![]() “It felt like Scouting was his breath of life to me, pointing me down a path I had not intended,” she says. She had never felt so close to her father. This reintroduction to Scouting awakened something in Smith. By 2010 she was the camp’s program director. She was asked to staff a merit badge camp, and she accepted. Scouting returned to Smith’s life nine years later when she was in college. “Too much for my mother to be reminded when driving him to meetings.” “It was too much for my brother to be without his father,” Smith says. The Smith family left Scouting soon after. Six months later, their dad, Andrew Rhodes Smith, was at an Order of the Arrow weekend event when he died from heart complications brought on by Type 1 diabetes. Smith’s brother crossed over into Boy Scouting in March 1999. “Scouting made my family stronger, closer and tighter.” From tragedy comes triumph “I essentially came up through the Cub Scout program,” she says. So Smith became the sister who attended den and pack meetings with her brother and her dad (pictured here) while Mom was at work. “Being an Eagle Scout himself and knowing all of the rewards that came with the program, he signed his adult application that night, too.” “My youngest brother was joining Cub Scouts, and my father was just bursting at the seams with excitement,” Smith says. Her BSA career started five years ago, but her exposure to Scouting started when she was 8 and attended a join Scouting night with her brother and dad in their church’s basement. “Making a difference, even if it is in one person, is enough for me.” “My job working for the Boy Scouts is really where I feel I was called to serve,” she says. Smith, now 29, has worked for the BSA’s Laurel Highlands Council for five years. And Smith’s story of her Eagle Scout father’s death when she was just 13 and the Scouting career he inspired is one you’ll want to read. Like all tattoos, there’s a story behind Smith’s ink. Her tattoo is so famous that new Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh mentioned it in a presentation to hundreds of Scouting professionals last month. Smith, a senior district executive from Pittsburgh, has the BSA fleur-de-lis and the words “On My Honor” tattooed on her left leg. Amanda Smith’s passion for Scouting isn’t just seen in her words or her actions.
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