Eagle: The measure of a young man's imagination

Originally printed in Plano Profile, January 2003. Reprinted with permission by the Boy Scouts of America. Copyrighted material © 2003, Boy Scouts of America.

The measure of a young man's imagination, leadership, and tenacity

A Plano family visits a long-neglected cemetery and finds loved ones’ gravesites cleaned and repaired. A preschooler, who longs for a tricycle, and his father, who has no car to go to work, both receive bicycles and helmets. Sunday school children trudge outside to a barren patch of dirt and behold a new playground. Even the ducks at Heritage Farmstead get a surprise — a new habitat complete with swimming pool and shelter to protect them from the rain.

The anonymous benefactor is no genie, rich uncle, Santa Claus, or fairy godmother. The giver of these and other good gifts is over 100 Boy Scouts who served their schools, churches and communities in their final steps toward the Eagle rank last year. Members of Great Plains District troops in Plano and southern Collin County contributed what officials conservatively estimate is over 7,000 manhours of work in 2002.

They held drives for food, clothing, bicycles, books, school supplies and toiletries. They conducted a child identification program. They built trails, wheelchair ramps, decks, a footbridge, picnic tables, bookshelves, dugouts, gates, benches, woodduck nesting boxes and outdoor classrooms. They moved playground equipment from one church that no longer needed it to one that did. They cleaned and refurbished cemeteries. They trimmed trees, cleared brush, planted seedlings, restored a prairie, and installed landscaping and irrigation. They built a prayer garden and transformed a children’s Sunday school room into a colorful art studio. They refurbished computers. They painted bike racks, signs and buildings.

Travis Taber, Great Plains District director, says that in addition to benefiting the community, the projects teach the boys leadership, citizenship, responsibility and a sense of community, "showing them that we all have a place in and duty to our community."

The Eagle Scout Award is the highest rank a Boy Scout can achieve. In addition to planning, developing and leading others in a service project helpful to a religious institution, school or community, the Scout must earn 21 merit badges. "Every adult male I know can tell you just how far he got in Scouting," says Robert Phillips, associate director of Banc One Capital Markets, Inc., who serves as chairman of Great Plains’ advancement committee.

Cody Smith, a junior at Plano Senior High, led Troop 1000 in collecting and repairing bicycles to be donated to Head Start families in Plano.

Phillips, his father, two brothers and two nephews are among the two percent of males worldwide who stay in Scouts to become Eagles. Though he has no children of his own, Phillips enjoys being part of a committee of 14 who approve all Eagle projects in the district.

"We’re the gatekeepers," he explains, "making sure the quality of the projects is good. We like projects that challenge a young man and stretch him a little."

He has his favorites — a collection for Oklahoma storm victims, the duck habitat built to fit Heritage Farmstead’s 1890s look, and the Scout who vacationed in Belize, Central America, and discovered a need for basic school supplies. Back home, he collected over $2,700 of materials, which he delivered to three schools on a follow-up trip to Belize.

The designers of those projects are among over 100 teenagers who attained the Eagle rank in 2002 and will be honored at the Great Plains District awards dinner at the Plano Centre on January 24.

Bicycle benefactor

Cody Smith, a Plano Senior High School junior, will be among them. Cody led Troop 1000 to collect, repair and distribute bicycles to Head Start families at Meadows Elementary School, where his mother is the technology assistant.

Thanks to the efforts of Chris Moore and his team, seniors can enjoy an afternoon of bocce ball on a tree-shaded court behind Plano Senior Center. Pitching in on the Eagle project were brothers Jason, Phillip, and David Gardenia.

Smith, who started his Scouting journey as a first-grader at Shepard Elementary, supervised the evaluating of the 19 bikes they collected, purchasing parts and making repairs. Half were donated to children; the others went to parents who had no cars.

"What Cody did was really wonderful," says Patricia Duran, Plano Independent School District’s Head Start family services manager. "He helped a lot of families. Some people had to walk to work. It was great for our Head Start families to know that there are people who care about their needs."

The project opened his eyes, Smith says, and "provided a place to meet needs, learn, and achieve."

And achieve he does. Ranked near the top of his class, the 17-year-old is a member of the Plano Senior High’s band, a former Vines High School drum major who takes school seriously.

"Cody has a lot of soul," his mother Julia says of her only child. "What he has achieved makes me realize what an able person he is. It gives me great peace to know he has ability and direction."

Service a family philosophy

Chris Moore discovered Boy Scouts at Schimelfenig Middle School. At 18, he is now a registered adult leader for Troop 259, serving as assistant scoutmaster.

Service is a way of life for the three sons in the Moore family, which has a tradition of doing projects — most recently cataloging over 1,600 gravesites in central Texas as part of the National Cemetery Project.

Last summer, Moore heard about senior citizens who played bocce ball in the Plano Senior Center hallways because they had no court. He researched the sport and concluded that he could design a court for the Italian lawn bowling game.

In mid-September, the project got under way, attaching backboards to poles, setting poles in cement, excavating and pouring reinforced concrete slabs. They finished late one Saturday. On Monday, a group of players moved their game from the carpeted hallway to the brand new court under the shade of towering oak trees.

"The boys have to demonstrate leadership," says his scoutmaster, Dave Duff. "They have an idea, formulate how to implement it, present it to scout management, then go do it. It’s all about project management. Corporations spend thousands teaching the skills our Eagle candidates are learning."

An outdoor learning place

Seventeen-year-old Chris Poluski, a senior at Plano East Senior High, remembered how much he enjoyed going outside to a creek bed to look at rocks with his science class at Hendrick Middle School.

"I thought how cool it would be to go back there and make something better than what I had," he said. His imagination led to a plan to clean and clear the area of fallen trees and replace two tables and three benches that had once been a makeshift outdoor classroom.

PESH senior Chris Puoluski in his outdoor classroom. The scout returned to Hendrick Middle School where he had once studied science to replace worn tables and benches for students and teachers of the future.

Work began on a hot July day with 10 pairs of hands. Four long days later, the job was finished with little ceremony. The boys ordered pizza and admired their handiwork. Principal Sara Bonser walked down the hill to take a look.

"Chris took an area that was virtually unusable and turned it into an area where students can congregate and teachers can take their students on nice days," Bonser said. "He did a thorough study, communicated his plans and maintained his timeliness. We’re very grateful for his hard work and for the quality of the job he did. He provided a valuable service to the Hendrick community."

Chris became a Cub Scout at the then newly opened Hedgcoxe Elementary. As a Boy Scout, he held every major leadership position in Troop 181, earned 36 merit badges (only 21 are required for Eagle rank), and logged over 200 nights of camping.

Ranked near the top of his class, Poluski is enrolled in PISD’s rigorous International Baccalaureate diploma program, whose slogan, participants say, is, "Sleep is for the weak." As a member of Plano East’s drumline, he participated in six consecutive Saturday competitions last fall.

"He has the confidence, the ability, the motivation, to do whatever he wants," his mother Connie says of her oldest son.

Detours on the Eagle trail

Joe Ward took some detours along his path toward the Eagle rank. The Collin County Community College freshman joined Scouting as a fifth- grader, eager to be with friends who hiked and backpacked in New Mexico, the Teton Range and the Smoky Mountains. He achieved some notoriety three years ago as a part of a troop "lost" in the Wichita Mountains of Arkansas.

Though they took a wrong turn, his group was never lost, Ward says to set the record straight. After three hours on the wrong trail, they turned back, but had to make camp for the night. Search parties combed the mountains, and Ward’s group emerged from the woods to the news that they were the headline of the day.

Leaders in Troop 262 urged the 16-year-old, who had earned all required merit badges, to choose an Eagle project. "They said if I didn’t hurry up, I’d be overcome by the ‘fumes,’" Ward says, explaining their joke about perfume fumes and gasoline fumes. Ward didn’t move fast enough.

A year later, he began to regret his decision to abandon Scouting. "I had forgotten what my priorities were," he says. "I don’t like not finishing things."

In researching a clean-up project for the City of Plano, Ward dialed the wrong number and discovered another opportunity — "a better one," the city employee told him.

Armed with caulk guns, Ward led fellow Scouts in cementing special tiles near city storm drains warning citizens of pollution hazards associated with dumping materials down the drains.

"Scouting," he contends, "was a fun, positive environment for me," an influence that helped re-establish his priorities.

Despite changing times since the first Eagle rank was awarded 90 years ago, the respect and admiration for those who’ve attained the rank has not diminished. Over 100 young men in Collin County join the ranks of one and a half million Scouts who’ve achieved Scouting’s highest rank — individuals who, as leaders today and tomorrow, make service a priority in their lives.

Vicki Sledge, a frequent contributor to Plano Profile, is the mother of two sons who are Boy Scouts.

Editor’s note — Special thanks to lifelong Scouting supporter Don Wendell for his assistance in preparing this story.

A little comfort

Eagle project occupies Plano family’s home, hands & heart

Will Sledge and helpers Bill and Vicki Sledge and Frank Roby take a break after loading pallets destined for Mexico.

The trailer doors swing shut and something like sadness washes over me. Inside are the last of 100 foam rubber mattresses bound for a poor colonia outside Matamoros, Mexico. The project, one of the last steps on my son’s road to Eagle rank, has, after all, occupied our home, our hands and our hearts for the last five months.

Within 48 hours, they will be driven to a warehouse 600 miles away in Los Fresnos, then moved discreetly across the border a few at a time. A Methodist missionary will distribute them to children whose families live atop a former garbage dump in cardboard, plywood or tin shacks.

There is no running water in Derechos Humanos, and an open canal, filled with industrial and human waste, produces an overpowering stench. Rats forage for food by night. As day breaks, parents discover bites on the limbs of their children, who have become easy prey, asleep on the ground.

North Texas churches, including several in Plano, send teams there regularly — to build tiny concrete houses, smaller than the average closet in most Plano homes, to paint clouds on the ceiling of the nearby school, or to construct bunk beds to get children off the ground, away from the rats.

It is here, on these new bunk beds, that my son’s mattresses — soft pallets, covered with bright fabric — will find a home. The missionary tells us that at least two children will sleep on each mattress.

Those who load our cargo describe the colonia as brown and gray — colored by dust, cinder blocks, murky water, rusty corrugated tin, plywood and cardboard. The mattresses, wrapped in covers made from donated bed sheets — plaids, Goosebumps, flowers, Pokemon, stripes, Dallas Cowboys, Scooby Do and Barbie — will be a welcome relief to a bland palette, they say.

The trailer pulls away and we return to our spacious home. We step into our closet and imagine a family of six living there. We fill our glasses with clean, cold water and remember the canal in Derechos Humanos. We crawl into our comfortable beds and fall asleep, grateful. – Vicki Sledge