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Joyous Jamboree turned disastrous
Scout leader recalls tragedy that ended with deaths of four
 | A group of Boy Scouts walk back to their base camp at Fort A.P. Hill in Bowling Green, Va., on Tuesday, a day after the deaths of four Boy Scout leaders at the National Jamboree being held there. |
Haraz N. Ghanbari / AP |
The Washington Post |
WASHINGTON - Larry Call told his wife that he wasn't sure if it was a few seconds or a few minutes. But as he gripped the metal pole and hoisted it beneath the sprawling white canopy, he found himself suddenly paralyzed, frozen full of electricity and a pain he has not yet found words to describe.
He was jolted to the ground and lay there, barely conscious under the canvas, Paula Call said in a telephone interview from Alaska. This was the end, he thought. He looked around at it.
There, hurled to the ground along with him, were the men with whom he had just been happily working, setting up a huge dining canopy at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, a jubilant moment in their lives as Scout leaders and, for some, as fathers.
There was his close friend, Mike Lacroix, apparently unconscious but breathing. There were Scott E. Powell and Michael J. Shibe -- with whom he had planned this trip to Virginia for years -- their bodies twitching from the shock. There was the Scoutmaster, Ronald H. Bitzer, his body on fire.
He looked around for his 15-year-old son, Kendell. He wanted his son to come to his side, but he couldn't speak, couldn't call out his name.
But Kendell, who had witnessed the accident, came anyway. And then something happened there on the floor -- some words or gestures that no one perceived but them.
"Some things happened between father and son," was all Paula Call would say, and is more or less all she knows. "My husband just said that for some reason, Kendell almost pulled him right back to life."
Lacroix, Shibe, Powell and Bitzer -- who journeyed with Call, three other leaders and 72 Scouts from Anchorage to Washington, D.C., and finally to Fort A.P. Hill, Va. -- died after the pole they were hoisting Monday afternoon struck a power line that they apparently could not see from under the canopy.
Along with Call, who was burned on his hands and feet, a contract worker was injured. Both were hospitalized in stable condition yesterday. Another contractor and a Scout were less seriously injured.
Boy Scout officials revealed little about the investigation yesterday. The jamboree went on, even as sons boarded planes for the long flights home to Anchorage, the place they had excitedly left last week, their uniforms pressed, their duffels full of tents and stoves and supplies.
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