‘A pretty big accomplishment’

Five members of Camas-based Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Troop 562 achieved the rank of Eagle Scout during a ceremony on Aug. 10 at the Camas Church of the Nazarene.

The Scouts — all 18-year-old Camas residents — completed all of BSA’s requirements, including earning 21 merit badges and completing a community oriented service project, to attain their Eagle rank.

“To see the growth in these young men has been amazing,” said Troop 562 Scoutmaster Hugh Brown. “Something as simple as communication skills, being able to tell their story and present their ideas and concepts, to have them explain to others and interact with adults about what their motivations are and what they’re trying to accomplish and how they want to approach it, there’s a huge growth piece that comes out of that.”

Just 6% of all Scouts earn Eagle rank, according to the BSA, which counts more than 1 million youth among its ranks.

“This is the first (Eagle Scout ceremony) we’ve had in probably about a year-and-a-half or so,” Brown said. “Ten (scouts) came over from the same Cub Scout troop when they were 11, and five of them (achieved Eagle Scout status) so that’s pretty exceptional. Fifty percent versus 6 percent is a pretty big accomplishment.”

Eagle projects, the culmination of a scout’s leadership training, must benefit an organization other than the BSA and cannot be performed for an individual or a business or be commercial in nature. Scouts must submit a written plan for project approval to the benefitting organization, the Scout leader, a unit committee, and a district representative before work on the project can begin.

After the project is complete, the scout presents a report to district leaders, who question the scout about their experiences in scouting, their Eagle project, how they plan to live up to the honor of being an Eagle Scout, and more.

“They have to come up with (the project) concept from scratch,” Brown said. “They have to build a plan, they have to manage it, they have to manage people, they have to manage a budget, and ultimately, they have to fulfill the benefactors’ needs and go through a sign-off process. They’re almost learning to be a project manager in that sense, so it’s a great educational experience for the scout going through all the pieces of the puzzle that help make that happen for whoever they choose as a benefactor.”

The Troop 562 scouts completed the following projects:

• Harris Royer (Camas High School/Cascadia Technical Academy), Parkers Landing Historical Park landscape-irrigation. “He did irrigation (work) on some trees there, a reconfiguration of what they had set up, because it can’t be improved,” Brown said. “They can’t put an irrigation system in there. He got a group of volunteers to help him redo the landscaping there to guarantee that those trees are getting the proper amount of irrigation.”

• Alex Sample (Camas High School), American Legion Cape Horn Post 122 landscaping and path. “He did a combination of landscaping and disability access,” Brown said. “There was some landscaping that was a little bit overgrown, but was also preventing easy access from the parking lot. He helped some of the more mobility-challenged folks who belong to the American Legion and redid the landscaping — put in a path, basically.”

• Mac Clark (Camas High School/Clark College Running Start), Port of Camas-Washougal informational kiosk restoration. “The kiosk is sitting right on the water and takes a lot of exposure beating, and it was getting dilapidated,” Brown said. “He worked with the Port and completely redid it, stripped it down, replaced a lot of the materials on it, redid the fence around it, and repainted it. He totally re-furbed it.”

• Vance Gooch (Camas High School), Camas Church of the Nazarene bench installation. “He reconfigured some landscaping and put in a couple benches for them,” Brown said. “(The church) sits on a pretty heavily-traveled path out to Fallen Leaf (Lake), so there’s always a lot of foot traffic there, and they thought people might enjoy a chance to sit.”

• Reece Sample (Discovery High School/Cascadia Tech), Camas Church of the Nazarene stair replacement. “There’s a pretty big flight of stairs leading out of the kitchen area, and it was getting pretty rotted out,” Brown said, “so (Reece led a project to tear) the whole thing out and build a nice new set of stairs to make it a little safer for people coming in and out of the kitchen (going) out into the parking lot.”

Brown said the projects reinforced some of the major tenets of scouting, such as “duty to self, duty to others, duty to country and duty to God.”

“They’re learning that there’s something more than just themselves,” he said. “They’re learning how they can give to others, work with others, and how ultimately that benefits them as well. That’s the biggest win for me, that they learn what it means to be a contributor to the community.”

Royer told The Post-Record in 2023, that he was “satisfied” with how his project turned out.

“The trees look pretty good,” Royer said. “It was actually pretty enjoyable to do. When I was starting to work on it, it was pretty fun, especially with all my friends helping me. By working on the trees and getting new bricks, the park just looked cleaner. A lot of the bricks hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time. And since we put down the new soil, it looks like a fresh new part of the park.”

The five teens have been scouting together since they were 7 or 8 years old, when they joined the Camas-based Cub Scout Pack 424. They moved to Troop 562 when they were 11.

“I think with these five, the common trait is definitely the willingness to contribute,” Brown said. “All five of them are the type that, if you know you’ve got a job to do, they’re going to be there. You don’t have to push them to get to contribute. They’re stepping up. They have a ‘can-do’ kind of attitude amongst them.”

Troop 562 is a BSA scouting unit that serves scouts ages 11 to 18, and is based out of Camas Church of the Nazarene. It is “a very active troop in both advancement and outings” and hosts a week-long summer camp every year, along with offering other “adventure opportunities” in addition to regular programs, according to its website.

“The whole concept behind the scouting movement is that these youth are learning practical skills, learning leadership and community service, and the outdoor adventure is the wrapper which goes around it,” Brown said. “We do a whole heck of a lot of camping, hiking, cycling, canoeing, rock climbing, all sorts of fun outdoor adventures that I think most people associate with the scouting movement. But along with that, especially when you’re attaining that Eagle rank, there’s a lot of academic work that goes with it as well.”