Remembering Mark Dunakin
What follows is a piece I wrote for the Arrowpoint, a publication of the Order of the Arrow Lodge, Achewon Nimat, San Francisco Bay Area Council Boy Scouts of America. I go into a little BSA lingo here. So get out your Google Page if you need definitions.
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For those of us involved in Scouting since the early 1980's, the passing of Sergeant Mark Dunakin of the Oakland Police Department on March 21st was like the loss of a brother. I suppose I could spell out the particulars: he was a member of Troop 943 in Pleasanton California, he entered the Order of the Arrow in May of 1983, he received his Brotherhood in May of 1984. In 1986, he was awarded the Eagle Scout rank. He served on Camp Royaneh's staff from 1984-86 and on Wente Scout Reservation's off and on from 1987-90. But those fact's won't give you the essence of Mark. If the creed of the Order of the Arrow is to be a "Brotherhood of Honor Campers", then to understand that creed, and to get beyond the uniforms, the awards, the ceremonies, the sashes and to understand what Mark meant to camping, as we knew him, you have to understand the camp experience with Mark.
A fixture of Camp Royaneh and Wente Scout Reservation in the 1980's, Mark worked in the Diamond and Risin' W corrals at both camps. There are many men and women of the greater Bay Area , that as a boys and girls, took their first horse ride with Mark Dunakin ----and what "rides" they could be.
As someone who saddled up for many a clip clop through the back country of Wente Scout Reservation I can tell you "the ride" wasn't taking place so much on the back of a horse as in the mind and word antics of Mark Dunakin. It was a bit like trekking through the trees with Disney's version of "The Jungle Book's" Baloo the bear. It wasn't so much the sway of the horses, the silhouette of fake cowboys in the sunset as it was the impromptu theater of yarns that would come from Mark's mouth. None of the trees grew naturally. "That crooked tree was planted by Crooked Dan, a lumberjack in these parts. No matter how he combed his hair, it never came out straight. So when he planted trees after logging, he bent a lot of them, so he'd have company." The performances changed every trail ride. There were at least three or four new plot lines a day for crooked trees. The campers ate it up.
Like Baloo, Mark was big, tall and broad, three times the size of the average Scout he was guiding, not the kind of friend you expect to meet in the woods. But as he rode along each summer he taught the scouts a little about the meaning of life, friendship, and trust. Ed Clunies-Ross told me one of his first memories of Mark was one day in the corral when a horse had caught his hoof in the wire mesh of the corral fence. If you have been around horses enough, you know in that sort of situation, they panic, and the situation get's dangerous. While Mark and another corral staff member handled the horse, Ed was sent to the tack room to get a pair of wire cutters. As Ed said in his e-mail to me, "This says a lot about Mark, he didn't begrudge having to have a ten-year-old in tow and actually put trust in me in a stressful moment. In my mind he was always one of the big guys I looked up to."
After Mark started his career in Law Enforcement members of the camp staff's and Scout troops would occasionally run into him in Oakland. He was the same old Mark, married and with a family now, but just as gentle a disposition as ever. Conversations would move to Scouting and the influence it had on his life. A few stories about how a few fake robberies and some warrior ambushes that went awry on the trail always got exchanged. But everyone that met him, relayed the same story back to me: he loved being a Oakland police officer. As I saw him on TV over the years discussing his job you could tell, he liked public service, and he kept the" Mark" sense of humor about it. I encourage you all to Google up some videos online and watch them yourselves. His understated "give everyone the benefit of the doubt" personality is there. I can't really tell you where Mark got his love of service. I suspect some of it was from Scouting, I suspect some was from a father who spent a career teaching all of us who worked at his camp's, you can do a hard job and still have fun at it.
In Scouting we all go to our meetings, we say our oaths and recite our motto's. In the week after March 21st, when I was writing this, the last lines of the Obligation of the Order of the Arrow came to mind: "The preservation of cheerful spirit, in the midst of weighty responsibilities, and the unselfish service and devotion to the welfare of others. " Twenty years ago, my friends, Mark and I stood in the light of candles or campfires and uttered those words a hundred times as we held up the Sign of Scouting. But as I wrote this, it occurred to me, on that Saturday afternoon, when Mark Dunakin was stolen away from us: he wasn't uttering those words, he wasn't thinking them, he was living them.
He will be sorely missed.
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For those of us involved in Scouting since the early 1980's, the passing of Sergeant Mark Dunakin of the Oakland Police Department on March 21st was like the loss of a brother. I suppose I could spell out the particulars: he was a member of Troop 943 in Pleasanton California, he entered the Order of the Arrow in May of 1983, he received his Brotherhood in May of 1984. In 1986, he was awarded the Eagle Scout rank. He served on Camp Royaneh's staff from 1984-86 and on Wente Scout Reservation's off and on from 1987-90. But those fact's won't give you the essence of Mark. If the creed of the Order of the Arrow is to be a "Brotherhood of Honor Campers", then to understand that creed, and to get beyond the uniforms, the awards, the ceremonies, the sashes and to understand what Mark meant to camping, as we knew him, you have to understand the camp experience with Mark.
A fixture of Camp Royaneh and Wente Scout Reservation in the 1980's, Mark worked in the Diamond
As someone who saddled up for many a clip clop through the back country of Wente Scout Reservation I can tell you "the ride" wasn't taking place so much on the back of a horse as in the mind and word antics of Mark Dunakin. It was a bit like trekking through the trees with Disney's version of "The Jungle Book's" Baloo the bear. It wasn't so much the sway of the horses, the silhouette of fake cowboys in the sunset as it was the impromptu theater of yarns that would come from Mark's mouth. None of the trees grew naturally. "That crooked tree was planted by Crooked Dan, a lumberjack in these parts. No matter how he combed his hair, it never came out straight. So when he planted trees after logging, he bent a lot of them, so he'd have company." The performances changed every trail ride. There were at least three or four new plot lines a day for crooked trees. The campers ate it up.
Like Baloo, Mark was big, tall and broad, three times the size of the average Scout he was guiding, not the kind of friend you expect to meet in the woods. But as he rode along each summer he taught the scouts a little about the meaning of life, friendship, and trust. Ed Clunies-Ross told me one of his first memories of Mark was one day in the corral when a horse had caught his hoof in the wire mesh of the corral fence. If you have been around horses enough, you know in that sort of situation, they panic, and the situation get's dangerous. While Mark and another corral staff member handled the horse, Ed was sent to the tack room to get a pair of wire cutters. As Ed said in his e-mail to me, "This says a lot about Mark, he didn't begrudge having to have a ten-year-old in tow and actually put trust in me in a stressful moment. In my mind he was always one of the big guys I looked up to."
After Mark started his career in Law Enforcement members of the camp staff's and Scout troops would occasionally run into him in Oakland. He was the same old Mark, married and with a family now, but just as gentle a disposition as ever. Conversations would move to Scouting and the influence it had on his life. A few stories about how a few fake robberies and some warrior ambushes that went awry on the trail always got exchanged. But everyone that met him, relayed the same story back to me: he loved being a Oakland police officer. As I saw him on TV over the years discussing his job you could tell, he liked public service, and he kept the" Mark" sense of humor about it. I encourage you all to Google up some videos online and watch them yourselves. His understated "give everyone the benefit of the doubt" personality is there. I can't really tell you where Mark got his love of service. I suspect some of it was from Scouting, I suspect some was from a father who spent a career teaching all of us who worked at his camp's, you can do a hard job and still have fun at it.
In Scouting we all go to our meetings, we say our oaths and recite our motto's. In the week after March 21st, when I was writing this, the last lines of the Obligation of the Order of the Arrow came to mind: "The preservation of cheerful spirit, in the midst of weighty responsibilities, and the unselfish service and devotion to the welfare of others. " Twenty years ago, my friends, Mark and I stood in the light of candles or campfires and uttered those words a hundred times as we held up the Sign of Scouting. But as I wrote this, it occurred to me, on that Saturday afternoon, when Mark Dunakin was stolen away from us: he wasn't uttering those words, he wasn't thinking them, he was living them.
He will be sorely missed.
posted by Stan at 11:13 AM
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