Michael J. Anuta - National Council

Excerpt from Michael J. Anuta: an Autobiography

Privately published, c2006.

Used by permission of the editor, Janet Anuta Dalquist

After serving as president of the Nicolet Area Council I became a member-at-large of the National Council. I served in that capacity from 1946 until 1975. I was also named representative of the Nicolet Area Council to the National Council and served from 1946 to 1975. I was active in Region Seven for some twenty years. While working with that region I was asked to make an inspection of Camps Hiawatha and Gardner Dam for the National Camp committee.

I believe it was in 1975 that there was a reorganization of Scout councils in the United States. The Nicolet Area Council merged with several other councils and became the Bay Lakes Council of the Boy Scouts of America. I have served on the advisory board of that group since it was organized. I have known all five Scout executives, Messrs. Tarr, Bucklin, Olmstead, James D. Stone, and Ricky Williamson. In the Nicolet Area Council I recall Peter Norg, Edwin A. Schwechel, Hugh Sargent, Art Lindgren, Craig Uncapher, and James Gribble. Of course, there were others whose names I cannot recall. All these leaders laid the solid foundation of Scouting in this region.

I attended National Council meetings in Milwaukee, San Francisco and Detroit. At the forty-ninth annual meeting in San Francisco I saw James Stewart invested with the Silver Buffalo. I met Chief Scout James E. West in person at the Milwaukee meeting. I attended the fifty-first annual meet-ing in Milwaukee. We met with Commander Thomas J. Keene, head of our National Sea Scout program and were greatly inspired with his leadership. Mr. Urner Goodman of the national office visited us, and Marianne and I entertained him in our home on Michigan Avenue. We had a small dachshund at the time, and Mr. Goodman recited for us a bit of poetry about dachshunds:

“I had a little dachshund, one so long he had no notion
How long it took to tell his tail of his emotion,
So it was that though his eyes were full of woe and sadness
His little tail kept wagging on because of previous gladness.”

In about the year 1948 I had the privilege and honor of pinning the Eagle Scout badge on my nephew, Albert E. Anuta, Jr., son of my older brother, Albert, and his wife Alice Hunt Anuta. Albert had graduated from Pulaski high school in Milwaukee and attained his Eagle rank before entering Purdue University. Michael Andrew, son of our oldest boy, Michael John and his wife Elaine, became a Life Scout but was unable to progress further due to leadership problems. Our grandson Karl Gregory Anuta, son of Karl Frederick and Barbara, attained Life Scout and was elected to the Order of the Arrow. Our great grandson, Jeffrey Allen, son of Marianne Milidonis Simancek and her husband Jay, earned his Eagle rank and I had the honor of participating in his investiture. Both his parents were honored with Silver Beaver awards. The following year the two sons of our second oldest granddaughter, Madeline Milidonis Fritz and her husband Leonard, attained their Eagle rank. Both Leonard and Madeline were also honored with the Silver Beaver award. Lloyd Dalquist, the husband of our youngest daughter Janet, was the active leader of the Houghton-Hancock area Explorer Scout unit. Their son, Daniel Dalquist, became a well-known Scout leader as well as a nationally recognized member of the National Ski Patrol. Eric Dalquist, son of Dan and his wife, Bobbie, earned his Eagle rank in 1999. We had a private investiture in our retirement apartment as I could not attend his Court of Honor.

I have received a Scouter’s key for training and was recognized with a Silver Beaver Award at the council level in 1940. On November 11, 1967, at the annual meeting of the Region Seven Council in Detroit I was honored with a Silver Antelope Award. In the year 2000 the Bay Lakes Council issued a proclamation naming me a Veteran Scout in honor of my achieving 77 years in Scouting. On May 16, 2000 Marianne and Jay Simancek had me named a James E. West Fellow by their Clinton Valley Council in Michigan and on October 9, 2001 the Executive Committee of the Bay Lakes Council conferred on me the honor of James E. West Fellow.

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