Q: Hello Brother Mike!
In my position as a chapter adviser I was recently approached by a Scoutmaster to ask if there was a way for him to help his troop reinvigorate their OA program. Great news, but it came with a puzzle. The Scoutmaster in question joined our Order as a youth in a different lodge, but when he contacted his youth lodge, they had no record of his membership. Does the national office have a record of candidates?
-Todd
A: Todd,
Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, the Order used to only maintain manual records in each council. It has only been since 2006 that the National Order of the Arrow Committee has provided any kind of automation to help lodges maintain their membership records, and it has taken a decade for all lodges to adopt OA LodgeMaster as their standard membership management system. Even with this tool, each lodge's records are independent of all other lodges, so there is no single national database of all OA members.
Perhaps the Scoutmaster in question has some old OA membership cards or kept his personal record in his OA handbook that could help him to reconstruct his Ordeal and/or Brotherhood dates. If he was selected for the Vigil Honor the national office would have that date. The best you can offer him for his initial dates is to help him approximate the time of the year, or to determine someone who was inducted with him. I'm sorry I can't be of greater help here. We have a ways to go but we are working on it.
Thanks for doing what you do!
Best,
Mike