By Ed Simmons, Jr.
cpreporter@lcs.net
For Boy Scouts who are a little too young or not quite rich enough to bunk onsite at the Jamboree full-time, Caroline County provided some alternate heavenly camping space down on Tommy and Jean Upshaw's farm way down on Mattaponi Trail, not far from Shiloh United Methodist Church and across the road from historic "Elm Grove," built around 1740.
Friday evening Tommy and Jean's farm was teeming with Scouts and Scoutmasters, with nine troops camping out – Troops 235 and 202 from Franklin, North Carolina; 901 and 57 from Chesapeake, Virginia; 237 from Orbisonia, Pennsylvania; 711 from Dunn, North Carolina; 159 from Simpsonville, South Carolina; 580 from Lilburn, Georgia; and Troop 236 from Raleigh, North Carolina. In all there were 165 Scouts, plus Scoutmasters.
Tommy and Jean have been hosting Scouts for Jamborees since 1989; their son Michael is an Eagle Scout from Bowling Green's Troop 173. They provide camping free-of-charge, with donations invited to help pay for the Port-A-Johns. "I don't ask anybody to give me anything. I just ask for one of their patches to go on that board over there," he said, pointing to a bulletin board with numerous troop badges tacked to it, nailed up on a tree. Tommy said he got his start helping the boys during Jamboree assisting Scoutmaster Joe Medley of Bowling Green Troop 173 host Scouts at "Red Barn View" in Bowling Green back in 1981.
Friday evening at the Upshaw farm they were treating the Scouts, many returning from visiting the Jamboree, to a cook out. There were numerous heroes at this occasion. Jim Gray, formerly of Milford Street in Bowling Green, and now a Scoutmaster of Troop 711 in Dunn, North Carolina, had brought a mountain of hot dogs and hamburgers donated by a Wendy's down his way. Then Tommy Harmon and his wife Lisa soon arrived hauling a big cooker on wheels, and starting in on the cooking were Robert "Teddy Bear" Martin and his son Cole, Vin Wright, Corbin and Lyda Bowie, and Ken Smith.
Meanwhile, Tommy's wife Jean and daughter Michelle Quigley, along with Mary Bowie and Pam Smith were at work cooking up 78 ears of corn they'd grown on the place, boiling it up in a 5-gallon pot. They had baked apples too, 40 of them grown on the Upshaw farm, but they got forgotten "in the hustle and bustle," said Jean, and the Scouts didn't get at them until Saturday. It was a merry party, the Scouts pitching their tents in neat rows. "There were Scouts out in the yard and all out in the field," said Jean. "That night about 10, three more troops came in."
Scoutmaster Richard Koomtz, of Troop 159 from Simpsonville, South Carolina, said he was feeling some pangs about perhaps never returning to the Upshaw farm. A tall, rangy man who looks like he could lead boys on hikes for miles and miles, he's been bringing Scouts here since 1989, and though he was glad to return and was enjoying occasion, he said he was feeling sad about the Jamboree maybe moving to West Virginia and the Scouts not returning to the Upshaws. "I'm feeling some mixed emotions about not coming back here," he said. "They've really been wonderful years, these 21 years here – wonderful years."
Boy Scouts also stayed at other Caroline locations, including at Park and Sue Dodd's farm "Holly Hill" on Richmond Turnpike. Twenty-seven Scouts and Scoutmasters from Greensboro, North Carolina camped on the Dodd's rolling acres from Wednesday to Sunday, attending the Jamboree daily.