B. Talbot Hyde

Those of us who encountered Benjamin Talbot Hyde, at his occasional visits to the Club, will recall the burly figure clad in the rather unusual uniform of a grown-up boy scout. Probably few Centurions were aware that his work with the organization whose uniform he wore was to him the real concern of life. Those who knew him testified wholeheartedly that, both as Boy Scout leader and as interpreter of nature to youngsters outside that organization, Hyde exercised an immense influence for good. One of his friends describes him, in his chosen fields of activity from New Jersey to New Mexico, as always surrounded by a group of boy disciples who hung on his every word while he talked to them about birds or plants or snakes or Indians and, in his genial non-didactic way, taught them what it actually meant to be a worth-while Scout. He was said to be a marvel at straightening out the character of wild and incorrigible boys. Regardless of type or temperament, they were all potter’s clay in the hands of “Uncle Bennie.”

Alexander Dana Noyes
1934 Century Association Yearbook