Vista Scouts honor the memory of Bill Bongiorno

A beloved former Cubmaster was recently honored by Vista-Lewisboro Cub Scout Pack 101 with the presentation of the second annual Bill Bongiorno Excellence in Scouting Award.

Bongiorno is remembered for his spirited personality, flair for organization, and talent for recruiting and motivating volunteers. These attributes were key in his helping to maintain regular Scouting activities during the Covid pandemic when other packs were scaling down or going virtual.

The award, described by outgoing Cubmaster Brian Pouliot as “the highest honor that we as a pack will now bestow,” was created in 2024 as a lasting tribute to the long-time South Salem resident and business owner.

Bongiorno served as Den Leader and later Cubmaster of his son Will’s pack from 2019 through 2022, prior to becoming a leader of Boy Scout Troop 101. He passed away in May of 2023.

Bongiorno had been a pillar of the Lewisboro community for many years as an active volunteer and fundraiser for numerous charitable, community, and civic organizations. In April 2023, he was awarded a proclamation from the Lewisboro Town Board for his fundraising and other efforts on behalf of the Lewisboro Baseball Association.

The Excellence in Scouting Award will be presented annually to a youngster between Kindergarten and the fifth grade who most embodies the Scouting code – the pledge to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent – while also showing a desire for growth and advancement that Scouting seeks to foster.   

This year year’s honoree was announced by Bongiorno’s wife, Robbin, at the pack’s annual Blue and Gold Awards Ceremony held on June 14 at the Vista Firehouse. After recalling her husband’s long-term dedication to the Scouting movement and his love for the scouts, “whom he considered an extension of his family,” she presented an engraved commemorative plaque to 9-year-old Madoc Chamberlain, a third grader in the Katonah-Lewisboro School District. Currently at the rank of Bear, the young scout has already set his sights on one day becoming an Eagle Scout.     

In attendance were some two dozen Cub Scouts and their parents, assistant Cubmasters and Den Leaders, as well as Scouts in their teens who were joined by their leaders from Troop 101 in Vista and Troop 15 in Redding, Conn.

The culminating event of the Scouting year, the Blue and Gold Ceremony recognizes the advancement in rank and other achievements of the Scouts over the previous months, and acknowledges the efforts of the adult leaders for making possible the pack's varied roster of fun and enriching activities.

Also featured was the traditional “crossing over” ceremony, in which Scouts exiting the fifth grade walk over a wooden bridge to formally graduate to the Boy Scouts, now known as Scouting America, and shake hands with their new troop leaders.

After “graduating” to Boy Scout Troop 101 himself when his son turned 11, Bongiorno continued to inspire some of the same Scouts he had guided from their earliest days in Scouting. He served as merit badge counselor and Trail to Eagle mentor, while also recruiting a new assistant leader who is among those now guiding a number of senior Scouts.

Apart from his leadership, team-building, and problem solving abilities, the former Cubmaster had other talents that endeared him to youths and adults alike, and bring a nod and a smile to their faces even now.   

“Bill was also the greatest campfire storyteller we’ve ever had,” Pouliot recalled. “One time, when we ran out of stories, Bill kept the kids riveted well into the night with child-friendly versions of 90s action movies."

The former Cub Scout leader also took delight in spinning suspenseful yarns from his own fertile imagination.

“Bill’s favorite story, told with great theatricality, and one that all of us best remember, was the ‘purple gorilla’ story,” Pouliot told his assembled audience. More than a few grins were evident in anticipation of the brief synopsis to come.

The fantastical fable, invariably narrated in eerily embroidered detail, evoked a vivid picture of his hair raising encounter with a mythical purple gorilla in the dead of night, in the dusty cobwebbed attic of a kindly homeowner who had once given him shelter when his car broke down in a lonely countryside.

The amusingly spooky tale gave rise last year to the creation of a commemorative “purple gorilla” pin. It will be presented along with the plaque and worn on the pocket or lapel of future Excellence in Scouting Award honorees.   

On a more serious note, Pouliot, who served as den leader during the pandemic and was groomed by Bongiorno to succeed him, is quick to credit his predecessor’s role at that key time. Like other students in more advanced grades, his 9-year-old son, Wyatt, who was in Kindergarten at the time, was banned from the classroom and stuck at home, staring at a computer screen for hours a day, without the company of other children.

“For a time, our Scouting events were the only face-to face interaction these kids were having with their peers. So it was huge," Pouliot recalls.  

As he began his introduction of the award, the Cubmaster said, “I like to tell people that anything you see here that looks like it’s going well, you can attribute to Bill, as an echo of what he set in place, and the path he set us on.

"Anything you see that’s not going well,” he added, and paused as the chuckles began, “that’s on us.”    

Reprising remarks made at last year’s inaugural award presentation, he concluded, “In my mind, and to many of us, Bill will always be the real Cubmaster of Pack 101.”