Scouts’ Honor

It was an unusual time. And theirs was an unlikely group.

They were rebellious black teenagers meeting weekly to learn knot-tying, compass-reading and animal-tracking skills.

He was a white man with a love for the outdoors who found himself on the urban streets of Compton and Willowbrook.

But for nearly a decade in the tumultuous 1960s and ‘70s, Boy Scout Troop 1135 flourished as one of the few inner-city groups of its kind.

On Saturday, many of the more than 200 boys who belonged to the troop over the years gathered once again--this time to honor former Scoutmaster Steve Hauser.

Hauser is now a Santa Monica lawyer. His Scouts went on to become professors, accountants, insurance brokers--and in one case--famed rap artist Coolio.

“Of course, a few of them didn’t follow the Scout Law. And they’re in prison now,” said Hauser, 49.

Some in the crowd of about 40 former Scouts and their families attending a barbecue at a Long Beach park could relate to that.

“That’s where I’d probably be too if it wasn’t for Steve,” said former Scout Renard Stevenson, 39, now a Compton minister. “I’d probably either be dead, or have shot somebody and be in jail.”

Stevenson said he joined Troop 1135 as a sixth-grader after attending his first meeting--an excuse to look for something to steal at the Willowbrook Job Corps office where the Scouts met. His first camping trip to Lake Arrowhead turned his life around, he said.

He had stolen food from other camps and hidden it in his tent, Stevenson said. But when Hauser found out, he didn’t get angry.

“He said I must eat more food than other kids did, so he’d better start giving me more to eat. That changed me right there,” Stevenson said.

Dwayne McGee, a 38-year-old Compton freight handler, said he was “an angry, rebellious kid before Steve began exposing me to the brighter side of life” by taking the troop to baseball and basketball games, to church in Bel-Air and to camp-outs in Yosemite, the redwoods and Catalina Island.

“A lot of us didn’t have a positive, hands-on role model at home or in the community. Steve really exposed us to a whole new and different point of view toward life,” said Barry Toston, a 35-year-old tax accountant who lives in West Los Angeles.

Tommy Tucker, now a 41-year-old television producer from Barstow, recalled wearing a coat over his green Scout uniform to his first few meetings. “There was a lot of gang activity around, and it wasn’t cool to be a Scout. We wanted to hide it. But that passed.”

Quarter-century-old snapshots of the Scouts were displayed at the picnic. So were notes and letters Scouts wrote to Hauser.

“Dear Steve, I am very sorry about the way I acted on Monday evening at the Scout meeting and also about calling you a white man,” wrote Albert Clifford in a 12-year-old’s careful scrawl.

Race was rarely a factor with the troop, said Hauser--who became a Scoutmaster after he invited a group of inner-city youngsters to the UCLA fraternity house where he lived.

Hauser said he didn’t try to teach white middle-class values to the Scouts, “but human values.”

Former Scout David Bell, now a 39-year-old South Gate teacher, said youngsters could have spotted a phony.

“Especially in the post-Watts riot period you’d question people’s motives when they did things. But a kid can read somebody. When a kid finds out you’re sincere, you’ve got a friend for life.”

That’s the way it seemed Saturday in Long Beach.