A commemorative fireside honoring the Church's 75th annviersary as an official sponsor of the Boy Scouts of America will be held Feb. 14 at 6 p.m. MST in the Tabernacle on Temple Square.
The program will be televised live via satellite to hundreds of meetinghouses around the country. Invited to attend are Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varisity Scouts, Explorers, and Scout and Young Men leaders and parents.President Ezra Taft Benson is scheduled to give brief remarks. Others who will speak include President Thomas S. Monson, second counselor in the First Presidency; Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone of the First Quorum of the Seventy, who is chairman of the Church General Scouting Committee and Young Men president; and Dwan J. Young, general Primary president and a member of the Church General Scouting Committee.
Also speaking will be Ben Love, chief Scout executive; and Charles Pigott, National Scout Executive Board president. A 400-voice choir of Scouts and leaders will sing, and a color guard of Scouts will present 100 flags.
The Church sponsors some 23,000 Scouting units, the most of any single organization, according to John Warnick, director of Mormon relationships for the Boy Scouts of America. There are more than 300,000 Scouts and 120,000 leaders in those units.
The first continuous LDS Boy Scout troop was organized in Salt Lake City's Waterloo Ward in 1910, and three years later the Church became the first organization to officially sponsor Scouting.