Scouting, Volume 60, Number 3, March-April 1972 Page: 8
66, [6] p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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In a small business block at North
College Avenue and 38th Street
on the fringe of the Indianapolis
inner-city, there is a variety store.
At first glance, it looks like any
other good variety store—clean,
brightly painted, its shelves lined
with everything from shoestrings to
bird feeders.
But an observant passerby may
guess that it's not just another
variety store. For one thing, the
sign over the door identifies it as
"The Duffel Bag," and the "U" in
"Duffel" is a bag stamped with the
and staff the store as volunteers, so
that costs are minimal.
The Duffel Bag was born in the
fertile mind of August F. (Bud)
Hook, president of Indiana's larg-
est drugstore chain and a volunteer
Scouter with a list of honors and
leadership credits as long as a
Scout stave. "I got to thinking," he
says, "that we and a lot of other
stores had quite a bit of merchan-
dise that couldn't be sold in our
stores—perfectly good stuff—and I
kept seeing places like the Salvation
Army store and the Next-to-New
ganization—the Women's Service
League of the Central Indiana Coun-
cil, BSA. Membership is by invita-
tion, and each member pledges to
give at least 1 day of work per
month at The Duffel Bag. Usually
two or three women are on hand
Monday through Friday from 10
a.m. to 4 p.m.
The driving force behind the
Service League—and The Duffel
Bag—during their formative period
was Mrs. Norris. A petite blonde,
she is the type of person to whom
people turn to get things done. But
THE BIGGEST
PERMANENT GARAGE SALE
ANYWHERE
letters "BSA." For another thing,
when the passerby goes in, he finds
that the clerks are women from
some of the city's leading families.
And they are selling new merchan-
dise at half the usual retail price.
Our passerby would be right in
concluding that The Duffel Bag is
something special. It is a unique
effort by a group of concerned wo-
men, abetted by one of the most
dedicated Scouters, anywhere, to
provide extra funds for Scouting
in the inner-city. In its first year,
the store grossed about $20,000.
The Duffel Bag idea is simplicity
itself. Merchants donate new mer-
chandise that for one reason or
another can't be sold, or seasonal
goods that they don't want to hold
over for a year. Their donations are
tax-deductible. The women operate
By ROBERT PETERSON
store of the Junior League. Also, I
had a vacant store in the block we
control on College Avenue. So I
thought, why can't we get the Boy
Scouts in on this?"
Why not indeed? Soon after-
wards, in early 1970, Bud Hook and
his wife, Peg, broached the idea to
friends, Dr. Max S. Norris, then
president of the Central Indiana
Council, and his wife, June. Enthu-
siasm. Great excitement. And so, in
March 1970, Mrs. Norris and Mrs.
Hook organized a meeting with a
handful of their friends to get the
project under way. The group of
women, initially known as the
Nameless Ones, gradually expanded
to its present size of 55. Eventually,
they settled on a name for the or-
the Duffel Bag is not a one-woman
show. "It amazes me," Mrs. Norris
says. "The girls have been just
great! Their enthusiasm for what
we're doing is just as high now as
when we opened the store October
1, 1970. They drop in often, even
when they're not scheduled to work,
just to see what's in stock and how
we're doing."
At its opening—after a hard sum-
mer's work cleaning and arranging
the store and stocking it—The
Duffel Bag had several thousand
dollars worth of merchandise—
much of it given by Hook Drugs,
Mattel Toys and RCA, as well as
many Indianapolis-based busi-
nesses. Bud Hook says that most
of the new merchandise sold by
The Duffel Bag is in three catego-
ries: overstocked goods, particularly
seasonal items such as Christmas
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 60, Number 3, March-April 1972, periodical, March 1972; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353588/m1/12/: accessed May 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.