The Curious Little Santee 116 Trader Flap
Santee 116 F3 Trader Flap
In August of 2011 at the LLDC the executive committee approved a new "Trader Flap" for the lodge. The vote came at the direction of the scout executive in order to have a Santee flap available for open sale in the Florence office. Several designs were drawn up around tables in the dining hall. However, the design which won out was from Brian Howell who used his computer to take the classic Santee twills and create a white twill. Brian added a fleur-de-lis under the "WWW" but otherwise kept the same look as the twills. The youth approved his design because it was very traditional and also because as a twill flap it would not be as desirable as a fully embroidered Santee flap. The flaps arrived in time for the 2001 Fall Fellowship but a little bit of controversy came with them.
The 2001 Fall Fellowship Patch that became the bird on the Flap
The Moritz patch company had switched the bird that Brian had proposed and used the bird from the 2001 Fall Fellowship patch to the surprise of the executive committee. Another impact of this change was to drop the fdl that Brian had added to the classic twill look since the 2001 Fall bird has a hidden fdl in the parakeet's neck. The committee met on Saturday to decide whether to sell the flaps anyways or send them back. The committee decided to sell them anyways. Randy Dargan wisely made a motion in the business meeting that night that if the patches were reordered that they should keep the design that Moritz sent them instead of going back and using Brian's design which would have made another lodge issue.
The original order of the Trader Flaps was for three hundred. Most of them were sold at Fall Fellowship to Santee brothers who were not used to being allowed to buy a Santee Flap at open sale. Some flaps were taken by the Staff Adviser to be sold in the council office which of course was the first time this had happened in the lodge. By January 2002 all the flaps in the first run were sold out. The lodge eventually reordered 400 more in the fall of 2002. There is no variation in the second run although a twill left and twill right version are recorded in the Blue Book listing. The last trader flaps were sold at 2006 Fall Fellowship.
Contributed by Webmaster Jason Spangler
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I remember it well! My first and last patch design. I believe I was treasurer at the time. I still have the first “demo” of it, given to me by Ricky Huggins. Great times!