Too many kids today spend time on video games, which don’t teach them the interaction and social skills they need in today’s world. The scouts focus on lessons in leadership that also teach them to care about others and to participate in the community,” says Leo Bellefleur of West Windsor.
Bellefleur, a former scout himself who is now a scout leader and the father of two scouts is front and center at dozens of scouting events throughout the year, including the Boy Scout Camporee this fall, which drew some 2,”000 Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Venturers of all ages from central New Jersey for the first time ever at the Mercer County Community Park. The three-day event gave the boys physical challenges, learning opportunities, and a bonding experience they would take with them for a lifetime.
Bellefleur says: “This is an opportunity for all scouts to have fun with an absolute purpose. There’s fellowship. By helping them learn we’re building tomorrow’s men.”
The event featured stations set up at different venues throughout the park. For example, at the craftsman station they learned how to build with common tools. Another station focused on the Citizen Badge, where scouts learn about the country’s leadership, the basics of the flag, and the proper etiquette used to raise it, lower it, and fold it. At dozens of other booths the scouts learned everything from how to build a fire in the outdoors to lassoing to kitemaking.
“It’s like old home week out here,” Bellefleur says. “I love all of this because it’s not just about being out here with your friends and having fun, it’s about building character. When a boy leaves scouting you can bet that when you talk to them they will look you in the eye and talk to you in a clear and forthright manner.”
Sam Esposito, 12, a seventh-grader at Community Middle School who lives in the Princeton Ivy East neighborhood of West Windsor, had Bellefleur as a pack leader. “He is the most enthusiastic cubmaster I’ve ever seen in my life. He is great with all the scouts and his own kids are so lucky. He built them a rock climbing wall and a zipline in their backyard to help them with their skills.”
Esposito’s father, John, a satellite systems engineer, is a former Cub Scout and Boy Scout who now is assistant Scoutmaster of troop 88 in Princeton. “Scouting is a super cultural institution. It gives kids something they don’t get in school. It helps them develop maturity, and they understand that they are charged with responsibility for the organization and leadership of the troop.”
Bellefleur was born in San Francisco in 1947. His parents had met during World War Two, his father a janitor, his mother a nurse’s aide. He started Cub Scouts at the age of eight and bridged to Boy Scouts at 11. But that bout with scouting lasted only another year. “It was too much like the military,” he says.”I didn’t see the fun and the purpose.” It was while he was in the North Point neighborhood of San Francisco teaching swimming that he became intrigued by the Sea Scouts in uniform working on the boats in the bay.
When he was 14 his family moved from San Francisco to Pacifica along the coast and Bellefleur became involved with scouting under the Sea Scouts, now renamed the Venture Program. The experience taught him about life on the water, sailing up the bay, up the Sacramento River, and even sailing to Canada. “The best things I learned in my life I learned in the Sea Scouts,” says Bellefleur, “and they were the basic concepts of Boy Scouting: loyalty, working as a team, planning and goal setting. It was all about life skills, things you need if you want to succeed in business. I learned about leadership and being a good citizen.”
It was the Sea Scouts, Bellefleur says, that prepared him for his successful career in sales. He stayed in the Sea Scout program for as long as he could, until the age of 22 when he became too old for the program. He had graduated from Oceana High School in Pacifica and then did some college studies though he did not complete his degree. He says he was able to do very well in the world of business because of the skills he learned in scouting. He was senior vice-president of sales with Telekurs North America, a Swiss firm that specialized in the electronic dissemination of financial data in New York. In 1990, he married his wife, Colette. In 1991 the young couple moved to West Windsor. In 1992 Bellefleur joined Thompson Financial in New York as sales director of North America for insider trading analysis.
Their son, Paul, was born in 1993, followed by another son, Francis, in 1995. In 2002 the Bellefleurs realized that both kids were not doing as well in school as they could. Colette was working for McGraw-Hill at that time in a high-powered job. Then she took a senior management position at the economics information company Global Insight. Her main office was in Philadelphia and her staff was in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Massachusetts, and Europe so she was constantly traveling.
“Her career was on the way up, my career was flat, and the children were suffering,” says Bellefleur. “It was an easy decision to stay at home and let Colette have the big job.” He says he tried a stint as a full-time dad staying at home but it didn’t work financially. “No matter what I did, it seemed we were running about $500 short every month living in West Windsor. Nobody wanted to give me a job where I could get the kids off to school and be home when they got home. I was looking at Home Depot, Acme, just to make up the shortfall but couldn’t find it. I had the same dilemma as a working mom. The flexible hours were hard to find.”
About a year ago, while he was networking with associates in the financial information business, he was able to find a company in Canada that was interested in opening a U.S. branch and was willing to take him on as a consultant. His job is now to develop North American sales for Canada fixed income products such as bonds. The company’s goal is to open offices, develop staff, and sell products, which Bellefleur can do out of his home office.
“Colette is up and out of the house by 6:30 a.m. That’s when my day officially starts though I’m up earlier,” Bellefleur says. “I get the kids ready for school, make the lunches, then send them off on the bus. Then I head to my office in the basement where I spend the next six hours working. I spend about 30 hours a week working, and then I’m a dad and scout leader. When my boys get home, it’s homework time, sports, and music. Fran plays the piano, and Paul plays the flute and saxophone.”
Bellefleur says since he has been home, his boys have gone from struggling in school to reading above grade level and receiving straight A’s.
Though it’s a huge time commitment, he says it is a labor of love. “I do this for the boys, and I do it for me. It satisfies my need to give something back to the community. The satisfaction of watching first graders coming out in the fifth grade able to stand up and speak to adults, to have a sense of right and wrong, and to be confident in their surroundings is awesome.”
For those interested in learning more about scouting, upcoming events include a holiday concert on Tuesday, December 21, at 7:30 p.m., given by the older scouts at Bear Creek Assisted Living; the Pinewood Derby Race on January 30 at Wicoff School; the February ski trip; and the Pack Meeting in the Woods in June, an overnight family camping experience. Additional activities include sleepovers at the Franklin Intitute and on the Battleship New Jersey, and a deep sea fishing trip. “Yes, we are a busy pack,” says Bellefleur. “We started with a total of 14 boys in 1994, and now we have over 40 active Cub Scouts.”
For additional information, call Leo Bellefleur at 609-936-1444.
— Euna Kwon Brossman
