Steve Hauser
Cover of Baddest Troop Alive
A memoir

Baddest Troop Alive

The Story of Inner City Troop 1135 · Steve Hauser

In 1968 a young white volunteer started a Boy Scout troop for Black boys in Willowbrook, between Watts and Compton. He had no idea what he was getting into. For ten years the troop camped, marched, went to Mexico and the redwoods, and called itself the baddest troop alive.

Years later Steve Hauser went looking for the boys. He found sixty-three of them, and he let them tell the story with him: their memories, dated and in their own words, run through the book beside his.

Pending · Blurb

Final back-cover copy, written to memoir shelf convention. This lede is a working draft.

Ryan to write; Steve to approve.

Buy the paperback[PUBLICATION DATE] · [PRICE] · [ISBN]

The shape of the book

Five parts, twenty-one chapters, and Where Are They Now?
  1. Part ITenderfoot Times1968 to 1969Start ’Er Up · Blowin’ Smoke · Let’s Get Organized · Camping · The First Camporee
  2. Part IIBuilding the Troop1970 to 1972Mexico · Camp Chaos · Violence · Struttin’
  3. Part IIIGrowing Together1970 to 1972Distractions · Rockin’ · Black and White · Party Time · Jimmy Does The Funky Chicken
  4. Part IVCoasting Along1972 to 1977A Changing of the Guard · Jobs and Jen · Now This Is Camping · Riot In The Redwoods · Time to Run
  5. Part VResultsWas It Really Worth It? · Recognition
“Seeing all those really poor people down there in Mexico made me appreciate what we had, even in Watts. That taught me what real poverty was.”
Thomas Tucker [2000]
“Some of the other troops were a little uppity towards us, knowing we came from Willowbrook. We did pretty well in some of the activities, but we didn’t look so hot.”
Thomas Tucker [2000]
Where are they now?

63

Former scouts Steve could locate

The book closes with a line on each of them. A judge. A school principal. A professor. A rocket engineer. A pastor. And the men who did not live to be found.

Their names stay in the book. A man is named here only if he has said yes.

Victor Wright in judicial robes, with Steve Hauser and another man, in a courtroom
Victor Wright’s enrobing as a judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, with Steve.

Photographs

Shown as found, with who, where and when
Scouts and young men on the front steps of a school building
Frances Willard School, the meeting place.
Three scouts standing in a field at camp
First camporee, 1968.
Scouts building a fire on dry ground in Mexico
Building a fire in Mexico, 1969.
Troop 1135 marching behind a sign reading Troop 1135
“1135, baddest troop alive, hut, hut…”
Scouts in uniform crowded together against a car on a residential street
After the Watts Christmas Parade, 1970.
Round embroidered patch reading Green Meadows District, 1971 Fall Camporee
1971 camporee patch.
Scouts sitting along a stone wall by the road, the granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley behind them
Yosemite overlook, just arriving.
Four scouts in front of a waterfall in Yosemite
Yosemite, 1972.
Steve Hauser with scouts among boulders and pines in Yosemite
Steve and the Yosemite boys.
Boys and young men standing together in a dirt yard beside a building in Tijuana
Tijuana church project, 1974.
Grown former scouts, many giving the Scout sign, at a reunion
“Yeah, Steve, we still remember the oath.”
Steve Hauser standing with former scouts, now grown men
Second reunion.

Captions are Steve’s own.

Written about the troop

Long before there was a book
  1. September 1998Scouting magazineThe Legacy of Troop 1135 →By Keith Monroe
  2. 22 September 1996Los Angeles Times[HEADLINE TO CONFIRM]
  3. November/December 2004Santa Monica Rotary Club newsletter[TITLE TO CONFIRM] · original link dead
“I’d probably be in prison if it weren’t for Steve.”
Renard Stevenson, in Scouting magazine, September 1998