Over the years, the Green Mountain Council — the Vermont chapter of Boy Scouts of America — has bestowed its “distinguished citizen” award on governors, U.S. senators and a federal judge.

“Now, they’ve got a funeral director,” said Dwight Camp, of Woodstock.

A third-generation funeral director, at that. And one whose unique abilities have been put to use far beyond the Upper Valley in the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes, jetliner crashes and 9/11. (More on that later.)

On Thursday, Camp will be the guest of honor at the Green Mountain Council’s fundraising dinner at the Quechee Club.

“The big thing for this award is community involvement,” said Ed McCollin, the nonprofit organization’s chief executive officer. “He’s had an impact on generations of kids. He’s given much of his free time to helping young people.”

Camp’s affiliation with the Scouts goes back nearly 70 years while growing up in Woodstock, where his grandfather, Willard Cabot, started the Cabot Funeral Home in 1917. Camp advanced to Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in the Scouting program. He later became a troop leader (three of his sons were Scouts), and at age 77 continues to teach a course in citizenship.

A big part of Scouting is following the “12 Points of Scout Law.” In Camp’s case, No. 3 on the list seems particularly apropos: “A Scout volunteers to help others without expecting a reward.”

Which brings me to the National Disaster Medical System, a federal undertaking that Camp recently retired from after 34 years of service. The NDMS, as it’s called for short, is a collection of 70 teams with 5,000 doctors, nurses, forensic scientists and other professionals from across the country. The teams, including one consisting of funeral directors, respond to major disasters, man-made and natural.

Camp was a founder and first commander of New England’s Disaster Mortuary Response Team, which helps identify and care for deceased disaster victims.

“We don’t publicize what we do,” said Mark Libby, a regional emergency commander who works out of Boston for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Basically, we’re there to support states when the very worst things happen.”

Camp’s initial involvement in disaster relief was his wife Kay’s doing. Kay, who followed her husband into the mortuary business, was president of the Vermont Funeral Directors Association in the early 1980s. At a national conference, she heard about how the nitty-gritty aspects of disaster relief weren’t getting the attention they needed.

The funeral director running the meeting asked if there was anyone who possessed organization skills to help set up the fledgling group.

“Dwight was in the Boy Scouts,” Kay said.

“That’s good enough for us,” the funeral director replied.

When she returned home, Kay informed Camp of the task that she had signed him up for.

I can’t imagined that he minded, considering it was Kay’s doing. This summer, the couple will celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary (they were high school sweethearts).

“I didn’t know her until we got to high school,” he said. “I made sure she didn’t get away.”

Sitting in their dining room last week, I got the feeling that Camp is still smitten. Although the reason for my visit was to talk with Camp, he made sure that Kay was included in the conversation.

While she didn’t join him at disaster sites, he couldn’t have performed his job without her help. The work took him away from home for months at a time.

In the early days it required Kay to hold down the fort at the funeral home and their hilltop house on Cabot Road, where they raised four boys. In later years, their son, Greg, ran the funeral home. (Camp’s brother, Phil, took another career path; he’s publisher of the weekly Vermont Standard.)

One of the largest disasters that Camp dealt with came in 1999, when he was called out to the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, 60 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. It killed 217 people.

Two years later, immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, Camp was summoned to New York. He was “part of a massive effort to take human remains from the wreckage and identify victims with pictures, dental records and — if necessary — sophisticated DNA tests,” the Valley News wrote two days after the attack.

Camp stayed in New York for 5½ months. “We had all these police officers and firefighters going (into the rubble), and finding their own,” Camp recalled. “That was hard.”

Mangled bodies. Grieving families. It’s not the kind of work that many people are cut out for, but it has its rewards. “You’re helping people during their worst times,” Camp said.

Libby, the federal emergency commander, told me that Camp stood out after the 2003 nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I. Many of the 100 people killed that night were young adults.

“There were a lot of parents who had lost children in the fire,” Libby said. “He helped them through it. The job requires a quiet professionalism, and he embraces that.”

It’s a trait that might help make a good Boy Scout.

Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com