F-Troopers, RALLY!

F-Troop

“There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories! Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned. Every Greek historian, and every scribe shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Why, uttering the very name of Sparta, or Leonidas, will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!”

~Xerxes

For some odd reason, you could substitute “F-Troop” for Sparta in that speech and it would apply.
What happened to “F-Troop?” Here was a “Service Organization” that was started by Dr. Tom Ryan at Broward Community College that served many and is now forgotten.

I have been on the internet since 1983, back in the days when graphics were unheard of and you depended on the “Dartmouth Gopher” to retrieve dry information from university libraries around the world. Communication was pretty much limited to BBS postings and true search engines had really not even been developed yet.

Off and on, since 1995, I have searched for traces of F-Troop or old F-Troop Alumni on a host of search engines even search engine compilers like “Dog Pile” and I have seen almost NOTHING. I did see a reference to F-Troop in an old BCC archive, but it wasn’t much.

Maybe it is just me, but how could an organization that devoted itself to service of others simply disappear? Here was an organization that, at least while I was a part of it, provided gifts for tens of thousands of children during the Christmas Holidays? Provided thousands of food packages for needy families during the Thanksgiving Holidays? F-Troopers took hundreds, if not thousands, of handicapped children to places like “Boardwalk & Baseball” and Disney World and pushed, pulled or otherwise carried these kids around the parks and tried to bring some light into their lives, how could such a group vanish?

I am not trying to have this group lionized, or put this forth for self aggrandizement; just something seems a little off when no one remembers such a giving organization.

F-Troop was just about helping those less fortunate souls that you picture when thinking of those in need. There were plenty of people that were helped out who did not even know that they needed it or even that they were being helped. I speak of the hundreds of students and faculty of BCC who went on retreats to places like Elliot Key, Cayo Costa and Peace River where they learned things about the world around them and also learned something about themselves that they may never have known. The Retreats were legendary almost epic in nature. It was not just a get away during a long weekend, but a place for discovering things, learning new skills and having the time of your life. (I remember one trip to Cayo Costa, a lovely island park just North of Sanibel off the coast of Florida, which involved a near naked intern named Dawn literally swinging from the rafters of our cabin when Penny McIsaac (My boss.) came in around 2:00 AM screaming for us to shut up and go to sleep. There was a mad scramble to jump in bed and pretend we were asleep. It was kind of hard to fake it since we were the only people around for miles, can’t exactly blame it on the squirrels. The next morning Penny came up to us as we sleepily stuffed our faces with pastries from Entemans, she singled me out and said, “You had me so angry last night I writhed in my bunk half the night!” To which I said, “Aw, you should have…” well, maybe we should leave my pithy remark out.

Another group of people who benefited from F-Troop were the F-Troopers themselves. We were all volunteers so there was no monetary gain, but what we did enriched our lives to no end. There are some alumni who will admit that F-Troop helped them to “open up” while helping others. F-Trooper learned organizational and budgetary skills by almost single handedly setting up orientation for a commuter college with over 50,000 students. We ran numerous booths at the Broward County Youth Fair to raise money for other campus organizations. We acted as advisors for student clubs like the International Club, the Student Government Administration or the African-American Student Union to name just a few. Troopers were partly responsible for bringing incredible guest lectures to the college like Richard Dreyfuss sharing stunning and intimate tales of his drug use in the movie industry. Mercury Morris, former Miami Dolphin’s during their undefeated season, shared similar stories from the sports world. And I remember Charlie Lyle and I driving to Miami International Airport to pick up Dr. Wade Davis, Ethno Botanist/Biologist, who is a “Real Life” Indiana Jones of the pharmaceutical world exploring Zombies in Hati and trekking through a leech infested Amazon in search of the cure for cancer and many other illnesses.

Troopers were initiated by showing their dedication to serving others, usually assisting or carrying a special needs child through Disney or Boardwalk and Baseball and then undergoing one of the most bizarre scavenger hunt imaginable. I remember Todd Anderson wearing a hat made of Kotex and tampons having to go into a Publix grocery store to buy something that no man should ever have to purchase.  I remember a small girl named Marie having to climb a football goalpost covered in slime to retrieve a message that told her that the clue she needed was atop the other unslimed goalpost at the opposite end of the field. I remember an altercation (Competing teams, remember?) involving a frozen “Death by Chocolate” ricocheting off the front end of some poor bystanders Camry hood in the parking lot of a local TGIFridays. At the end of each initiation the member would be inducted and given a new F-Troop name and jersey. (My first F-Troop name was “Check This Out” because almost every new idea I had was prefaced by that phrase. My second initiation I was called, “Brother Burns” because I tended to say things like, “The Brother had nothing to do with that” or “The Brother won’t stand for that.”)

All in all, for good or for evil, F-Troop and all of it’s members deserve more than to “Go gentle into that good night!” We are not looking for recognition or accolades, but we must have a touchstone, a rallying point, something that says “We were here, and we tried to fight the good fight.” There fore, I am issuing the call to all F-Troop Alumni to rally. We are seeking photos and remembrances, contacts and addresses and we will build a legacy a memorial to what once was and hopefully will be again somewhere…anywhere.