A father and son duo have described receiving honours from the Prince of Wales side-by-side as a “super special moment”, after claiming serving the community is “part of their DNA”.
Chief executive of the Scout Association Matthew Hyde received an OBE for services to young people alongside his father, Richard Hyde, who received an MBE for services to his local community in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, from Charles at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.
The pair had appeared on the same New Year’s Honours list in 2020, but father Richard waited to tell the family about his own news to allow his son to “let him have his time” to enjoy his own success.
He told PA news agency: “Matthew told us that he got an OBE and when we drove home, (my wife) said to me in the car: ‘You didn’t say a thing about your MBE!’ and I said: “No, let him have his time.”
“And so he announced it to the rest of the family on Christmas Eve and I announced it just before Christmas lunchtime and he didn’t believe me!” he laughed.
Matthew said: “On Christmas Eve I’d said: “it’s such an honour dad, I’m so pleased you and mum get to see me get this honour, but I feel like you should have been recognised for all your work in the community.” And he said, ‘Well little people like me don’t get that sort of recognition’, knowing full well that he got the MBE which he announced the next lunchtime!”
He added: “We were brought up to believe in service and serving the community and helping other people, and that’s what we say every time when Scouts across the country take their promise.
“That’s part of the DNA of us as a family and how we were raised by mum and dad, and it gets passed on to the next generation and on it goes.”
His own grandfather had been a member of the Scouts and had received a medal from the Scouts’ founder Robert Baden-Powell in 1931 for saving a young boy from a river in Ramsey.
Speaking about the ongoing importance of the Scouts in the aftermath of the pandemic, he said: “We saw communities come together, 12.4 million people volunteered in the pandemic, 4.6 million for the first time, and we’re now seeing that resurging for scouting as well.
“We had a really challenging time during the pandemic, but we’ve just added 60,000 new youth members onto our membership over the last year, the highest growth since 1942. So we’re here, standing up, ready to serve those young people and serve our communities.
“Young people are coming back in droves and they know that scouting is good for them, and parents and carers know that scouting is good for their young people as well.”
