Elusive pictures arrive!

This past week has been exciting for new content at kecoughtan.com. I've been provided with photographs of items that I've needed for a long time. Larry Johnson sent me several very cool pictures, including one of the last coffee mug from Kecoughtan Lodge. It's not a design masterpiece, in fact it features a generic national OA logo with "Kecoughtan Lodge 463" imprinted underneath. But when it's the last photo you need to show every mug ever issued by the Lodge, it's welcomed as quite a prize!

I was also granted permission by auction hostess Melynda to share a picture of a 1992 NOAC leather round from Kecoughtan Lodge whose existence I was beginning to doubt since I had no details about it other than the fact it was reported to be a leather emblem. There's no sign of it on oaimages.com nor is it listed in the Blue Book. The only one I am aware of is now in the collection of Sam Fairchild who won the auction. This photo was the last one I needed to complete the Kecoughtan event emblems of the 1990's.

Now will someone please help me find out if there really was a leather patch for the 1976 Kecoughtan Lodge Spring Ordeal?

Down to nine Kecoughtan Lodge activity patch needs

I've been fortunate to pick up some Kecoughtan Lodge activity patch needs from recent auctions and after doing to checklist updating realized that I am down to just ten to complete this collection. I may even be down to just nine since I have not been able to confirm the existence of one of the patches (a leather patch reportedly issued in 1976 for the Spring ordeal).

Should you happen to have any of these available for trade or sale, please contact me. I've got a number of 463 activity patch duplicates as well in case you have holes to fill in your collection, and I'd be happy to send you a list of them.

Here's what I need (click on the decade links if you'd like to see pictures):

50's/60's
57 Fellowship (w/349)
66 Fall Fellowship - silkscreened neckerchief
67 Fall Fellowship
69 Winter Ordeal

70's
76 Spring Ordeal - leather (does this patch exist?)

80's
84 Fall Ordeal
86 Christmas Banquet
88 Summer Ordeal

90's
90 Spring Ordeal
95 Spring Ordeal

40th Anniversary Kecoughtan leather emblem

I was able to add a long-sought after item to my Kecoughtan Lodge collection recently. The 40th Anniversary Vigil Rededication leather emblem was issued to Vigil Honor members in 1991, and until I acquired this item through an ebay auction I had never even seen a photograph of it.


You can now find a picture of it on the web page listing Kecoughtan Lodge activity emblems from the 1990's. If you can provide any additional information like the number that were issued or who created the emblems, please send me an email.

Bayport 2007 patch gallery completed

Larry Johnson kindly sent along images of the Bayport Scout Reservation 2007 Staff and Rivah Base emblems to help complete the gallery of patches issued so far this year.

Four diamond-shaped patches were issued for the summer camp sessions, including a camper version with purple border, a black bordered collector's edition for the camp's inaugural year, a white bordered staff issue, and a blue bordered version for Rivah Base.

In addition, registrants received a round patch for early payment. Pictures of each of these emblems are available on the Colonial Virginia Camps page in the Bayport Scout Reservation section.

Converting image views to Lighbox

I've spent several hours recently going through the site and converting the emblem image views to use Lightbox, a web presentation effect that places a dark translucent screen over the web page the image is linked from and displays the image centered with a white background.


While the effect is visually appealing, there are a couple of other reasons that I chose to implement it on this site.

The prior image presentation method of using popup windows was a serious pain to manually code and many browsers and adware/spyware blockers are configured to block popup windows.


The lightbox effect includes navigation when an image is displayed. If you mouse over the image you will see "next" and "previous" links so that you can view other images in a series (you can also use the "n" and "p" keys on your keyboard to accomplish this).

For example, you can go to the Kecoughtan Chenilles page, click on the link to the C1 emblem, and then proceed to view all of the other Kecoughtan chenilles by just pressing the "n" key on your keyboard while the lightbox effect is active.

I held off on a mass conversion of the site to lightbox until I could verify that the effect works without issues when browsing images from an Apple iPhone. I was mighty relieved when I saw it works fine on the iPhone's Safari browser since I was not at all eager to go back to popups or research another display solution. When I get a chance I will take some photos of Kecoughtan patch images from this site displayed on the beautiful iPhone LCD screen and post them to this blog.