By By Steve Gillespie / staff writer
Oct. 15, 2002
This is the time of year hundreds of Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts ring doorbells and ask people to buy popcorn.
The annual sale of Trail's End Gourmet Popcorn raises money for the Choctaw Area Council and its individual units. As an incentive to sell, Scouts can win prizes and earn scholarships for their efforts.
Keith Clifford is assistant Scout master of Meridian's Troop 40.
He said 70 percent of the popcorn sales stay within the Choctaw Area Council, which includes Choctaw County in Alabama and Lauderdale, Clarke, Kemper, Neshoba and Newton counties in Mississippi.
Of the 70 percent, Clifford said 30 percent of the sales go to the council. Another 30 percent is kept by the Scouting troops that make the sales and 10 percent goes toward prizes for the Scouts.
Noel Evans, executive director of the Choctaw Area Council, said the remainder of the sales goes back to the popcorn company.
Evans said money the council will earn from the sales will go toward improvements at Camp Binachi. He said Scouts benefit from the sale in other ways.
Mike McGrevey, executive director of the Kemper County Economic Development Authority and this year's popcorn campaign chairman, also said there are long term advantages to selling the popcorn.
When he was first asked to take on the responsibility by Evans, McGrevey said, his first instinct was to decline because he was too busy. It didn't take long for him to change his mind, however.