Even at the age of 80, Ken Cole Jr. is still a Boy Scout. Starting at the delicate age of 12, when he first joined the Boy Scouts, Cole, a Windham native, has had Scout in his heart. Although he never made Eagle, Cole has done just about everything else there is to do in one of the oldest international youth organizations.

Cole joined the Scouts in 1936. Not allowed to become a Cub Scout, the young Cole got a chance to join the group that met at the Highland Lake Grange Hall.

“I was never a Cub Scout because my religion (Quaker) in those days didn’t believe in Cubbing. The Catholic Church didn’t. The Quaker Church didn’t. And the Mormon Church didn’t, because they thought that was family time. So you could become a Boy Scout but you couldn’t become a Cub Scout,” he said.

While Cole quickly moved up the Scouting ranks to the penultimate Life badge, he also joined a Sea Scout troop in Portland rising to the highest level, Quartermaster.

Then the Second World War came and changed Cole’s direction.

His Sea Scout experience came in handy as he became a pilot and navigator of small boats in the Transportation Corps of the War Department. His job was to deliver men and goods to the North Seas, Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Seas during World War II.

“We had a song, ‘We take them there; we take them back; and our troubles we never lack,” Cole joked.

Cole was 21 when he got back from the war and immediately became a Scoutmaster in Windham. At the time, Windham hadn’t had a Scout troop for about a decade so the harvest was ripe and within a week Cole had 150 boys eager to learn all that the young Scoutmaster could teach them about the outdoors.

“There wasn’t much competition in the old days and people wanted to be in the troop,” he said. “After I was a Scoutmaster of that big troop, I decided I should become a professional Scouter.”

But the paid Scouting career had to wait for Cole because the person who would have hired him didn’t want former military officers in the Boy Scout organization. But Cole outlasted the man who wouldn’t let him in. In 1958, after a decade of working at Portland’s Cushman Bakery and in the adjutant general’s office overseeing veterans’ affairs, Cole became Boy Scouts of America’s district executive in Somerset, New Jersey.

After four years there, Cole moved up to the national staff in the role of national director of volunteer training for the entire country. During his time on the national staff, Cole also had the prestigious position of director of the largest Boy Scout camp in the world, Philmont Scout Reservation in Cimarron, New Mexico.

“Over a period of eight weeks at Philmont, you have 600 boys coming everyday and 600 boys leaving everyday and you have 1,800 or more there all the time. And you have 725 on staff. It was a big job, but one I loved,” Cole said.

While at Philmont he hob-nobbed with famous politicians, artists, and business tycoons who all had ties with the Boy Scouts.

“I made quite a few friends and acquaintances, you’d be surprised who I met,” he said.

Cole was good friends with people like billionaire and former presidential candidate Ross Perot, American artist Norman Rockwell, gold baron Charles Engelhard, tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone and department store icon J.C. Penney. He convinced many like them to help the Boy Scouts financially.

“All the heads of industry are active on the national executive board and you work with them all the time,” Cole said. “Take, for example, Charlie Engelhard. He’s got his name on every gold bullion in this country almost. I recruited him as finance chairman not because I thought he could ask people for money but because I knew he couldn’t fail. If we were short at the end of the campaign, he’d simply write a check.”

Cole, a longtime columnist for Windham’s old Suburban News and the new Lakes Region Suburban Weekly, put his writing skills to good use for the Scouts by writing the Boy Scout Fieldbook in the 1960s. Cole was and still is considered one of the most authoritative experts on wilderness survival in the country. In fact, longtime friend Euell Gibbons (of Grape Nuts fame) said in his book Stalking the Good Life that if he were lost in the wilds he’d want Ken Cole Jr. to help him survive. Cole’s Fieldbook, so successful that it was published under four different covers over a period of couple decades starting in 1968, was chock full of information regarding the outdoors.

During promotion of the Fieldbook, Cole even appeared on multiple television game shows such as This is Your Life, I’ve Got A Secret, and To Tell The Truth. He also appeared on Merv Griffin.

At home now with his wife Lena on the land he was born on off the land of Nod Road, Cole is still as active as he can be. In addition to volunteering for Maine Medical Center and AARP, he is still active in his beloved Boy Scouts. He attends Eagle Scout award ceremonies, speaks at local Boy Scout gatherings, and writes articles on survival techniques for Scout training materials.

Cole is also concerned about the future of Scouting. He sees school sports as Scouting’s main competition both locally and nationally. But being the survival expert he is, Cole has great hope that Scouting will have a long and prosperous life even after he’s gone.

“I think Scouting is as relevant today as it was when I got involved in 1936,” he said. “But it has much more competition. Sports like football, baseball and soccer, for example, demand so much time. But everyone loves the outdoors sooner or later, so I’m not too worried about it.”

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