Madison Scouts

------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------- HISTORY In 1937, a group of Madison businessmen watched a performance held at the UW Stock Pavilion by a 10 year old boy scout drum and bugle corps called the Racine Scouts. Impressed by their performance and the possibilities of a highly entertaining youth activity for area young men, they decided that Madison should have a scout drum & bugle corps too. The men, E.J. Hess, Robert Gerry, Thomas Jones, Arthur May, and Robert Hesse, gave life to the Madison Boy Scout Drum & Bugle Corps organization, which soon after held it's first rehearsal on February 8, 1938 in the basement of the Christ Presbyterian Church with equipment borrowed from the Masons. Soon, the National Guard Armory would be the home of the Corps and was used until 1946. It was a relatively inauspicious beginning for what was to become one of the premier youth organizations in Madison and Wisconsin and one of the finest drum and bugle corps in the drum corps activity with a worldwide reputation. Armed with official Boy Scout uniforms, regulation Army-issue G bugles, a Snare, Tenor, & Bass drum and a broomstick for a drum major's baton, the Scouts were born. E. J. Hess became the first corps director, but shortly after Clarence H. Beebe, Scoutmaster of Troop 20, was appointed quartermaster and executive director of the Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps. "C. H." as he was known to the entire troop became the inspiration and driving force behind the corps for the next thirty years.