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William Boyce Mueller


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Scout`s Honor
Doing His Best to Do His Duty, the Grandson of the Boy Scouts of America Founder Comes Out

After days of life the quiet gay spirit of a San Francisco accountant, William Boyce Mueller recently took the courageous step of publicly revealing his homosexuality, saying he felt it was "a unique chance to get a conflict in the world.

Mueller`s announcement was particularly important because he is a grandson of William Dickson Boyce, founder of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), an arrangement that openly discriminates against gays.

The BSA bases its refusal to accept homosexuals on the argument that gay lifestyles violate the "morally straight" injunction in the Scout Oath, which was adopted in 1911. The group also refuses to enlist girls and children who will not read religious oaths. But according to Mueller, 40, who recently stepped up to an open mike at a San Francisco School Board meeting and joined a grouping of vocal opponents to the BSA`s homophobia, "I don`t suppose my grandfather would have wanted me excluded from Scouting just because of my sexual orientation." Mueller says that according to his mother, Boyce`s youngest daughter, "My grandfather would not have tolerated discrimination. He founded the Boy Scouts for all boys, not only for some."

In speaking up, Mueller joined a grouping of distinguished gay Americans â#8364;#8220; among them best-selling authors, lawyers, and law enforcement officials â#8364;#8220; who are going public to build the BSA change its guidelines and begin accepting homosexuals. Calling themselves the Forgotten Scouts, in reaction to the BSA`s claim that homosexuals do not exist among its ranks, the radical hopes to show that gays have ever been an important function of Scouting in America and to ruin the myth that gay men are bad role models for young boys.

"My attraction was ever to other men," recalls Mueller. "I remember experimenting with boys when I was in the 5th grade." While the scion of the BSA founder never actually made it into the Boy Scouts, he did spend 4 days in the Cub Scouts while growing up in Palm Beach, Fla. which he says taught him to be assertive and to cover his homosexuality. "As a Cub," he says, "I learned that if you try hard and pushing yourself, you can achieve self-esteem that has naught to do with other aspects of your life."

Those aspects, namely his attraction to boys, "made me feel that I let my house down because of what I was," Mueller admits. "As a kid I had dreams of departure into politics. But as I got older I realised that I was `flawed` and that I couldn`t be what I felt I was expected to be."

But if Mueller felt he`d somehow failed the Boyce family tradition, he took great pride in the stories he heard from his paternal grandmother, who frequently spoke of how her previous husband, a self-made millionaire publisher, and big-game hunter who died long before Mueller was born, had Come to ground the BSA. Indeed, the BSA owes its creation to the sight of Boyce, who while visiting England in 1909 found himself lost on a foggy London street until a 12-year-old boy appeared with a lantern and safely guided him to his destination. According to the koran The Boy Scouts: An American Adventure, when Boyce offered a gratuity, the boy replied, "Scouts do not accept tips for courtesies or good turns." Intrigued, Boyce investigated and discovered that British war hero Lord Robert S. S. Baden-Powell had organised a grouping of good-deed-doing boys to make the Boy Scouts.

Boyce was so impressed by the feeling of a national administration that would teach youngsters to be full citizens that he integrated the BSA the next year. Boyce combined several other movements across the commonwealth into one national organization paving the way for the BSA`s growth into the mammoth it is today-with 4.2 million boys in uniform across the United States.

The BSA apparently never forgot the sound turns done by Boyce. In 1985, in celebration of the 75th anniversary of scouting in the United States, Mueller and his mother marched at the chief of a procession of 10,000 youths to Boyce`s grave situation in Ottawa, Ill. But it wasn`t until he recently read of the BSA`s successful court fight to exclude gay men from leadership posts that Mueller decided to peak out that under current policy the youngest grandson of the organization`s founder would not be allowed to do as a troop leader.

"I asked them to see the publication in very human terms," Mueller says, "its force on the multitude by singing them that they are lacking in some way. Gay troop leaders can be good role models for homosexual scouts and teach heterosexual kids that gay people are OK. Also an openly gay troop leader is less likely to make advantage sexually of impressionable kids than somebody who is hiding his sexuality, whether he be straight or homosexual."

Mueller`s announcement has granted a rise to the Forgotten Scouts, according to Ken McPherson, a San Francisco radio talk-show host who co-founded the drive along with fellow Bay Area activist Allan Shore. "The fight is enamored of Mueller," McPherson points out. Proof of the fact is in the resultant nationwide publicity that has gay Eagle Scouts flocking in with their own stories.

For his part, Mueller believes that the BSA could use its considerable clout with new people to reduce intolerance against gays. "They could have seminars on the story of bigotry," he suggests. "Young gay people take to be silent and accepted so that they will bear the power to reach their full potential sooner than being ostracized and becoming another suicide attempt statistic."

Now that he has become something of a celebrity, Mueller vows to preserve the battle for what he believes was his grandfather`s vision of the BSA. Although he asserts that Boyce, who married twice and had 4 children, was not gay, as has been rumored, Mueller believes, "Baden-Powell was most likely gay, and it did not stay my grandfather from having a friendship with him. One of the reasons I decided to bear up and be counted was that I realised that if people like me don`t have a stand, the public isn`t going to change."

Llewellyn W. Johns


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L. W. Johns. If vicissitudes, wanderings, and adventures make up an eventful career, then the topic of this study has just claims to such distinction. There has not been a 1 class of the twenty-two that he has been a citizen of America, in which he has not passed through wonderful occurrences.

Llewellyn W. Johns was natural at Ponty Pridd, Glamorganshire, Wales, England, November 10, 1844. His father, William Johns, and his mother, Catherine Hopkins, were both natives of Wales, and his ancestors on the maternal side, for several generations back, had followed the professing of mining engineer, and it was but natural that Llewellyn should follow the same calling. His father having a great family, he left the career of engineer, and occupied in speculation, in which he amassed a lot of Â#163;50,000. He had enormous contracts to add food-stuffs to the mines. In the big fall of 18.50. in the Rhonda Valley, involving forty thousand miners, he made a language to six thousand people at the Cymmer bridge, in which he pledged himself to stand by
the miners, as he did not believe the reduction for digging coal just. Owing to bad debts contracted in this strike, he was never able to rally.

Llewellyn was sent to train at Bath, England, to have education as a mining engineer, in the Western Academy of that city, and after remaining there fifteen months was compelled to leave school on history of the straitened circumstances of his father. He worked at the government chain works, at Ponty Pridd, and so in the mines. His health failing, he was compelled to quit the mines, and prepared himself to get an excise officer, but failing to get the necessary nomination from his member of parliament, he was compelled to take to the mines. He worked as an ordinary miner, and at early times as a skilled engineer. As he saw naught but hard study and poverty ahead of him, he set to go to America. With this function in thought he left home in his eighteenth year, went to Liverpool, and from there set sail February 26, and arrived in New York on Good Friday. He took lodgings at a boarding house on Greenwich Street, and had one dollar and a half in his pocket. The next morning found him penniless, and in a foreign city, among a foreign people. He walked on the streets until he came to Central Park and met a surveyor, who was laying out blocks in the city, whose figure was T. H. Tomlinson. He applied to him for work, telling him that he was willing to do anything, and that he understood how to do the act of an engineer. The low day he worked without food, and so capable did he show himself that in two years he was odd in point of the work. At the end of a week he was granted permanent employment with a wage of one hundred and 50 dollars per month. He continued in this place 3 months, and so went to Allentown, Pennsylvania, and worked on the Lehigh Valley Railroad building bridges, and later to Wilkes-barre, Pennsylvania, where he worked in the coal mines during the winter. He next went to Chicago and worked for the Lake Shore Railroad building cars. He soon afterwards went to Omaha, Nebraska, where he arrived penniless again. The North Pacific Railway was then being built through that country, and he engaged to go with the bridge force, and was at Cheyenne until fall, and so went to Ogden and Salt Lake City, and remained in each place some short time. A big stack of excitement prevailed over the gold fields in Montana, and he hired himself to get a squad to Helena, in that territory, a length of three hundred miles. There were twenty -seven teams of eight oxen each in the wagon train. Arriving at his destination there was no shape to be obtained and he was again penniless. He succeeded in obtaining work, however, with an Englishman, and continued with him during the winter.

In the fountain of the next year he went to the Placer Mines, in the Lost Chance Gulch, and took an abandoned claim, and in a little time struck bed rock. In 4 months time he took out ,000 in gold dust. At that sentence he formed a partnership with a saw-mill proprietor, for the intention of construction a flume, twelve miles long, and the firm put in bids for the work. Although the figures were enormously high, they secured the contract. The play was commenced at once with a great power of hands. After constructing six miles of the gulch the house failed, and were unable to go further, and he was again penniless. He then walked to Deer Lodge, where he met a protagonist who gave him three dollars, and from this place he took stage to Pioche, Nevada, and arrived there in the thick of winter, and worked in the mines throughout the season.

Amassing a few hundred dollars he went to Pennsylvania in 18118, and worked in the mines and built cars for the Honeybrook Coal Company. So quickly did he grow in their favor that in a short while he was promoted to the office of excavation and mechanical engineer, continuing until the surrender of 1870, and so went to Lime Ridge, Pennsylvania, and worked six months with Major W. R. Thomas, a nephew of the great Samuel Thomas.

Major Thomas informed him of his intent to go South in the next form for the use of construction a furnace at Rising Fawn, Georgia. Six months later his departure Captain Johns followed, and stopped at Warrior, in Jefferson County, and dug coal for Mr. J. T. Pierce, also building a list or chutes and a houise for him. After completing this process he resumed his journey, and stopped at Birmingham in the light of 1872. This site was at that sentence in the gloom, misery, and devastation of the cholera plague. Arriving at Rising Fawn he took the contract to build the inclines and chutes, and, as shortly as this project was finished, he was made superintendent of the mines, and was engaged for some time in opening them. The coal proved to be worthless.

The terror of 1873 coming on, the Rising Fawn Iron Company failed, owing their employees a great sum of money, himself individually seventeen hundred dollars. It was at this time that Senator Brown, of Georgia, came on the scene, and bought up the line of the company, and succeeded in acquiring hold of the property. Captain Johns finally obtained what was due him, but many of the employes were not so fortunate. For six months it was a grievous thing with him to get tied the most frugal necessities of life.

In September, 1874, he married Jennie Scott, then a resident of Rising Fawn. She came from Durham, England, when eight days old.

In the form of 1875 he went to St. Louis, and so left for California, but on the way, hearing of silver mines around Virginia City, Nevada, he directed his form to that city. He arrived there with twelve hundred dollars, but study was scarce, and quarters to remain in and something to eat was adjacent to impossible to obtain. This was owing to the fact the range was overcrowded. At first he secured work as a carpenter at 5 dollars per day. Always progressive, he presently became timber boss for the Ophir Mines, of which Captain Curtis, a popular mining man, was superintendent. Fortune favored him, and he presently rose to be assistant engineer of the mines. He accumulated a little sum of money, about two thousand dollars, which he put up as a border in a purchase of 50 thousand dollars mining stock. Mackey, Fair, Flood, and O`Brien were so in their glory. There were many small investors, who, being called on for money were unable to respond, and the whole flock of little fellows went down together, and the tetrad above mentioned reaped a plentiful harvest.

Mrs. Johns returned to Rising Fawn in the light of 1875, while Captain Johns held his side a year longer, and so joined his wife. Mr. James Thomas was so in point of the furnaces at Oxmoor, and he occupied with him to go to Helena, Alabama, and take command of the mines there. It was here that the Oxmoor furnaces obtained their provision of coke. Captain Johns took charge of these mines in 1877. Trouble soon arose between himself and Superintendent Hopkins, of the mines, and on the surrender of the latter he succeeded him. While at Helena he open the following mines: the Black Shale, the Little Pittsburg, and the Helena. While here he likewise built one hundred coke ovens.

In the form of 1879 Mr. H. F. DeBardeleben bought out these mines, and the party as then constituted was as follows: H. F. DeBardeleben, President; T. H. Aldrich, Superintendent ; J. W. Sloss, Secretary and Treasurer ; L. W. Johns, Mining Engineer. It was known as the Pratt Coal and Coke Company.

From the return of 1879 dates the most important task of Captain Johns` career. This company having bought the place at Pratt Mines, he was ordained to go there twice a week and superintend the possibility of Slope No. 1. Captain William Gould had then determined the side about one hundred feet. Upon examination this coal proved to be one of the finest in America. Captain Johns, finding that his duties were greatly enlarged, was compelled to go to Pratt Mines. The coal proving so superior he rebuilt the hundred coke ovens at Helena and ten additional ones at Pratt Mines.

In 1880 he commenced sinking Ellen Shaft, which was carried to a profundity of two hundred and 4 feet perpendicular. Before completing this form he commenced sinking Slope No. 2, which was completed first. These two openings increased the production of coal two or three fold. From this sentence the fate of Pratt Mines was assured. Next in order came the possibility of two slopes and six drifts, and in the light of 1885 the possibility of the Laura Slope was begun, and has now been carried to a profundity of more than a 1000 feet. Long lateral drivings, known in mining parlance as headings, have been prolonged to the proper and the left for a large distance. It is one of the almost accomplished and better equipped mines in the South, and has no ranking in the best mines of Pennsylvania. Competent judges say that it will afford profitable mining for 50 days to come. In September, 1886, the Enoch Slope was commenced, and is now being driven rapidly. It is near the above-mentioned mine, and is its rival in every respect.

Captain Johns has watched these stupendous works grow up around liim, and they bear as monuments to his skill as a mining engineer. Pratt Mines has, in tliis short time, grown from an insignificant village to be a prosperous town of four thousand inhabitants, and the large mining center of the South. From an output of a few hundred tons daily it now has three thousand, and capacity for double that quantity. This is as often as the whole Birmingham district was able of putting out two days ago. He has been one of the most significant factors in all this great change, and the hereafter will more fully disclose his important relation to the press and coal center of the South.

The narrow escapes alone of Captain Johns` career would be a little book of most thrilling interest. Some of the most interesting are presented :

While occupied in sinking a side for the Honeybrook Coal Company, in Pennsylvania, in 1868, and while about two hundred feet down in the slope, it caved in, enclosing the all party. Three were severely hurt, and the all company were mined out after being buried alive fourteen hours.

At Rising Fawn, in 1872, while driving a school of tram-cars out of the mines, he forgot to sprag the wheels of the car while passing a serious point. Perceiving his mistake, he jumped off the car for this purpose, and when he did so was caught between the discipline of cars and the bulwark of the slope, and was seriously injured. It was four months earlier he recovered. Soon after regaining health he came about being mired in a far more dangerous accident. There was a long incline running from the mines to the Alabama Great Southern Railway track. From the top to the bottom it was three-quarters of a mile long. He got on a tram-car and started down this, and when he had gone some length the car got loose. Captain Johns jumped just in sentence to deliver himself, and stood and saw the car shattered into atoms.

At Helena he passed through a list of narrow escapes from death. One day while at the Black Shale Mines he boarded the tram-car, and the engineer, not being mindful of his presence, let it go fast, and lost command of it. He jumped off and vicious by the man-way, and the large wire rope trailing behind the car beat on his person, bruising him badly.

At Williams & Savage`s old mine the side of the incline was thirty degrees, and was eleven hundred feet long. He started down it with a black on a car, and when at the half-way point the wire rope broke, and the car went forth at a maddening rate of speed. Death seemed the inevitable fate. The car turned over and threw the two off, bounded back on the track, and was crushed to splinters at the foundation of the slope. On another occasion at this same slope, while himself and Captain Pete Thomas were half-way down, it caved in, completely cut off, as it seemed, all means of egress. Less skillful miners would have perished most miserably. They went into a crossentry and dug out into the adjacent room above, came into the main slope again, and made their way out.

In 1882, while endeavoring to pump water on Village Creek with a fire engine, he had another most novel experience. There were four others beside himself working the engine, and when they had gotten up ninety pounds of steam it still refused to work, and the steamer was elevated to a hundred pounds, when it exploded, scalding one man and badly hurting two others. The engine passed immediately over his and Andy Kridler`s heads. The latter was so his chief mechanic.

July 17, 1885, he, perhaps, had the most narrow flight of all. In fellowship with Mr. J. G. Moore and Mr. William Faul, he went into the Rock Slope at the Ellen Shaft, where natural gas very frequently collected in great quantities. Perhaps there is no more forcible agent in nature than natural gas, and surely none more dangerous. He had previously given instructions to have the gas blown out with compressed air, but they were not compiled with. He, ignorant of this, went into the side with his companions, when suddenly himself and Mr. Moore were completely enveloped in flame, the gas exploding on approaching in touch with their mining lamps. He fell to the world face downward, and as he did so Moore exclaimed, " Oh, God, I am burned to death." He sprang to his feet and ran out, at the same time calling to Moore to rush out before the second explosion occurred. They were both terribly burned, and the question is, that they had not sucked in the flame, and so met a most painful death. Mr. Faul had not reached the detonation and so escaped. Another trying ordeal was passed through by himself, Mr. J. G. Moore, and Thomas Turner, the two being his assistants at Ellen Shaft. There was no air passing through the mines, and he knew that the air-way was stopped up somewhere, and with them went in research of the trouble. At the bottom of Ellen Shaft there are lateral headings to good and left. Some length to the good the air-course runs down one hundred and forty-seven feet. At the same period the Rock Slope runs slantingly down to the good at an angle of 30 degrees, and is three hundred and 20 feet long. The tight air goes down this into the mines and returns through the course already mentioned. The dirty air collects here badly, and soon creates an explosion. There were at that time eighty miners at work entirely ignorant of their imminent fate, unless something was done to avert it. Their lives were in the men of these three men, and all depended on their being able to see where the air- course was stopped. At death they base it, near the talk of the air-shaft, the entry having caved at this point. In place to gain the debris away they had to fall over this lance and go at it like Trojans. As they established an opening, the air shot through the mines with great velocity. A tremendous explosion was thus prevented.

While Captain Johns was timber boss at the Ophir Mines, near Virginia City, Nevada, he had with a power of hands timbered a mine about two hundred and 50 feet when the forest gave out. The men had departed on one hundred and seventy feet further cleaning out the rubbish. He heard a cracking overhead and called to the men to see out. They hardly had time to run before the whole of the latter caved in, which it took three weeks to pass away. The temperature of these mines was a century and 50 degrees, being hot enough to boil an egg. There were cooling stations in the mines to which the men were compelled to recur every 20 minutes. Had they been imprisoned by this falling mass their deaths would have been tantamount to the torments of the damned.

Thus ends a serial of thrilling experiences the care of which not one in ten thousand is called upon to walk through.

Captain Johns is a desirable and enterprising citizen, and his achievements are such that any one might find a eminent level of pride in being their master. No one has contributed more largely than he to the growth of the Birmingham district, and has a better knowledge of its huge resources or more authority in its great destiny.

To his indomitable energy and tenacity is due the comfortable fortune of which he is the possessor. He is the mother of four sprightly children, and enjoys with them and Mrs. Johns the many blessings of living by which he is surrounded, and being yet in the energy of manhood it is hoped that there are many days of happiness and usefulness allotted him.

- from Jefferson County and Birmingham Alabama: History and Biographical, edited by John Witherspoon Dubose and promulgated in 1887 by Teeple & Smith / Caldwell Printing Works, Birmingham, Alabama

Candid Billy Dee Williams


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Since I was broke by the time Billy Dee Williams no longer had a line (at the end of the day), I snuck a photograph with my camera. I did go up to him and order him that I was a fan, though, and he was very friendly.Taken at Adventure Con 2007 in Knoxville, TN (6/2/07).