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MORE EAGLE SCOUT PROJECTS FROM AROUND THE NATION: ONE TEEN BUILDS
WALL FOR ATHLETES; ANOTHER OVERSEES HYDRANT PAINTING
By Suzanne M. Ellis Staff writer, Syracuse Post Standard
Thanks to the efforts of two teenagers in Cleveland (NY), there's a
new rebound wall for athletes and the village's 65 fire hydrants have
been repainted and pressure-coded.
Shaun Beasley, 15, and Cody Netzband, 16, members of Boy Scout
Troop 723 in Cleveland, decided that the village should be the
recipient of the projects they're working on to become Eagle Scouts.
Both projects were finished at the end of August.
"Everybody on the (village) board was enthused about this right
from the start," said Cleveland Mayor Kevin Gribbon. "Just to see the
enthusiasm from kids of this age who want to do something for the
village... There are hundreds of things they could have chosen for
their projects that would have had no impact on this village."
Beasley, a sophomore at Paul V. Moore High School in Central
Square, decided to recruit volunteers to spruce up the fire hydrants,
which hadn't been painted in decades.
"We had to strip all the old paint from them, and then we put two
new coats of paint on them," Beasley said.
He took the project one step further and added nationally accepted
color codes to each hydrant. The colors - blue, green, orange and red
- alert firefighters to the approximate gallons-per-minute flow of
water in the area.
"This is something we've wanted to do for many years, but we
haven't had the resources or the time or the money to do it," said
Cleveland Fire Chief Jack Cottet. "This goes way beyond just
painting... there was a substantial effort here, and it's something
that was beyond our ability to do."
Netzband, a junior at Paul V. Moore High School, oversaw the
construction of a wooden rebound wall that's 32 feet long, 8 feet high
and about 6 inches thick. It's at Cleveland Village Park and is
available to anyone who wants to practice soccer, lacrosse, handball
or other racquet sports.
"I saw one of those walls when I was at a lacrosse tournament at
(East Syracuse-Minoa) High School," Netzband said. "I thought it would
be very handy to have here because we don't have anything like that in
the village."
Netzband had the help of fellow Boy Scouts, family and friends.
The work on the fire hydrants was done with the help of about two
dozen volunteers.
Both boys said they're pleased with their projects and are now
anxiously awaiting word on whether they'll attain Eagle Scout status.
That should come fairly soon, said Ray Sander, scout executive for
the Hiawatha Seaway Council, which oversees Boy Scouts in Oswego,
Onondaga, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties.
The boys will appear shortly before a local board of review, Sander
said. From there, the paperwork will be sent to the Boy Scouts'
national headquarters near Dallas.
"They will certify the (Eagle Scout) award and mail it back to us,"
he said.
Nationally, only four in 100 Boy Scouts become Eagle Scouts, the
highest rank that's given in Scouting. Last year in the Hiawatha
Seaway Council, 150 out of approximately 4,000 Boy Scouts earned that
rank, Sander said.
The village of Cleveland plans to honor the boys, Gribbon said,
whether or not they become Eagle Scouts.
"We talked about it at our last village board meeting," he said.
"We want to develop some sort of citation or letter of commendation.
We feel it's appropriate to recognize these guys for all they've
done."
Eagle Scout history
Arthur R. Eldred, 17, a member of Troop 1 in Oceanside, in Nassau
County on Long Island, received the first Eagle badge on Labor Day in
1912. Seven decades later, Alexander Holsinger, 13, of Normal, Ill.,
became the one millionth Eagle Scout. Since Boy Scouts of America was
founded in 1911, more than 1.5 million boys have attained the
organization's highest rank. They include Gerald Ford, Donald Rumsfeld
and H. Ross Perot.
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