In 1954, a decade before the Civil Rights Act was passed, Loren Loomis was pushing to integrate the Boy Scouts of America.

Loomis was executive director of the former Kit Carson Council, now the Great Southwest Council of the Boy Scouts of America in Albuquerque from 1963-70.

In New Mexico, he helped pioneer Scouting among Hispanics and American Indians by hiring one of the first Hispanic Scouting leaders and the first American Indian leaders in the state.

Loomis, 82, died Nov. 30 in Tulsa, Okla., from chronic lymphocytic leukemia contracted in the early 1950s.

"It was caused by the fact he had been the one on the B-36 to handle and arm the atomic bomb during the Cold War," said Allie Belle Loomis, his wife of 60 years.

He was retired and was living in Claremore, Okla., at the time of his death.

When he came to New Mexico in the early 1960s, "One of the things the council board hired him to do was to expand Scouting in Hispanic and Indian populations," said his son, Steve Loomis, who lives in Albuquerque.

He accomplished that in New Mexico, but worked earlier in his career integrating blacks into the organization.

While in the Gulf Coast Council in the early 1950s in the Pensacola, Fla., area, he worked with Boy Scouts in part of Alabama, said Steve Loomis.

On a trip across the Florida border one night, Loomis and another white Scout leader, wearing their Scout uniforms, headed for a church meeting with black leaders in rural Alabama.

"They were stopped on a country road by members of the Ku Klux Klan holding shotguns," Steve Loomis said. "They stopped them and asked them where they were going. Dad said he couldn't think of anything better to say than `We're going to a Boy Scout meeting.' "

The men lowered their guns and let the car pass.

While in Pensacola in 1953, he helped open one of the first integrated Scout camps in the country.

"My dad wasn't the kind of guy that would go march, but as a practical matter, he always operated openly and fairly with all communities in scouting," Steve Loomis said.

About 10 years later, Loomis and the council here helped develop Camp Assayi just across the New Mexico border in Arizona on Navajo Reservation land.

Tribe members wanted a youth program. The Boy Scouts had knowledge of camping, camp operations and camp development. The two organizations collaborated and the camp was built.

Scouting runs deep in the Loomis family.

Loren Loomis' father was one of the early Eagle Scouts and a member of the first Boy Scout troop in Enid, Okla.

Loren Loomis earned his own Eagle Scout rank as a young man in Oklahoma before World War II.

Both his sons, Steve and Phil, became Eagle Scouts later on.

His daughter, Diana Loomis, was an early member of the Explorer Scouts, when the organization first allowed girls to become involved.

A memorial service was held in Oklahoma. Interment is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Monday at Santa Fe National Cemetery.