Former Scouts rally the troops

Twenty-three years ago, two Boy Scouts from Troop 325 were immortalized in bronze when a Spokane artist used them as models for a national scouting award trophy.

Now a larger-than-life version of that statuette is being created to honor Scout leaders, including the man who spent more than three decades shaping the troop.

Dean Dinnison recently retired after 36 years as the troop’s Scoutmaster. His stepdaughter, Deborah Copenhaver-Fellows, is the nationally recognized sculptor who created the original bronze and will make the bigger version if local Scouts can raise about $125,000.

The Spokane Arts Commission is considering sites in Riverfront Park for the statue “Footsteps to the Future.” But the project would still need approval from the Spokane Park Board.

The Inland Northwest Council of the Boy Scouts hopes to raise money, in part by selling a custom patch that will be available by the end of summer. Sales of a similar patch raised about $7,000 for a statue of former Spokane Boy Scout Michael P. Anderson, an astronaut who was killed in the 2003 explosion of the space shuttle Columbia.

Some of Dinnison’s former Scouts traveled to Spokane from around the nation for a recent surprise ceremony featuring a U.S. Marine Corps honor guard and a display of some of the 3,800 slides that the 82-year-old Dinnison collected from Scout activities.

Steve Speer, of Virginia, an Eagle Scout and vice president of Hensel Phelps Construction Company, said he didn’t like Dinnison at first but quickly learned “what he was all about.”

“When you look at his philosophies and his discipline and the responsibilities that he forces on boys in that troop, it’s what I use today … to run a very large organization,” he said.

Eagle Scout William Stacey Cowles, publisher of The Spokesman-Review, called Dinnison a “great testament to the spirit of scouting.”

“He’s touched an awful lot of lives,” he said. “There are guys who claim they would be in jail if they hadn’t met him.”

Dinnison served as Scoutmaster from 1968 through 2005, working with more than 250 boys and coaching 54 of them to become Eagle Scouts, the Scouts’ highest youth rank.

Dinnison said he didn’t always follow Scout rules.

“I made things as difficult as I could and trained them to handle the difficulties,” he said.

Born in a log cabin in Pierce, Idaho, he wanted to be an Eagle Scout but obtained only the Scouts’ second-highest rank of Life Scout before his troop disbanded.

After studying engineering at the University of Idaho, Dinnison served in World War II and Korea, working his way from an enlisted Marine to captain.

Back in the Northwest, he was a manager for a company that sold chemicals to farmers and later worked as a financial planner.

War wounds prevented him from backpacking with his troop during his final decade as Scoutmaster.

“I figured the best thing I could do for my country and my community is to teach boys,” he said.

Each year, Troop 325 completed about 120 events, including 50-mile hikes, 100-mile bicycle trips, weekly meetings and service projects.

Seated in the Airway Heights home where he raises Arabian horses, Dinnison recalled some of his Scout adventures, such as running whitewater in two-man canoes that the Scouts built from kits. He taught the boys to swim through rapids.

Cowles said he remembers losing several canoes on Scout trips.

“He put us into situations that most of our mothers felt were way too dangerous,” Cowles said.

“Of course, we did too at first. Then we figured out there’s not much we can’t handle provided we’ve got the skills, which Dean taught us.”

Although Dinnison and his late wife, Leslei, had nine children and stepchildren between them, only his adopted son, Aaron, participated in Troop 325. Even before Aaron had reached the Scouts age of 11, he had four “50-miler” patches on his backpack.

Copenhaver-Fellows, who lives in Arizona, decided in the early 1980s that she would like to do a statue inspired by the leadership of her stepfather and boys in the troop.

Eagle Scout Todd Glass and Tenderfoot Jason Johnson posed as an older boy showing a younger one the way.

The Boy Scouts of America ordered 50 of the statuettes for national awards.

Copenhaver-Fellows later gave the troop the rights to make and sell the statues.

But she always wanted to create a monument-sized version.

The planned monument will be about 8 feet tall and should take about a year to complete, said Copenhaver-Fellows, who has created bronze statues for the Vietnam War memorial in Riverfront Park, the Bing Crosby statue at Gonzaga University and the Korean War memorial in Olympia.