Before Eagle Scout applicant Tyler Eagle refurbished the benches outside City Hall, the wood was weathered and worn.
Eagle Scout applicant Tyler Eagle refurbished the five picnic benches outside City Hall as his service project. The benches were ready for the pubic to enjoy on July 18 after a few days of work.
The next time you enjoy a nice sit or fast bite at the picnic tables outside of City Hall, be sure to thank Tyler Eagle. He recently refurbished all five tables as the service project portion of his Eagle Scout application.
As part of the project's stipulations, the work has to benefit an organization other than the Boy Scouts of America and display a Scout's ability to plan and direct.
Pondering his options, Eagle had been eating lunch with his mom on the City Hall lawn when she mentioned what poor shape the benches seemed to be in.
"That seemed like an easy enough thing to get done," Eagle said, and refurbished benches would also get a lot of use from the community.
When Eagle decided to make it his project, he began by talking with Wrangell's Parks and Recreation Director Amber Al-Haddad.
"We have a lot of folks who have come in to volunteer in the past year," Al-Haddad said, like local volunteers repainting the buildings at the ball park or tidying up the shooting range. Al-Haddad was enthusiastic about Eagle's plan to refurbish the benches, though he declined to use assistance from her department.
"It was Tyler's idea," she said. "He took care of it all."
With some help from family members and former fellows of Troop 39, Eagle stripped the five benches' frames of their boards, measured and cut replacements, and then reassembled and varnished the lot.
"Every board and bolt is completely new. The only thing that's the same is the frames," he said. "We got pretty much everything we needed from Johnson's Construction or Ottesen's." After only three or four days of work, the benches were done and back in place by July 18.
But he hasn't made Eagle Scout just yet. "It really depends on how long the paperwork takes to get done," Eagle said. The advancement will be an important next step for the long-time Scout, who joined in the second grade.
"It's the highest award I can get," Eagle said. "It's definitely been a fairly formative experience, I think, for me. It's pretty much been a huge part of my life," he said of scouting.
It didn't take long for the finished project to be noticed, either; Al-Haddad hadn't even had time to see it before she was receiving compliments.
"He did a really good job," she said.
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