Most of us know that WEBELOS is a contraction of “We‘ll Be Loyal Scouts” but that is only half of the story.
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, BSA realized that they were losing a lot of young Scouts in troops nationwide. These were Scouts recently crossed over from the then fledgling Cub Scout program. The solution to this problem was launched in 1954 and it was a 6-month program intended to acclimate Cub Scout Lion Scouts (At the time, Lion was the highest Cub Scout Rank, not the earliest) to Boy Scouting so they wouldn’t experience such a culture shock when they transitioned.
The program was named Webelos, drawing the first letter from each rank through Cub Scouting to the goal of becoming a Scout… Wolf, Bear, Lion, Scout. The catchphrase “We’ll be loyal Scouts” was created from the WBLS initials and used to fill in the vowels to make Webelos.
Eventually, BSA would eliminate the Lion rank and absorb it into a longer Webelos program and Arrow of Light would become what started as Webelos.
