Santee Lodge - Scout Memorabilia

Third Generation Three Flap System

October 24, 2009

After a decade as the sole flap of the lodge the reign of the S10 came to an end in 1995.  The flap had been along for so long it was simply known as the “current”.  At the Spring Fellowship in 1995 Harrison Penn and others finally accomplished what two Jasons (Collins and Spangler) and one Gowder couldn’t: getting enough votes to bring down the S10.  To accomplish this he returned to a simple idea that Jason Collins had tried in 1989 which was to update the classic design with a sharper look. Steven Askin’s new design replaced the palm tree on the “current” with a true palmetto tree and used a unique bird from the Audubon print which had never been used on a flap.  Harrison Penn was helped in his push for a new flap because the quality of flaps that the lodge was getting from the Midwest Swiss Company was going downhill.  Instead of the modern computer generated patches Midwest Swiss used an older embroidery system.  Former lodge adviser Jay Hodge first explained this problem during the debate regarding Jason Collin’s design in 1989.  Jay said that whenever the company ran another loom it made a copy of the last template and so as time went by the details were getting fuzzier.  By 1995 there was a very noticeable difference between the first crop of S10s and the ones that were coming in.  In fact the last loom run had some horrible looking examples in it that were sold out of the lodge store.  This probably helped seal the fate for the old “current”.

Although the idea was around in 1995 it was another couple of years before the change to the S12 ordered from Krelman grew into to a three-flap system.  Ironically, this is the exact same thing that happened in 1978.  The lodge had a white background flap (S2) and decided to use that as the Ordeal Flap and add a black background Brotherhood and blue background Vigil Flap.  In this modern case the S12 was to become the Ordeal flap with the S13 being the Brotherhood and S14 being the Vigil Flap.  The biggest hurdle in creating a three-flap system is that it requires a change of the lodge rules, which can only be accomplished in a lodge business meeting with a 2/3 majority to win.  In the Fall of 1996 he had to get a larger percentage of the vote to be successful.  In the end the vote was not really that close as many of the older Arrowmen who were Vigil supported the resurrection of the three-flap system in the lodge.  Later a change was made so that each Vigil brother could purchase a second Vigil Flap every year for $75. In later years Arrowmen was also allowed to purchase additional ordeal flaps for $15 each.  These policies were probably set by the executive committee or by the Key-3 and were never voted on the by whole lodge.

Scott Alexander took over as Lodge Adviser from Porter Stewart at the Winter Banquet in January of 1997.  One of the things on his plate was ordering the new flaps.  However, the bids sent out to the Krelman Company (who produced the S12) came back very high.  Two prototypes were ordered by the adviser to compliment the ordeal flap which was already being produced by Krelman.  However, the decision was made to order the new flaps instead from a company that the council was using for many of its patch orders.  The Stadri Company got the business and the flaps were first sold at the 1997 Summer Fellowship.  When time came to reorder the S12 Ordeal Flap instead of using the Krelman Company the flaps were ordered from the Stadri Company.  Of course the new loom was a variation which got the designation of the S12b.

The musical chairs of patch companies and variations was just beginning however.  The Stadri Company lost the council’s business when the 1999 camp patches didn’t arrive until 3rd week and in poor quality.  Therefore, at the Fall Fellowship of 2000 after the reorganization of the lodge the new loom run of Ordeal flaps were not ordered from Stadri but from a new company, Moritz.  This Moritz Ordeal was given the designation S12c and has some slight variations from the others.  Strangely enough in a little over 5 years the lodge had produced three varieties of the same Steven Askins design from three different companies.

Of course when time came to order the overdue loom of Brotherhood and Vigil Flaps (no Brotherhood flaps were available at the 2000 Fall or 2001 Spring) they were ordered from Moritz.  This order created two new variations the S13b Moritz Brotherhood and the S14b Moritz Three Arrow Vigil.  The first loom of Brotherhood Flaps from Moritz sold out at the Summer of 2001 but were reordered several times during the next five years.

The One Arrow Vigil Flap has perhaps the strangest story of all Santee Flaps.  Originally, this batch of 144 flaps was a reorder from Stadri on the S14 Vigil Flap.  However, somehow in the ordering things got mixed up.  One story says that when time came to reorder flaps the Assistant Scout Executive sent the company a Vigil Flap that he had in his possession to show the company what we wanted.  The story goes that the executive had a protoype from Stadri with the Vigil flap looking exactly like the Ordeal Flap except with a blue background.  Whether this story is true or not (the prototype has never been seen by collectors) the flaps came back with one arrow just like the Ordeal Flap instead of the three arrow Vigil triangle look in the design.

Now given the fact that the flaps were wrong it might make sense to have them sent back or destroyed.  The lodge had learned back in 1969 what happens when you send flaps back to the company (see Double Black Flap) and the executives said no more flaps were going to be burned (a botched order with no plastic backing from Stadri were burned by the executive committee around 98-99).  Therefore, the flaps were put in the lodge store and the first ones were sold at the Summer of 1998.  However, given the restrictions on the Vigil Flap less than twenty were sold at that fellowship.  Basically, the lodge year begins with LLDC in September and most everyone had already bought their ONE flap for the 97-98 lodge year.  When the lodge store opened at the 1998 Fall Fellowship there were 127 of the flaps in the inventory.  The flaps were also sold at the 1999 Spring Fellowship.  However, (and here is where the story gets stranger) during summer camp in 1999 some of the flaps got missing.  In September the Scout Executive shut down the lodge and everything was frozen until Spring of 2000.  The flaps were not sold during the 2000 lodge year for whatever reason. The lodge officers who served during the reformation of the lodge in 2000 received them on their plagues handed out at the Winter Banquet in January of 2001.  Although about 22 flaps were left no decision was reached as to their fate and so at the 2001 Spring again none were sold.  At the 2001 Summer the new run of Vigil Flaps from Moritz was in but still the One Arrow Vigil Flaps were kept back.  Finally in October of 2001 the executive committee decided to put 1 up for auction at Spring 2002, hold 5 back for the lodge collection, give the four new inductees at Fall 2001 a One Arrow Vigil, with the remaining flaps to be sold first come to Vigil brothers at Fall 2001.  In the store line at that fellowship Vigil brother literally drew from a brown paper bag to decide whether they would get a new Moritz Vigil flap or one of the coveted One Arrow Vigil flaps.   Truly, this is the strangest story of any Santee Flaps.  What probably accounts for the bizarre twists in this story is the turnover of lodge leadership during this period and the lodge being shutdown from September 1999 to February of 2000.