NORWAY — Homer Piper doesn’t remember a lot about his Boy Scout experience on Lake Pennesseewassee in the 1930s, but he does remember a big fish, some big rocks and a girl named Enid.

Piper, who turns 90 next month, traveled from New Mexico to Norway last week with 15 family members to see the site where he, his brother and father set up lake shore tents with the Boy Scouts of the Panama Canal Zone more than 80 years ago.

“I don’t remember much,” admits Piper, who wore a World War II B-7 Flying Fortress cap and sat in a chair with his children, grandchildren, niece and assorted other family members gathered around to hear how he caught a big fish in the lake and other stories.

The family rented a house in nearby Conway, N.H., for the week and stopped at the Norway Historical Society on Main Street on Thursday morning to talk to society President Susan Denison about the history of Norway and to recall Piper’s excursion to Norway when he was about seven years old.

Piper called himself a “tagalong,” since he was not an official Boy Scout. His father was a scout master, and his older brother, Ray, whom family members believe was 16 or 17, was probably a Sea Scout. They traveled with a large contingent of Boy Scouts from the Panama Canal Zone, where they lived.

“This truly is a big deal,” said Denison.

Very little has been known about the scouts in Norway until Piper and his family arrived, armed with copies of 1930s pictures they donated to the Historical Society, giving new information to the Norway historians, she said.

Piper was part of the contingent of 50 or more Boy Scouts from the Panama Canal Zone who came to Norway for the summer in the 1930s, setting up tents on the lake shore in an area believed to be near the present-day Lake Pennesseewassee Park.

The residents of the self-contained Canal Zone (the official name for the U.S. territory in Panama) were primarily U.S. citizens and West Indians who worked in the Zone and on the canal — the 48 mile-long international waterway that allows ships to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Local newspaper accounts of the time indicated that the boys usually arrived in July and left in early September, filling their summer with activities such as camp regattas in places like Roxbury Pond and Maranacook Lake in Winthrop.

The regattas were sensational and attended by as many as 5,000 people. There were swim races, motor board races, log-rolling competitions, seaplane demonstrations and other events, all centered around water activities.

Names like Eddie Wood, George Halderman and Harry Foster, all Panama Canal Zone Boy Scouts, peppered the newspaper accounts of the regattas with their swimming feats.

Swimming was also an important part of the Boy Scout experience at Lake Pennesseewassee.

Although Piper didn’t recall who Enid was at the time of his visit to Norway, he hadn’t forgotten she was a pretty, young local girl, pictured in a bathing suit with scouts on the lake. Her pictures, which include one with Homer Piper and his brother, were the source of much curiosity by the family over the years.

Norway resident Enid Dullea, it turns out, was the Boys Scouts’ swim instructor and a highly regarded competitive swimmer in her own right.

On Thursday, Piper stood on the end of the Lake Pennesseewassee boat ramp. Cupping his hands over his eyes, he looked north searching for “three big rocks” on the shore of Lake Pennesseewassee, where he had once set up his tent with other Boy Scouts, caught a big fish and met a young woman named Enid.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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