Aromas troop above the norm in Eagle Scout ranks
Take a stroll along the streets of Aromas, and it won’t take
long to see the signs that a future Eagle Scout lives there.
There are freshly planted flowers and a new garden bench at
Aromas School. The smell of new paint lingers in the air at the
Aromas Grange Hall, the beneficiary of a newly remodeled men’s
bathroom.
Aromas troop above the norm in Eagle Scout ranks
Take a stroll along the streets of Aromas, and it won’t take long to see the signs that a future Eagle Scout lives there.
There are freshly planted flowers and a new garden bench at Aromas School. The smell of new paint lingers in the air at the Aromas Grange Hall, the beneficiary of a newly remodeled men’s bathroom.
By all accounts, it takes hours of hard work and dedication to become an Eagle Scout. It is the highest rank with the Boy Scouts of America, and something that is achieved by less than 4 percent of all scouts nationwide.
But in the last several years, 10 different scouts from Troop 504 in Aromas have become Eagle Scouts, with four more hoping to earn the rank this year. Since 1975, 23 scouts from Aromas have been awarded the Eagle rank, far above the national average.
“We usually have one or two a year as a normal thing. Our average is considerably higher (than the national average),” Scoutmaster Mark Boos said. “In Troop 504 our goal and objective is to get the kids to Eagle. It’s important.”
There are more than 130 different Merit Badges a scout can earn during his time in Boy Scouts, and Boos said an Eagle Scout candidate must earn a minimum of 21 badges, 15 in required categories such as citizenship in the nation, citizenship in the world, environmental science, personal management and personal fitness.
Another requirement is a community service project, and a quick look around Aromas shows much of the scouts’ handiwork. Past projects include the installation of shelves in the Aromas School library, as well as new lighting, cabinets and display cases at the Aromas Grange.
Projects now under way include new landscaping at the school, additional display cases at the Grange and the aforementioned men’s bathroom remodel.
“I took up the old flooring, the old linoleum that was rotting away, and put in new linoleum. I repainted the entire bathroom because not all of it was painted before,” said David Bellone, 16. “I ordered a partition and a new door, and I’m going to install a brand new urinal from Ferguson Enterprise because the old one was like practically the original one.”
He originally joined Boy Scouts because he had heard about a lot of the fun things they do and the fun adventures, Bellone said.
“It gave me something to do after school and on the weekends,” he said.
As he worked his way through the different ranks, however, Bellone discovered scouting was more than just fun and games.
“Being an Eagle Scout can help you later in life,” he said. “You get certain things, like higher pay, that other people won’t have. I’d like to join the air force and something like Eagle Scout can really help me out.”
Jason Merz, 16, another Eagle candidate from Aromas, agreed.
“I knew there were benefits to getting my Eagle rank and how it could help me in life,” said Merz, who planted new landscaping and flowers and installed a bench at Aromas School. “You can put this on your college applications and resumes. You can put it on every resume for the rest of your life. It’s a good feeling to know that you have learned so much. My dad was an Eagle Scout, too, in Indiana, and I wanted to be just like him.”
The boys take their community service projects seriously, and there are several goals they must reach before a project is considered completed. First, an idea must be pitched and accepted, and then the scout must go about raising funds and donations for his project.
For Merz this meant going before the Aromas Eagles and the San Juan Rotary Club. Working on the project requires coordination with the group benefiting from the project. Once their project is completed, the candidate must document that 100 people hours were put in and send out requests for letters of recommendation. Finally, the candidate meets with the Eagle Review Board to explain the project and what it has meant both individually and to the community.
“It’s great; we love it,” Grange President Michelle Faeth said. “There have been some minor glitches along the way, but it’s quite nice to have so many little projects get done.”
Boos, who has been Troop 504’s scoutmaster for three years, says the service projects reflect the troop’s belief that scouting is more than a social experience.
“We will have one outing a month, like camping or hiking or going to a lake,” he said. “But we meet each Tuesday night, and we start with the pledge and reaffirming what scouting is about. Then we break into groups to work on merit badges, so that the guys see something tangible they can achieve. So we keep them moving forward.”
Boos said that his troop is a little different in that they try to tie in scouting with what the boys are learning in school.
“One of the merit badges we are working on now is about personal management, like financial literacy and how to deal with a checking account,” he said. “There’s family life, and how families make decisions and how family members are valued. We do a lot with respect.”
As they await their review board meetings, Merz and Bellone, along with Ross Nichols, who landscaped the front of the new parking lots at Aromas School, and Andrew Jones, who built display cases in the Grange, work with younger scouts such as David Noon and Ryan Suess, giving advice and helping with projects. This sense of leadership is just another benefit of scouting, Boos said.
“What’s really nice is when you can get a former Eagle Scout to take time out of their summer for a week and come to camp and really mentor these kids,” he said. “That’s really powerful.”
Daniel A. Cressman contributed to this report.
