Troop 344 was organized in December 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression. The committee chairman, Thomas Mize, Sr., signed the charter application on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1935. The first scoutmaster was F. G. Sibley. The troop met originally at Price School, then located near Price & Clayton Roads, in Ladue. At the time, Price was the only elementary school in what later became the Ladue School District. Price School had operated since 1872, but the (then) relatively new large brick building where the troop first met had been built in 1923. (Price School closed in 1982, and it later housed the Churchill School, but the building was demolished around 2012.)
The Application for Charter for New Troop shows that the troop met on Mondays at 3:30 in the afternoon, though it had switched to evening meetings by 1937. The original scouts were Bob Vosburgh, Carlyle Pollock, Gibson Browne, Frank Jansen, Tom Mize, Jr., Richard Ludwig, Tom Mooney, Bill Phelan, Willard Schelp, and Jim Brown. At that time, Price School, like most elementary schools, extended through the eighth grade. The troop’s sponsor was the Price School Association.
Ladue built another elementary school, the Ladue School, in 1938. (It was renamed Reed School in 1969.) The Ladue School District was organized as an elementary school district in 1939. When it rechartered in January 1939, Troop 344 was still sponsored by the Price School Association and met at Price School at 9260 Clayton Road. By January 1940, the troop had moved to the Ladue School at 9060 Ladue Road, and its sponsor was the Ladue Schools Association f/k/a Price School Association.
In its early years, the troop had some young scoutmasters. F.G.Sibley was 24 years old when he became the first scoutmaster in 1935. Kingsley Wientge was 27 when he took over in 1937. Douglas Jones was scoutmaster at 25 in 1940. James B. Templeton was likewise 25 when he started in 1941, though he remained in the role through age 30 in 1946. (The youngest, however, was Michael Flynn in 2007 at age 23.)
Troop 344 had its first Eagle Scout, Thomas Mize, in 1942. He later became a casualty of World War II per the memorial plaque at Ladue City Hall. Early recharter applications show that the troop’s special activities included camporees, courts of honor, Scout Circus, flood relief ticket sales, Christmas toy distribution, bird feeding, and Boy Scout window displays.
The troop has met on Monday evenings for most of its existence, except for Monday afternoons in 1936, Wednesdays in 1942 and 1947, and Tuesdays from 1943 to 1946 and 1948 to 1952.
Summer camp when the troop started would have been at the 150-acre Camp Irondale or perhaps at the council’s 250-acre secondary camp called Lion’s Den. Camp May at Beaumont Scout Reservation opened in 1954, and Beaumont developed over the years from little more than a dirt road running through the valley dividing its 2,400 acres with few structures into a top-of-the-line near-town camping facility. The council moved its primary summer camp operations to the S bar F Scout Ranch in 1966, closing Irondale after the summer of 1965. An innovation when the Ranch opened was patrol cooking on the campsites since Irondale and Camp May were dining hall camps.
In 1948 and continuing through 1967, Scoutmaster Robert E. Shelton provided the dynamic leadership that expanded the Eagle Scout advancement in the troop. Typical council activities included the annual Scout Circus later replaced by the Scout Skill Show, paper drives, and telephone book deliveries. Three years after the 19/20-year tenure of scoutmaster Shelton, the 15/16-year tenure of Scoutmaster Richard C. Jente began (1969-1984). During those years, the troop began to mature and scouts became more aware of Eagle and strived to reach it. Troop 344 was a midsized troop within Midland District.
The council was reorganized in the very early 1980s, and Midland District’s slender boundaries from the eastern Clayton city limit (and University City) westward through Ladue out to the Missouri River in then-unincorporated Chesterfield were changed. Most of Midland District (excluding Chesterfield) became part of the present Pathfinder District. Pathfinder comprised the Ladue, Clayton, University City, Maplewood-Richmond Heights, Pattonville, Ritenour, Wellston, and Normandy school districts when it was first created, though it later lost Wellston to reorganization and Normandy to the North Star District.
In the fall of 1985, Scoutmaster Jim Barnes relocated the troop to its present location at what was then called Ladue Junior High School. That school had opened in 1959, soon became the East Ladue Junior High when the West building opened a couple of years later, dropped the “East” when the West Ladue Junior High (now the Fifth Grade Center) closed in 1978, and officially became the Ladue Middle School in 2001. The troop’s current sponsor is the Ladue Middle School Parents Association. (Cub Scout Pack 344, which had been organized at Price School in 1936 shortly after the troop and had likewise moved to the Ladue School, remained at Reed School.)
The troop’s move to the Junior High stemmed from a reorganization of the Ladue School District in which all sixth grade students were transferred to the Junior High. Unfortunately, all of the other troops that stayed at their respective grade schools were non-existent in two years. The relocation of Troop 344 to the Junior High, transfer of many scouts from other Ladue troops that folded, and aggressive recruitment provided a large influx of scouts into the troop.
The 1980s also brought new council and troop activities. Scouting for Food started in 1985 as a Greater St. Louis Area Council project and has grown to be the largest one-day food drive in America. Troop 344 participates in that and many other service projects each year. In particular, the troop has held its annual Do-A-Good-Turn service project for decades at Ladue Middle School to thank the school and the LMSPA for their support. At one time, the troop had a section of Clayton Road to clean up four times a year.
Scout John O’Donnell designed the Troop 344 logo in 1995 for the troop’s sixtieth anniversary featuring the BSA’s simplified fleur-de-lis and eagle symbol with a square red-white-and-blue background. The troop now uses the logo on its custom-embroidered uniform shoulder patches, troop T-shirts and, more recently, troop hoodies. Giant 344 logos appear on the troop’s trailer, which often serves as a landmark to find the troop at district camporees.
The troop’s meeting place at the Junior High/Middle School has varied over the years. At one time, the troop met in the cafeteria. For many years, it met in the multi-purpose room in the basement (which had originally housed the swimming pool). When renovations eliminated the multi-purpose room, meetings returned to the cafeteria for a couple of years. The troop even met online weekly during the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2021. After the completion of the expansion in 2023, the troop began meeting in the new library on the back of the building.
Being chartered at a public school, the troop uses trailers not only to transport but to store its camping equipment. The troop acquired a used truck in the mid to late 1980s. It had been a flatbed snow plow truck, but a box was built on the back with shelves for the tents, patrol boxes, and other gear. The troop replaced the smaller rusting truck around 1993 with a large new trailer purchased with proceeds from scout car wash fundraisers. The troop replaced that trailer in 2007 with one a bit smaller and less heavy to pull, though the older trailer remains in use as a storage shed.
Troop 344 has long been proud of its record of producing Eagle Scouts with more than 225 Eagles since the first one in 1942. The last year when the troop did not have an Eagle Scout (or several of them) was 2001, which may have resulted from a dozen of the troop’s scouts earning Eagle in 1999-2000. A few scouts have earned at least 100 merit badges, including Jeff Stevens (Eagle 1980) with 100, Rick Jente (Eagle 1971) with 101, and Brandon Barrett (Eagle 2024) with 141.
Five Probst brothers achieved Eagle from 1974 to 1984.
The troop has also long had a strong high adventure program. In the 1980s and 1990s with a large troop, annual trips to Philmont and the Boundary Waters were part of the life of the troop. In the late 1990s, Philmont adopted a policy (for a while) limiting a troop’s right to go to every second year, and the troop made trips there in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2008. The next Philmont trek was in 2011, and the troop has sent one or more crews to Philmont nearly every odd-numbered year since then. In recent years, the troop has sent one or more crews to Florida Sea Base in even-numbered summers. The troop sent a crew to Grand Teton in 2018, the Summit Bechtel Reserve in 2021, and separate groups to Northern Tier and to Boundary Waters privately in 2022. In some earlier years, the troop organized backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas, the Smoky Mountains, the Rockies, and part of the Appalachian Trail; sailing in the Bahamas; whitewater rafting in West Virginia and Idaho; and kayaking down the Mississippi River and off the shore of South Carolina. Troop leadership formed Venturing Crew 2344 in 2007 mainly to allow a second application for high adventure reservations. That separately chartered unit operated for several years, but it became superfluous when the reservation systems changed.
Many of our older scouts have over the years become involved in Scouting beyond the troop, including as district camporee campmasters, summer camp staff counselors, Philmont Scout Ranch staff, and chapter and lodge officers and committee chairmen in the Order of the Arrow. Some of these scouts have been recognized with the Vigil Honor or Pathfinder’s Sophir Arrowman of the Year award in the O.A.
Troop 344 has maintained this website since December 2013. More recently, it created a Facebook page for marketing purposes. The troop set up a Discord server in March 2020 to facilitate rank advancement during the pandemic and has maintained it as a channel of communications among the scouts since then.
Troop 344 