He started his Eagle service project this weekend. At the end of our street, there is a building that the town Historical Committee is renovating so it can be a museum and meeting place. It used to be THE hot spot in town "back in the day" as it were. Right there at the end of my little street!
The building had fallen into disrepair because no one was using it anymore, and it was most likely going to be torn down. The historical society rose to the occasion, wrote grants, did fundraisers, made all kinds of effort and Washington Hall was saved. Someone found the giant sign that is hanging on the front of the building down in their basement, and gave it back to the town, freshly painted and fully restored. The place looks fantastic from the outside, and in the inside, work is ongoing. There is a meeting hall downstairs and a concert stage upstairs. It would make for a fantastic coffeehouse space. I may have to arrange something like that amongst peoples that I know musician wise.
Anyway, our neighbor Thane decided that he wanted to improve the exterior space by doing a huge property clean up, tree thinning, and planting perennial plants along the slope on the corner. Seeing as he's lived in this neighborhood pretty much his whole life, and sees this building ever day, he thought it would be the perfect thing to do for his service project.
Geoff had volunteered to go but there was miscommunication in the troop and a camping trip was scheduled, so he went on that... plenty of people did get to come out and help, including yours truly and Mr. yours truly.
The slope on the corner is a major disaster. Really crummy soil, and it will be hard for him to grow anything there that will survive, so a consultant from the town garden club came to meet with him. We had about 24 people working, and him supervising. He did a great job delegating tasks and keeping people focused on them. In a five hour workday, we surpassed his expectations.
Looking forward to next week and doing some more clean up damage!
He asked me to take pictures of the project as it goes, so I was the official photojournalist and started a collection of pictures for him. You can see those here. As for Thane, I'm truly looking forward to him making the Eagle rank. He is by far one of the nicest, most fun people I've ever known. He is kind, supportive, funny, a young man of great faith and integrity and it really shows. Our troop has had a lot of Eagles in the past few years but this one soars the highest amongst them for sure.
I also went through all of my photos of Geoff through the Scouting years, thinking to myself that if he ever gets his Eagle, I want all the pictures together in one place so I can make an album or slideshow or something. I had a laugh riot looking at some of the older shots, and seeing boys that we haven't really been in touch with because they dropped out of Scouting. And it is great seeing the boys that are still IN Scouting, going through this process with Geoff.
I need to get more pictures of him as a Boy Scout -- I have a million shots of him as a Cub Scout. And other people have some too... so I need to just kind of get that organized one of these days in full. If you want to see them, click here. Long time readers and old friends will greatly appreciate the old shots, I'm sure. He was such a cutie little cubbie.
In the meantime, here's a picture of Thane as a first year Scout and Geoff in his last year of Webelos, working at a car wash fundraiser together. This kind of sums the two of them up. I hope they'll always be friends.
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