Jamboree jubilee

Deepa Bharath

Neal Cline clutched a photocopy of a front page of an old newspaper.

It was the front page of the Los Angeles Times from July 20, 1953.

The page had a photo of then Vice President Richard Nixon at the Boy

Scouts Jamboree in Newport Beach with a few scouts in the background.

Cline was one of them. And on Tuesday, the Huntington Beach

resident came to Fashion Island to reminisce about the “great

experience” -- the one week he spent camping out on the hillside

where the sprawling shopping center now stands.

He was part of the jamboree 50 years ago, an event that gained so

much fame and recognition in the area that a main road was named in

its memory.

The 1953 jamboree was the only one on the West Coast. The Boy

Scouts Jamboree, held once every four years, has been held in Fort

A.P. Hill, Va. since 1981.

About 60 people came to the commemorative event organized by the

Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts on Tuesday. After the reunion

were a flag ceremony, a speech by the organization’s officials and a

special address by Newport Beach City Councilman Don Webb, who is

also an alumnus of the program.

Webb, who came to the 1953 jamboree by bus from Arizona, arrived

at Tuesday’s reunion in full Scout dress.

“Once you’re a Scout, you’re always a Scout,” he said. “It becomes

a part of your life.”

Webb has been the Eagle Scout coordinator for the Newport-Mesa

area for the last nine years, he said. The passion for Scouting seems

to run in the family. Both of his sons are Eagle Scouts, as their

father once was.

The 1953 jamboree was a tremendous learning experience for him,

Webb said.

More than 50,000 Scouts came to the event from all over the

country.

Tustin resident John Thompson took a three-day train trip with his

friends from Cincinnati to get to the 1953 jamboree.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “I don’t think I got much sleep.”

One of the events he remembers most from the jamboree was an

evening of entertainment with such stars as Bob Hope and Roy Rogers.

In 1953, Mike Sampson traveled two days by train from the Dalles

in Oregon. He now lives in Newport Coast.

Sampson said he fell in love with the area and told himself he’d

come back.

“It was my first trip to California, and I was impressed,” he

said. “I thought to myself, ‘Gee, when I grow up, I wanna live here.’

Now I do.”

The event was still as exciting to locals as it was to outsiders.

Bruce Nott, whose late father, Les Nott, was one of the organizers of

the event, said he looked forward to the jamboree through all the

years he saw his father prepare for it.

“I anticipated it so much, and in the end, it turned out being the

dustiest place on the earth with all the buses coming in,” he said.

Jamboree was barely a dirt road then.

But Nott said it was a fun experience. He recalled trading in

Irvine Co. leather for neckerchief slides and carvings, Nott said. On

Tuesday, he lovingly held up the piece of leather signed by all the

scouts in his troop who were at the 1953 jamboree with him.

“We were the hosts,” he said. “We were part of the host patrol and

everything. It was nice.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at deepa.bharath@latimes.com.