Final Arena Show at Fort A.P. Hill's Jamboree

By Taylor Huber Monday, August 02, 2010

Bruton High School student Taylor Huber is a hometown correspondent at the 2010 National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill near Fredericksburg. He's part of Williamsburg Troop 1741, and is filing exclusive reports for WYDaily.

On Saturday July 31, the 2010 National Scout Jamboree held the final Arena Show that will be performed at Fort A.P. Hill.

The pre-show consisted of games by randomly picked Scouts and performances by the Trinidad Tin Drummers and Sarah Centeno, a 14 year-old from San Antonio, TX. Before 8 p.m. a recorded video showed Barack Obama, president, addressing the Scouts from the Oval Office.

At 8 p.m. there was a countdown to the beginning of the show and fireworks were lit at ze ro.

The show began with skits led by Alex Boylan from “The Amazing Race” and Burton Roberts from “Survivor.” There was also a parachute performance from the Army Black Daggers. Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazzuca rappelled down to the stage in order to address the Scouts.

They then had a few more games with randomly selected attendees, followed by a speech by Eagle alumni Mike Rowe from the hit television show “Dirty Jobs.” Rowe spoke about how a Scout should be clean, both morally and physically, but also not be afraid to dirty themselves with hard work. Rowe told a story from his childhood and how he did not enjoy Scouts the first few times he attended meetings, but then he learned to love what is hard and to never turn from work.

“Honor Society”  performed two songs and then left the stage while Mr. Mazzuca introduced the new site for the National Scout Jamborees. The 2013 National Scout Jamboree will be held in West Virginia and will be called “The Summit.”

The Scouts saw a slideshow of famous Scouting alumni. There were many familiar faces such as Neil Armstrong and George W. Bush.

The band Switchfoot took the stage and played two songs. In their second song, Switchfoot’s front man Jon Foreman left the stage and stood among the crowd. He asked everyone to turn off the lights and on the count of three everyone took a picture in order to light up the sky with camera flashes.

The Arena Show was an amazing experience and sobering when realizing that there will never be another National Scout Jamboree held at Fort A.P. Hill.

To close the show, there was a bonfire and everyone lit up their candles and on a three count everyone blew them out, and as soon as they did fireworks lit up the sky and lasted for 10 minutes.

The next Arena Show will be in West Virginia at The Summit.