Origin Story of Troop 3
The year was 1914. In San Francisco's Chinatown, a group of eight young boys had found a worn copy of the Boy Scout Handbook. As they thumbed through the pages in the play yard of the Chinese Methodist Church, the boys were thoroughly intrigued and inspired by what they saw in this new youth movement, something that was non-existent in Chinatown at the time. Eagerly, they studied the sketches, the diagrams, and read the printed words. From that moment, they knew they wanted to be Boy Scouts.
These eight boys, the charter members of Troop 3, were Lim Wong, Edward Lee, Tim Wong, Bing Moy, Stephen Moy, Nelson Wong, King Lee, and Chingwah Lee. It was Chingwah Lee's interest in Scouting had prompted him to obtain the handbook and it was he who sparked the interest of Scouting in the other boys.
They invited Lim J. Kwong, an engineering student attending the Mt. Tamalpais Military Academy, to be Scoutmaster. B.Y. Chu, a progressive Secretary of the Chinese YMCA, was nominated as the Troop Advisor. May 1914 marks the birth of Troop 3.
The boys recognized the lack of professional guidance. They wrote to National Boy Scout Headquarters in New York, stating their predicament. Field Scout Representative Harry Cross of the Los Angeles Council (the closest Council at the time) was notified. He came to San Francisco and assembled a group of prominent civic leaders to plan a local Council. It was in 1916, two years after the formation of Troop 3, that the San Francisco Boy Scout Council was formally organized.
Why is the troop named Troop 3?
Around 1910, Chinatown resident Hugh Liang asked the national headquarters in New York for information about the Scouting movement and they sent him a Scout Handbook. However, this early group of boys never formally registered because there was no local Scouting representation in the San Francisco area. So they practiced some of the customs and what the Boy scout movement stood for, but they never joined. Finally, when the boys became disinterested, they just discarded the book.
Some years later, Chingwah Lee found this copy of book while playing in the churchyard of the Chinese Methodist Church. With the help of B.Y. Chu (Secretary of the Chinese YMCA) a group was formed in 1914. At the time there was still no Boy Scout Council in San Francisco, so registration was arranged with the Los Angeles Council, and Troop 13 was created. A San Francisco Boy Scout Council with two other troops was formed in 1916; thus when Troop 13 moved under its jurisdiction it was designated Troop 3.