Living the Scout Law

A New Hampshire native, Jim Merrill joined Cub Scouts in 1981, becoming a member of Pack 104 in the Juniata Valley Council in central Pennsylvania where his family had moved for his dad’s job when he was a boy.

After a couple of years, his father, Frank Merrill, took over as his Scoutmaster for Troop 104. Merrill had joined Scouts with a group of friends and all his friends’ fathers volunteered, too. With such a close-knit group of fathers and sons, the troop took two unforgettable.

Hailing from Ashland, the Merrills brought the Pennsylvania troop back “home” to hike the White Mountains. Staying at Appalachian Mountain Club huts, the Scouts hiked Mount Madison the first day, then over to the Lake of the Clouds hut the second day. On day three, they hiked out the Crawford path to the Mizpah Spring hut, then hiked out on day four.

Merrill said his dad had taken him up Mount Washington when he was 8 years old. “But the rest of the Scouts had never, ever, experienced anything like this: hiking above the tree line, in the fog and in the wind,” he said. “So it was just a remarkable experience.”

The next summer, the troop toured military bases.

“We went to Norfolk Naval Base, Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg,” he said, among others. “We got to see paratroopers training. We got to see the ships in the harbor. We got to eat in the mess halls with the soldiers. My dad had lined all this up, and the military branches were very cool.”

Those two experiences stand out, but he also enjoyed the more typical experiences of going to summer camp, competing in Klondike Derby, and weekend camping trips closer to home.

“It was a blast. I couldn’t say more about my experience,” he said. “It was really a formative part of my childhood.”

Now living and working in Manchester, Merrill is the managing partner for The Bernstein Shur Group in New Hampshire. He uses his public affairs and communications experience to advise and strategize with corporate, non-profit and political clients. A graduate of Gettysburg College and the University of New Hampshire School of Law, he served as a senior advisor to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, for the primary. He also served for over two years on the staff of former Gov.r Stephen E. Merrill.

In addition to his father, he cites assistant scoutmasters Dick Price, Zeke Havice and Lynn McKee as mentors. Two of their sons, Scott McKee and Derek Havice, have been lifelong friends since their Scouting days.

“They are both guys that I still stay in touch with today, all these years later,” he said. “That’s a great shared experience.”

He loved the diverse skills he learned by earning merit badges. His favorite badge was the Indian Lore merit badge because he was fascinated with Native American culture. He remembers earning it at summer camp where he also earned his canoeing merit badge. “We did some cool stuff in the canoes,” he said.

By high school, his father’s work changed and he stepped down as scoutmaster while simultaneously Merrill’s involvement in high school sports began to take up more time.

As an adult, he served as an assistant scoutmaster in his son’s unit, Troop 77 in Andover, Mass. Since he’s been back in New Hampshire, he’s supported the then-Daniel Webster Council as a consultant and fundraiser and also served as the chairman of the annual Distinguished Citizen Award dinner three times.

“I love the Scouts: great values, great mission, great people,” he said. “It’s a great program for youth, and I’ve been honored to be a part of it.”

Merrill has always prized giving back to his community. In addition to being on the Bernstein Shur Board of Directors, he serves on the Business and Industry Association of NH Board of Directors, the Union Leader Corp. Board of Directors, the Greater Manchester Mental Health Center Board of Directors, the Advisory Board of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at UNH Law, and the Advisory Board of the NH Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College. He is also a Trustee of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications, serving on the fundraising committee for its First Amendment Award event for the past ten years.

He previously served as a director of Easter Seals NH, where he chaired the annual fundraising campaign three times, and the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center.

Merrill has received recognition for his success and contributions. He was named one of the state’s top government relations attorneys for 2023-2024 by Best Lawyers in America. In 2021, New Hampshire Business Review named him as one of that state’s 200 Most Influential Business Leaders. He was recognized as one of the state’s 25 Leaders for the Future in 2009 by Business NH Magazine. In 2008, New Hampshire Magazine recognized him as a “Rising Star” and in 2004 the Union Leader recognized him as one of the state’s Forty Under 40 emerging business and community leaders.

He thinks Scouting gives children a different and unique experience in their increasingly busy lives.

“We’re only given so many minutes on this earth, right? It’s a finite amount of time we have. There are so many distractions today, especially for our kids,” he said. “In Scouting, I never felt distracted. I never felt like my time was wasted. There’s always a purpose, a goal, an objective, something fun right around the corner, some experience you’ve never done before. I found Scouting to be refreshingly pure and authentic.”

To a young boy or girl considering joining Scouts, he would say, “You get to have fun, you get to make friends that’ll last a lifetime. You get to experience things you’ve never experienced before. And you get to express yourself artistically. athletically and intellectually in ways that other experiences may only stimulate one of those areas, not all of them.”

He thinks Scouting is as valuable to youth development as it ever was.

“I love seeing kids today involved in Scouting. I love seeing its good stories. Sometimes people will say Scouting is from the past. It’s an anachronism. It’s not really as relevant today,” he said. “I would argue it’s even more relevant today. I think that it can be a great unifier. I don’t know a better way to develop character, honor and leadership among young men and women. It’s an exceptional program. It was a remarkable experience for me.”