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August 22, 1982

On Sunday, August 22, 1982, nearly 1,500 Plast members attended the official closing ceremonies of the International Plast Jamboree at the Vovcha Tropa campground in East Chatham, N.Y. The nine-day jamboree was the sixth international jamboree held in North America, and was one of four jamborees held in commemoration of Plast's 70th anniversary. Australia hosted the first jamboree in December 1981, and the final two were held in West Germany and Argentina in the summer of 1983.

Plast scouts from the United States, Canada, Argentina, West Germany, Great Britain, Australia and Italy were present at the opening ceremonies on August 15, during which a symbolic eternal flame was re-lit by scouts, who used embers brought from the Australian Plast jamboree of the previous year. Lubomyr Romankiw, president of the World Plast Command, presided over the ceremonies, and an ecumenical moleben service was delivered by Plast's international chaplains, Metropolitans Stephen Sulyk and Mstyslav Skrypnyk of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches, respectively.

While the camps for Plast children and teens had their own schedule of structured activity during the week, adult members, Plast-Pryiat and guests occupied their time by attending seminars on the problems of Ukrainian language in Plast, the future goals of Plast, the culture of the Scythians, the 1,500th anniversary of Kyiv, and the efforts of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians to form a youth congress.

The final evening of the jamboree saw all the Plast units assembled for a big bonfire attended by nearly 2,000 people, among them Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian and Hungarian scout troops. The closing ceremony was marked by a divine liturgy followed by a parade of all jamboree participants and the lowering of flags representing the various countries where Plast exists. Lastly, the jamboree's eternal flame was extinguished.

Source: "International Plast Jamboree opens," The Ukrainian Weekly, August 22, 1982. "Plast concludes international jamboree," The Ukrainian Weekly, August 29, 1982.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 18, 2002, No. 33, Vol. LXX

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