As you walk towards the new entrance to the Service Center you will be greeted by a life size bronze statue of a Boy Scout. The Tait McKenzie statue is dedicated to the memory of Eagle Scout Jerry Ceres, III and serves as a reminder to all of us that “Service to Others” is what our program is all about.

Dr. McKenzie was a surgeon, educator, artist and one of the leading sculptors in America. He served on the Executive Board of the Philadelphia Council from 1911—1938 and designed the original statue for them. In his original letter he describes the statue:

“He trusts that his uncovered head may betoken them to reverence, obedience to proper authority, the well-ordered discipline so necessary to our well-being as a nation; that the hatchet, on which his hand rests, may serve as a symbol of truthfulness that characterized him who first sat in the chair of state in this the birthplace of national freedom in America; that he may never unsheathe it for grinding purposes; that he may never raise it in the cause of wanton destruction, but always for the defense of the weak and for hewing out new and nobler standards of conduct and progress; that he may apply it unceasingly to the neck of treachery, treason, cowardice, discourtesy, dishonesty and dirt.”