2020 Memorial Scout Knife GAW

I am very late getting my giveaway going this year. It has been a crazy stretch for me, and I missed my brother's birthday this January, and it slid all the way to today, the anniversary of his death. I had been very busy with a newish permanent job, and two young children, and then at the end of last year, two of my best and oldest friends died within a week of one another (both suddenly, unexpectedly, and at the age of 42), and now on Friday my stepmother passed after a hard fight with cancer. It has been a real hard stretch, and the pandemic hasn't been helping.

Anyway, if this tradition has taught me anything, it is that giving knives away makes me feel better, especially when I can give them to kids that could use a good knife.

Background About My Brother

On May 14th, 2014, my baby brother died in a car accident. He was 13 years younger than me, but we were very close. When he was a baby we shared a room, and so I woke with him and fed him and changed him as an infant (which led my dad to mistakenly claim that August slept through the night from the beginning at one point). For a good chunk of his early childhood it was just him, me, and my dad, so my brother had a hard time understanding that he did not have two dads. As he got older that changed, but the semi-parental character always stayed a part of our relationship. After I moved out he moved across the country to live with his mom, who he stayed with for the most part until his death. Nonetheless, he always made sure to call me at least a couple times a month until he died. He was very good about keeping in touch. Much better than I am.

He did not have an easy go of it in life, and as he got on into his teenage years he had a lot of trouble with drugs and alcohol. He had a series of stints in rehab and a school for troubled teens. After high school he continued the same trajectory, and though he enrolled in a community college he was not able to keep clean and quickly dropped out. After dropping out of college he finally seemed to get serious about his recovery. After another stint in rehab he started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings regularly.

After years of expecting to hear that my brother had died of an overdose, he suddenly seemed to be back. His speech was clear, he was happy, he went back to school and was doing better this time. He held down a job and was active in the recovery community. He was optimistic and doing well, and I stopped expecting bad news. As it turned out he stayed clean for the rest of his life.

Four years ago my daughter was born, and my brother was thrilled to be an uncle. My wife and I made plans to fly him out with her brothers so all the uncles could meet Abby together.

A month after my daughter was born, late at night, he gave a friend a ride home, and then on his own way home, lost control of his car (driving way too fast) and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. His system was clean, he wasn't drunk or high, he was just driving recklessly (much as I had done at his age). He was 20 years old.

Though his car was just ten feet off the side of the road, near a housing development, it was more than four hours before anyone stopped to check on his car. In my brother's case it probably wouldn't have made a difference if he had crashed next to an emergency room, but we'll never know for sure. I include this detail just as a reminder that we are all in this together, and you can save lives just by stopping to check. I've saved a few folks over the years by checking on wrecks, and I've known other people who were saved by a passerby stopping. It doesn't take any special knowledge or skill to call 911 for a person in trouble, but you could save their life.


But on to the giveaway.

After my brother passed, his mother sent some of his things to me that had special sentimental value. When my brother was little he was very impressed by my sword collection, so when he turned 13 I bought him a replica saber. His mother sent his sword back to me, along with his babyhood favorite stuffed Barney for my daughter, and for my father she sent my brother's knife. My brother's knife was my dad's old Camillus Boy Scout Knife, and it was in turn my brother's adventure knife. Though my brother was not a Boy Scout, that old Boy Scout knife was special to him.

I wanted to be able to share that, or to help someone else share it. So my idea is to send a Boy Scout Knife out to someone to give to a youngster for their first knife. So I'm asking you to nominate someone else who you will give the knife to, but this year you can also enter for yourself (so that more people will participate).

Unfortunately, Camillus went bankrupt a while back, and even the new Camillus doesn't make an official Boy Scout Knife. In the past I have given away official BSA licensed scout knives, but I could not find an appropriate one for a kids first knife this year (Scoutstuff doesn't carry them anymore, and the only NIB true BSA Scout Knives I could find were expensive limited edition models from years past). So this year the child's knife portion of the GAW will be a Boker Magnum in ebony. I am quite impressed with the quality. There is no BSA medallion, but the knives are very well done (at least the one I opened to inspect).

This year's kids knife offering:





Please keep an eye on this thread, because I will add at least one other knife as the grown up prize. I have ordered a couple of knives through the BSA, and so I am waiting on those, and this GAW has a history of inspiring generosity from the community (obviously, that is not something that I can guarantee, but with this crowd it is pretty reliable. I even got gifts from Case a few years back that allowed me to give away some really nice Case BSA knives for a few years running.) The prizes are not all selected yet, but you can rely on some quality scouting appropriate knives to win.

Rules for this year:

• Open to everyone
• You can enter one time for yourself
• You can enter a second time on behalf of someone else, preferably a child that you will give the knife to (make sure it is someone that you can give the knife to without any problems), or someone working hard at their recovery.
• I will send the knife to anywhere in the US and Canada
• your entry will be your post in which you say "I'm in" AND tell me who you will give the knife to (whether to yourself or to someone you are nominating)
• You don't have to tell me why you are nominating someone, but I would appreciate it if you did
• Don't enter if there is some reason that it would be legally problematic for you to enter

I am going to let this run for a couple weeks. There usually aren't many entries, so the odds are good if you decide to enter

Note:

I was inspired by a @Charlie Mike giveaway a few years back, when he gave away a knife as a mitzvah following the passing of a friend and fellow recoverer. Since my brother was also in recovery when he passed I thought it was an extra fitting mitzvah. As I was nearing the anniversary of my brother's death, I thought this would be a fitting way to help make his memory be for a blessing. When I do this giveaway I like to mention the history of the tradition.

It is a sad and fitting note to this year's GAW that Charlie Mike has left us far too early after he too managed to stay sober for the rest of his life. He had just passed his five year sober mark. May his memory be for a blessing.

*********** Update **************

Prize updates!

Starting at the bottom of the picture, @willintheweeds much appreciated addition to the GAW is a lovely (new, only-taken-out-of-the-box-for-the-photo) Bear and Son Cub Scout Knife. This one, like all the others that Will has donated over the years feels like a great knife for the cubs in your life.

Moving to the top is a new-in-the-blister-pack Deluxe Scout BSA knife from Scout Stuff. These ones don't have a bail, but they do feature a handy Phillips head screw driver.

And then moving to the middle is actually my six-year-old daughter's addition to the GAW! There is a big knife show here in Eugene (most years, sadly not this year due to COVID-19) that happens to fall right around my daughter's birthday. We have been going together since she was a toddler, and I typically wander around and pick up a few scout knives for gifts. At last year's OKCA show, Abby was actually given this older Ulster BSA scout knife. She liked this knife, but the screwdriver/cap lifter is a real nail breaker, it isn't shiny, and more to the point, she usually uses her green Girl Scouts scout knife. So when I ordered the Deluxe Scout and another Cub Scout knife (not pictured), Abby fell in love with the shiny blue knife. She decided she wanted to trade her brown knife to the GAW so that she could add the blue knife to her growing little collection.

So I am glad to be able to add a classic Made-In-America, Boy Scouts of America Scout Knife to the GAW, courtesy of Abby. The Ulster knife is not new, and as you can tell, it isn't minty, but it does not appear to have seen a lot of use, and I put a decent edge on it for whoever gets the knife.

 

That's a good name