Article and Pictures by Linda Charlton
Highland Avenue, Highlander Building at Waterfront Park, Celtic crosses on a fire truck and boy scouts in kilts. Are we obsessed with the Highlands?
Well … maybe.
The boy scouts, Clermont’s Troop 3, provide the latest nod to the area’s history as Highlander Country. The troop was officially formed on the last day of 2018. They meet on Sugarloaf Mountain, in a barn on a family farm, complete with chickens and pigs. The barn is the scouts’ own space, with their own wall, and the ability to do outdoorsy things like preparing ‘dump’ cake and other slow-cook foods on a weekly basis.
Organizers early on decided to form a kilted scout troop to honor the old Clermont Highlanders. The wearing of kilts is not required, except for scouts in the honor guard, but it is encouraged.
Troop 3 Committee Chairman Todd Angels says “when we decided to form Troop 3 we wanted to provide an atmosphere that encouraged advancement and a sense of community belonging. We decided to form a ‘Kilted’ troop to recognize the history of the City of Clermont and the association of the Highlanders from the old Clermont High School with South Lake County.”
So the scouts and adult volunteers in Troop 3 are The Highlanders, just like the firefighters at Clermont fire station #1 are The Highlanders. Angel is a Clermont Highlander, class of ’88. Scoutmaster John Slack is a Highlander, class of ’80.
Troop sponsor Nathan Focht remembers the moment the idea of the kilted troop was born. He and Angel were hanging out at the farm.
“We’re on the highest land in Florida,” Focht says, “and we started talking about the Highlanders.”
Truman Angel is one of the scouts in Troop 3. Speaking of the kilts, he says “a lot of people like it. There’s no teasing or anything.” He says that when people ask him ‘why,’ he tells them “Clermont High School used to have a bagpiper and the bagpiper would wear a kilt.”
Shaun Slack is also a scout in Troop 3. Speaking of kilt-wearing, he says “we did at one point go over how to do it. It took a while to get used to the breeze.”
The next step in the evolution of the kilted troop — beyond adding to their growing list of Eagle Scouts (four and counting) — is to get proper kilt hose. In American lingo, that means extra long knee socks to wear with the kilts.
The larger boy scout organization does have an official tartan (MacLaren) but local organizers went in a different direction. They picked the Black Watch tartan as a nod to the military, and as a way of avoiding any potential bad blood from traditional rivalries between clans. The Black Watch, as a fighting force of Scottish infantry, can trace its roots back to 1661. And as Angel points out, the current designation of the Black Watch is 3 SCOTS, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland. ‘Troop 3′ was available in the local scouts’ council, so organizers claimed that number.
Coincidentally they ended up with the number of the very first boy scout troop in Clermont. Staff at the local scout council (Central Florida Council, located in Apopka) have no information on Clermont’s original Troop 3, but it is possible to piece together the history. Paul Anderson, best known locally as a former assistant fire chief, is also a former scout in Clermont’s Troop 3.
“I know that we were pretty proud that we were the oldest active troop in the council,” Anderson recalls.
Anderson is confident that the old Troop 3 was still active at least through 1990. The website for Leesburg’s Troop 1 has scouting coming to Lake County in 1921. The April 8, 1921 edition of the Clermont Press, in a front-page story, proclaims Local Troop Boy Scouts Go Camping. So the old Troop 3 was active for approximately 70 years, starting in 1921, well before the Clermont Highlanders became the Clermont Highlanders.
As reflected in old yearbooks, that change happened in the 1948-49 school year. It seems that school officials finally realized that ‘Clermont Highlanders’ has a lot more pizazz than Clermont Hilltoppers (previous school mascot). The old school ceased being a school in 1993. The Clermont High School campus, currently home to Clermont Middle School, is slated to be torn down this summer. School district spokesperson Sherri Owens does confirm that the auditorium will be extensively remodeled and the athletic field will be redesigned.
Reflecting on the upcoming demolition of the old buildings, scoutmaster Slack says “I’m sad to see them go. I’m happy the auditorium is staying and the field. A lot of memories. I remembered when it snowed here. There was a basketball game, and someone came in and said ‘it’s snowing and the whole gym emptied out and they went out to see the snow and they shut down the game.”
*Technically speaking, Nathan Focht is the charter organization representative for Troop 3. He has a considerable background as an adult scout volunteer, dating from the five years he and his family traveled the country in an RV, with his sons in scouting as “lone scouts.”.
