By Mary Ann Bowles and Bob Ericson
This is the story of five huge badminton scrapbooks belonging to the Top Flight Badminton Club at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska. How did those scrapbooks, each weighing more than 20 pounds, end up in Presho, South Dakota, (population 472) in the summer of 2024? That question would lead us to Ray Scott, the Top Flight Badminton Club, and Bob Ericson and his commitment to badminton, to Ray Scott, and to tying up loose ends.
The Top Flight club was founded by Chief Warrant Officer Ray Scott in 1960, the first military badminton club registered with the American Badminton Association. The club was an international club, welcoming NATO personnel assigned to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Offutt AFB, and at one point had 150 plus members, a combination of military and civilian members.
Ray Scott was born in Presho, South Dakota, in 1916, and joined the Air Force in 1942. After a tenure of four years in Norway where he started an American badminton club, he returned to Omaha in 1957 and started the Top Flight club, which hosted an annual tournament from 1972 to 2014. The club hosted the USBA Adult National Championships in 1972, 1979, and 1980. Ray Scott served on the USBA Board of Directors, and became USBA Executive Director for one year in 1986.
Ray Scott started the club scrapbooks. He had a secretary in his Papillion office type up all his writings and names and ID’s of picture information for the scrapbooks. The scrapbooks became an annual accompaniment to the one-day tournament, displayed on tables in the gym, a renovated airplane hangar on the Offutt base. Photos, news clippings, and write-ups were displayed for each year of the tournament. Club member Bob Ericson, who had served as USBA Information Officer when Ray Scott was USBA Executive Director, began organizing the scrapbooks in late 1975 after he had arrived at Offutt in February of that year. He became the curator by default, and continued the style of the first and second scrapbooks in the third, fourth, and fifth books.
Ray Scott passed away in 2001, and Bob wrote an article, “Promoted to Glory,” which was published in “Badminton USA”, 1st Quarter 2002. But the tournament continued to run with the help of Bob, Len Williams, Jim Ronni, and Hank Schuring, and the tournament was renamed the Ray Scott Memorial Open. After 9/11, the tournament relocated to Papillion La Vista Senior High School in Papillion. The tournament hosted its last competition in 2014. At that point, Bob Ericson had a closet full of badminton memorabilia, and began to talk of organizing the materials and making a trip to the historical museum in Presho. Ray had made his wishes known in a signed 1994 letter,”…in the event of dissolution of the Top Flight club, all remaining Top Flight Club material should go to the Lyman County Museum in Presho, South Dakota.” So Bob “pressed on” with Ray’s direction. (Bob had already donated a big collection of Midwest Flicks and other Midwest memorabilia to the USA Badminton Museum.)
The Lyman County Pioneer Museum already had a Ray Scott collection with trophies, ribbons, and medals won earlier by the badminton guru along with a painted portrait.
Bob and his wife Jacqueline loaded up their silver Equinox with the five 18 x 24-inch scrapbooks, two trophies, an Omaha mayor’s Badminton Week in Omaha 1998 Proclamation, and a huge box full of tournament programs, and other papers on a hot June day, and drove north. “The drive and scenery were at times fascinating, interesting, and boring; yes, boring,” said Bob. They adhered to Ray’s mantra, “press on,” taking the scenic 350-mile drive on backroads from Omaha to Presho, a town named for an early trader, cattleman, and operator of a ferry at Yankton, SD. “And cattle? Herds of Black Angus, brown cows, always bunched up, tails to the wind ‘cause it was windy on the flat grasslands,” Bob noted. The museum was easy to find, “just a straight ‘clear’ from Exit 226 off I-90, west into town, south side of the main street,” according to Bob.
Bob and his wife met Bev and David, museum directors, at the museum with their load of scrapbooks, more trophies, tournament programs, and a 40th Ray Scott Memorial commemorative pin. “David helped unload our ‘gifts.’ He and Bev were very appreciative of what we’d brought,” Bob said. Bob presented the museum with his hand-drawn portrait of Ray Scott honoring the 25th anniversary of the Ray Scott Open.
A tour was given, and the visitors were led outside to the engraved memorial to veterans of Presho and Lyman County where Ray Scott’s named was engraved. Bob noted, “All in all, a rather lengthy but satisfying sojourn on the back roads of Nebraska and South Dakota.”
So the saga ends with the Top Flight scrapbooks and Ray Scott’s collection of portraits, medals, ribbons, and trophies earned (as he chased the shuttlecock all over the United States and Norway) delivered to the Presho museum. The physical memorabilia will be on display in the Lyman County Historical Museum for viewing for years to come. The same memorabilia is also available online in the USA Badminton Museum. Thanks must go to Bob Ericson and his decades of maintaining those scrapbooks and documenting all the activities of the Top Flight Badminton Club. Despite a few remaining copies in a filing cabinet, he is relieved to have the memorabilia in the Presho museum, and delighted to have an empty closet!