Scouting has been a lifelong passion for Johnny “MO” Nassour.

The Vicksburg native — “Nobody knows me as John Nassour, they all know me as ‘Johnny MO,’” he said — has been active in the Boy Scouts since joining at the age of 11 in 1955.

“My brother was in scouting,” he said. “I’ve been in it ever since; the same Scout troop.”

Since the day he put on the Boy Scout uniform, Nassour worked his way up through the ranks, eventually serving as assistant scoutmaster and scoutmaster of Troop 7, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus Council 898, before stepping down in 2000. He is also a fourth degree knight in the council.

He is one of three people in Vicksburg to receive the St. George Catholic Award, the highest award someone in Boy Scouting can receive from the Catholic Church for their work with scouting and youth.

He is also the recipient of the Silver Beaver award for his work with the Boy Scouts’ Andrew Jackson Council.

And he is famous for his “Johnny MO” grits and “Johnny MO” pancakes.

Nassour said it was the scouting activities he did as a boy that kept him in involved, going out to Camp Wilkerson on Boy Scout Road every week “riding horses, building cabins, building kitchens, building rec halls. I pretty much went out there every Saturday to work or work in (badge) requirements.

“Mr. (Bud) Take (his scoutmaster) was like a father to me; we went out to the Boy Scout camp every Saturday and sometimes after mass on Sundays, and we worked on the camp.

“Everything at the camp I helped build, and that was one reason myself and another scoutmaster didn’t make Eagle (Scout), because every time we went out to the scout camp, instead working on requirements, we had to help build the buildings.”

Nassour was assistant scoutmaster for Troop 7 for 16 years, “But I ran the troop for about 21 years,” because of an illness in the scoutmaster’s family.

When Take, who started the troop in 1934, retired in 1984 as scoutmaster, Nassour succeeded him.

“I didn’t think I’d ever become a scoutmaster,” he said. “I’ve never left. I was in the National Guard for six years, which kind of cut down my attendance, but was still was involved in the troop.”

Nassour stayed in the troop as an adult because of his son, Michael, who became an Eagle Scout, but also “because I felt all the young men needed leadership skills, and the best way to do that was through scouting. I’ve seen a lot of mama’s boys grow up in the scouting program.”

While he was involved with scouting, he worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for 33 years, 15 of those as a draftsman at the Waterways Experiment Station (now the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center) and then in operations and maintenance for 18 years at the Vicksburg District. He received humanitarian awards from the government for his work in scouting.

Outside of scouting, Nassour attends St. Michael Catholic Church, where he is a Eucharistic minister and has trained altar servers and Eucharistic ministers. More recently, he and his wife were facilitators for the Christ Life series.

“We led the discussions and asked the questions after the video; we’re sort of the teachers,” he said.

But scouting still has a part in his life.

“I’ve served on the Andrew Jackson Council training team for 20 years, training adults on how to train boys,” he said. “I went through Wood Badge, and I served on two Wood Badge courses; I was a course instructor.

“Wood Badge is almost like getting a master’s degree in scouting. It covers all the steps and leadership, and how to run your troop — camping and learning the basics in scouting, as well as properly run your troop as a boy-run troop and not as a man-run troop.”

Badge requirements, he said, have changed a good bit over the years. As far as Eagle Scout is concerned, he said, “It’s about 3 percent of scouts now get Eagle. It used to be about 2 percent. Having the rank of Eagle and applying for that job has a lot to do whether you get that job or not because of the training and leadership skills.”

He believes the reason the number of scouts achieving Eagle has risen to 3 percent is because more people are realizing the benefits of becoming Eagle Scouts.

Presently, Nassour said, he is the Knights of Columbus Council representative for the troop. He oversees registration and certifies new adults who join the troop.

“I’ve always enjoyed it (scouting). I’ve been on many canoe trips and I was the contingent scoutmaster for the 1993 National Jamboree at A.P. Hill, Virginia. I was in charge of two scout troops as scoutmaster through the council.

It was the canoe and camping trips that were the inspirations for Johnny MO grits and Johnny MO pancakes.

“I had to fix grits for 500 Boy Scouts at an Order of the Arrow conclave,” Nassour said. “All I had was a 14-gallon pot, and I used 14 pounds of butter. They ate all my grits.”

The Johnny MO pancake recipe involves mixing a yellow cake mix with the pancake mix 50/50.

“It makes a real sweet pancake that the kids love. We were on a canoe trip, and we only had a dozen eggs and a lot of bacon to feed 22 scouts.

“I started digging through the box and I found the pancake mix and the yellow cake mix. I mixed it all together and made the pancakes. They came back for seconds, thirds, and that became our Boy Scout recipe for pancakes.

“I plan to stay in scouting; I’m not leaving. My salary has been doubled about 20 times in the Boy Scouts and of course, double nothing is nothing.”