2016 Eagles Among Us: Rex Tillerson Keynote Address

Thank you. Well, it really is a special pleasure and privilege to be here tonight to help celebrate 100 years of Eagle Scouts in the Sam Houston Area Council. As many of you know, this Council holds a special place for me and my family. My father was a professional with the Boy Scouts for almost 28 years, and he spent the nearly last 20 years serving this Council before he retired back in 1987. I spent four years as the aquatics director at Camp Strake, summers of 1968, 69, 70, 72, and then I was about to enter my junior year of studying engineering, decided I guess future employers might want me to do some summer work in engineering, so I had to stop working Boy Scout camp.

But I want to talk to you tonight, and it's almost like a cliche when you say these things because every organization people say this about them, but it really is true that Houston, this community, our state of Texas, and America needs scouting today more than ever. And it's not a cliche. I've said it a lot over the years, but today it seems more relevant than ever when you look at the kind of role models that our young people are being presented with in current affairs today. The absence of honor, the absence of integrity, the absence of ethics. Where and how do we change that? And I'm sad to say that I don't know that we can do a lot about the current generation. You know, we can blame ourselves for it, but it is what it is. So I came to a conclusion a long time ago that the best thing I could do is try to help the next generation that's coming along start from a different place and give them different role models and give them a different set of values. And so that's really what scouting is all about.

We've been at it for more than 100 years, obviously 100 years in this Council. And as you've heard others express, while scouting has evolved in terms of how we deliver the program and how we engage young people, what has not changed are those values. And these values use words and expressions that regrettably are not part of the common lingo of youth today, or I would say not enough in our common lingo as adults. Words like honor. On my honor. I would guess that you could pick out 10 young people out of any high school today and ask them to tell you what does that phrase mean, on my honor, and they would struggle to tell you exactly what that means. But if one of them was a Boy Scout, they could tell you exactly what it means. And it is about the values that we instill in these young people.

So we capture them at the most formative age of their life in that Boy Scout era of 11 to about 18. And if we get them as a Cub Scout, we got a running start. But if we can capture them from that formative age of 11 to about 15 or 16 years old, while we hope and aspire for every young boy to become an Eagle Scout, and I know we're celebrating Eagles tonight, the truth of the matter is we know if we can capture them in the scouting program for even two to three years of those formative years, we will change who they will become. It will become part of their DNA. These words will become part of them. And these words are so critical from the oath itself, the three pillars of what we are instilling in these young people's DNA. On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and country. It starts with a recognition that there is something bigger than all of us. Duty to God, duty to country. That we are blessed to be born and live in a free nation, and with that comes a duty and a responsibility. So duty to God and country.

And then the second pillar is duty to others. On my honor, I will do my best to help other people at all times. At all times, mindful of the needs of others, looking for where people need that help. And that is the basis for servant leadership. And lastly, you have a duty to yourself to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. Because you cannot fulfill those other two duties if you have not taken care of yourself physically, mentally, and morally. So these are the three pillars that we teach these young people. Now, they don't realize they're getting this stuff. Some of you have heard me say many times, you know, when we bring young people in and we recruit these young people, we've never had a single kid put his hand up and say, 'I'd like to sign up to have my character built and my value system strengthened.' So we have to sneak up on them with these programs that are based in the outdoors, but more recently they're based around emerging areas of interest that kids have: STEM, science, technology, engineering, math. Great new programs, again remaining relevant. But all of that's really important, but what we're really doing is we're capturing their minds for a period of time in their lives where we can shape them.

So every Monday night at Scout meeting or wherever they are, they're going to raise that hand and they're going to say that oath: On my honor, I will do my best to do those three things. And then we give them an operating system. We operationalize how do you live your life that way, and that's called the Scout Law. And I talk to many business groups, and I know we got a lot of business leaders here tonight, we got a lot of young business leaders, we got some entrepreneurs. And I tell them, you know, if you were starting up a new company, whether you had five employees or 500 employees, and you needed a code of ethics or a business practices manual to give to your employees, you need to look no further than the Boy Scout Handbook and the Scout Law: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Now, if all of your employees did those things, don't you think you'd be successful? I know you would. So we're also teaching these young people then three pillars to live your life by and a system to help guide you in that.

And my scoutmaster minute, I was never a scoutmaster, but I was an assistant scoutmaster, so I got to deliver a scoutmaster minute every now and then. And my favorite minute that I always like to use with the young scouts is I would tell them, you know, as you grow up and you become a young adult, particularly when you get into high school, there's going to be a lot of tugging and forces on you. People are going to be trying to get you to do things. Groups are going to want you to go do this. They're going to be telling you, you know, it's okay to take this shortcut, hey, it's okay to cheat on this, everybody does it. And so you're going to just get buffeted by this stuff. And what you got to do is take those three pillars of that Scout Law and you make yourself a three-legged stool about this tall and you climb up on that stool and you use that Scout Law as a handrail around you. And when all of this storm is tearing at you, you grab a hold of that handrail, you stand on that stool, and you test every decision you make against that. And I promise you, I promise you, everything's going to turn out just fine and you're going to be great. That's worked for me.

And we know that if we can instill that in them at this formative age, whether they become Eagle Scouts or not, what we know is when they grow up, no matter what they decide to do with their lives, whether they're going to become carpenters, plumbers, school teachers, firemen, policemen, mayors of the city, politicians, presidents, CEOs, what we do know is they're going to be better fathers, they're going to be better family members, they're going to be better citizens in our communities. They're going to be the kind of people we want as neighbors. That's what we give back to the country through scouting. And they won't realize this is happening to them because they're having all this fun camping out and they're doing all these projects. But one day they're going to wake up in their life when they're having some measure of success and they're going to say, 'How did I end up here?' And then they're going to realize, 'I am who I am because I was a Boy Scout.'

The second thing we teach is leadership. We have the best leadership clinic anywhere. Dr. Bob Gates, former Secretary of Defense, former director of the CIA, former National President of the Boy Scouts of America, has said many, many times to many audiences, he said, 'You know, I got all that great training when I went to the CIA and I got all that great training that the military offered,' and he said, 'The truth of the matter is I only needed one leadership training course, and that's the one I got with the Boy Scouts of America at Philmont Scout Ranch when I was 13 years old.' And he said, 'Everything I ever needed to know about leadership, I learned it right there.' But not only do we teach it, but we operationalize it in those troops with that patrol method. You know, when you're 11 or 12 years old and suddenly you have to lead a lot of peers, in fact maybe you have to lead some boys that are older than you, and maybe they don't want to do what you want them to do, you learn a lot of valuable lessons. And importantly, you also learn how to be a great follower through that methodology because not everybody's going to be a leader. You may be a leader in one position but maybe you're a follower to someone else. And it's good citizenship. It's important to understand both of those roles because we lead, but as members of this nation and as citizens, we must learn to follow as well and be very productive in how we follow. So we teach that to young people as well. And through those pillars, then we teach them what it means to be a servant leader, that it's not about you, it's about how well we did together.

You know, one of my great experiences as a youth in this Council, Sam Houston Area Council, in 1969 I attended the 1969 Jamboree at Farragut State Park, Idaho, as part of the Sam Houston Area Council's contingent. It was the first time I'd ever been on an airplane. About 17 years old, never been on an airplane my whole life. Of course, didn't know I was going to live on one later, but early training from the Boy Scouts I got. So I attended the Jamboree at Farragut State Park, Idaho in 1969, and some of you will remember a very important event happened in August of 1969. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. And we were all at the Jamboree. Eagle Scout Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. And they set up these TVs with generators, black and white, so we could watch it all happen. And Neil Armstrong delivered a special message to the scouts at the Jamboree, and it was really inspiring. I was already very interested in science and engineering, and that sealed the deal for me. Watching them land on the moon, I said, 'I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go be an engineer.'

Fast forward about five years later, and I'm graduating from the University of Texas, getting my degree in civil engineering, and my commencement speaker is none other than Eagle Scout Neil Armstrong. So fast forward another roughly 10 or 15 years, and I'm at a scouting event and Neil Armstrong's there. And so I had a chance to go over and talk to him. And I told him that story. He just kind of smiled. He said, 'You can't imagine how many guys have come up and told me that story.' And I didn't ask him this question, but I always wanted to, and I've heard other people have said that he commented privately as to, you know, why did he not cash in on his fame? First man to step on the moon, he could have made a fortune out of that. But he didn't. Why? And I concluded, and a couple of other people have more or less confirmed it for me, that his value system wouldn't let it be about him. That Neil Armstrong understood he was there because of the efforts of thousands of other people. He just happened to be the guy that got to put his foot on the moon. But it all happened because there was a team of people directly behind him, and there were a team of astronauts that went into space before him, and he was just part of all of that. And it wasn't about him. He was honored to be the guy, but he never wanted to take away from their contribution by making it about him. That's a very Eagle Scout characteristic.

So when I was serving as the national president of the Boy Scouts, I had the honor to serve as the national president from 2010 to 2012, the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts. It was a great honor. And the first six months or so, people would ask me, some of my counterpart CEOs would say, 'I don't know how you have time for that, you know, and why are you doing that?' And I had the reason I'd give them, I'm really devoted to our youth, this program did a lot for me. But at our annual meeting that first year I was president, and at every Boy Scout annual meeting we have every year, we have two breakfasts. One is a duty to God breakfast one morning, and the next morning we have a duty to country breakfast. And the duty to God breakfast that morning, our speaker was a retired Methodist Bishop by the name of Will Willimon. And I had read some of Will Willimon's books. He's a great spiritual writer, great spiritual teacher. But I never met him. Turns out he's an Eagle Scout. And he gets up and he's telling this story about the very first campout he ever went on as an 11-year-old scout. He said, 'You know, we're all Tenderfoot, never been out. Our scoutmaster said, now boys, we're going to load up after school, it's going to get dark real fast when we get out to the campsite, so we got to have something real easy to fix for dinner. So bring some stew or a can of beans and weenies or something like that, you know, because we'll have to go to bed quick.' So he said we got out, we were all excited, we built our fire, we had our tent set up, we put our cans of beans and weenies in the fire, and in a few minutes cans of beans and weenies were exploding everywhere.

Will Willimon said his scoutmaster rushed over, just, you know, he just knew one of these kids was dead. He said he just rushed over, he pulled his neckerchief off, wiping beans and weenies off their face. 'You know, boys, you got to open the cans first. You can't just put them in the fire.' Will Willimon said, 'He was wiping the beans and weenies off my face. I looked up at him and I said, you know, being a scoutmaster is a really hard job. They must pay you a lot of money to do this.' He said, 'My scoutmaster looked down and he said, Son, they can't pay you enough money to do this. No one would volunteer to do this. Son, I was put here to do this. I was put here to do this.' And that's when it dawned on me. Why was I doing this? I was put here to do it. I was put here for this organization to promote its values, to help the next generation. And each one of you sitting in this room tonight, you may think you came here because you bought a ticket to come to a dinner, but I got news for you. You were put here. You were put here to support this organization and support this Council for the next 100 years. And that's what we're asking you to do.

And I'm living proof. I'm a product of the program, and there's a lot of other of you out there as well, that these values stay with you a lifetime. They guide every decision I make every day. And the reason I can confirm that to you is I got my Eagle Scout award 51 years ago. I was a Tenderfoot 53 years ago. And there's absolutely no reason that a CEO running a very large corporation with everything else that I deal with still carries around with him every day the words to the Scout Beeper, which our scoutmaster had us sing at every campout before we go crawl in our sleeping bags and get in our tents for the night: Softly falls the light of day, as our campfire fades away. Silently each scout should ask, have I done my daily task? Have I kept my honor bright? Can I guiltless sleep tonight? Have I done and have I dared everything to be prepared? Prepared for life. The Boy Scouts of America. God bless you all. God bless the Boy Scouts.