits next to a fireplace in a cozy cabin at Camp McKee, she looks to a new year of possibilities and challenges.
“I think everybody is looking forward to making scouting bigger than it's ever been. Scouting used to be very huge in America and in other countries even, and I think it's never going to lose its true meaning. It's never going to lose what scouting truly is, but the re-branding is just what every other company does. They re-branded, and it made sense for what the direction that we were going to include everyone, and it looks nice on letterhead and uniforms and everything else. I mean, you got to look nice. So, I think it was, was the right move, and I think it's been accepted very well.”
