Dean Poling: Doing our duty to honor Scoutmaster's memory

Apr. 23—Dean Parkins would always stand for the flag but he wouldn't stand for it being displayed wrong or in a poor condition.

If the American flag was displayed in an incorrect fashion — not the center flag in an array of flags, not the top flag on a flag pole, etc., Dean Parkins would either stop whatever he was doing and correct it himself or approach the person, demand they correct it then ensure the flag infraction was fixed.

During the reception of my sister's wedding reception, Dean and I were talking, when something caught his eye. The flags in the reception hall, the flags behind the band playing hits from the 1980s, the American flag was at the end of a line of flags.

You see the problem with the flags? he asked me.

Umm, the American flag should be in the center, I said.

Glad to see you learned something from Scouts, Dean Parkins said and off he went.

Dean walked onto the stage and rearranged the flags behind the band until the American flag was in its rightful place in the center of the array.

I have often wondered how he reacted in late 2002 and early 2003 when all of those flags flown in honor of 9/11, non-stop, in all weather, for more than a year faded, frayed, became tattered and torn. Those folks likely faced Dean Parkins demanding the battered flags be properly retired and replaced. I would not have wanted to have faced his calm anger and determination to see the flag treated properly.

But I'm thankful to have learned these lessons and others from Dean Parkins. He was my Scoutmaster back in the 1970s and early 1980s. He helped me earn my Eagle Scout rank. He was a larger-than-life character with character who was as devoted to the Boy Scouts as he was to the American flag.

He was in the Army and associated with the Army for more than 35 years. He retired as a sergeant major.

When our troop went on camping trips, Dean Parkins often donned his Army uniform instead of a Scout leader uniform. Often, he carried our gear to camp driving a Deuce and a Half, a 2,500-pound, Army-issued cargo truck. He hauled an Army water tank behind the Deuce and a Half, so our troop and other troops had clean water to drink during Camporees.

Being an Army sergeant wasn't for show, either. He could bark orders but he taught us the skills to respond to those orders. Get the tents up properly in rain and mud. We could do it and he'd remind us in emphatic tones that we could do it ... the sooner the tents were up, properly, we'd have shelter and could begin cleaning up from the mud.

Dean Parkins taught us lessons to see us through camping trips and earning our merit badges but he also taught us lessons to apply those same skills, determination and duty to our daily lives in the years and decades to come.

I am thankful for those lessons and thankful of having several opportunities to thank Dean Parkins for all of the lessons he shared and time he spent with us so many years ago. He shaped our lives. He changed our lives.

Further opportunities to thank him are gone. Dean Parkins passed away earlier this month. He was 87 years old. All that can be done now is thank his wife and grown children for sharing their husband and father with all of us Scouts. And do our best to do our duty to live up to the lessons he taught and the example he set.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.