Boy Scout Troop 457, one of four troops on Mercer Island, proudly announces four new Eagle Scouts in its ranks: Max Foster, Anders Hornor, Ian Munro, and Nelson Tate, all MIHS seniors this year.
The four scouts started together in Cub Scout Pack 624, Den 2, with dad Carson Hornor leading the group for 3 years through campouts at Camp Parsons, adventures in the woods, a memorable visit to our local police station, cooking attempts (one mother’s comment), hikes, and fond memories of skits.
The four boys advanced together into Boy Scouts at age 11, in 2005, and formed with several other school friends, the Pickles Patrol, with a homemade stuffed cloth pickle (2ft long and 3⁄4 ft thick) as their emblem and a homemade flag donning cutout pickles. Highlights from the boys’ experiences in Boy Scouts include Camp Grizzly, the Annual Pancake Breakfasts, Deception Pass State Park, the Cape Disappointment Haunted House in Octobers, rides on the Columbia River in a Coast Guard boat, food drives and service projects, Memorial Day weekends on Blake Island (including kayaking from Alki Beach), jungle ball, a Shi Shi Beach Hike, the 62 Mile Hike at Philmont Ranch, and for some of the four scouts sailing at Sea Base in Florida, and also the National Jamboree 2010 in Virginia. They waited for each other to finish the Eagle Scout Projects and then hold the Eagle Ceremony together before their graduation from , and a formal Eagle Court of Honor was held May 20 at the .
The Eagle Scout Project is the culminating practice of what the scout has learned in his years of Scouting, leadership, kindness, responsibility, duty to country and community, and more.
Here is how these four scouts show responsibility and thankfulness to our Mercer Island and surrounding community:
- Max Foster and volunteers of all ages took inventory and sorted for expired first aid and food items in the Emergency Preparedness containers at Mercer Island High School. In the future needed items can be replaced in a timely fashion and in correct quantities.
- Anders Hornor created a map and plant identification directory for the Browse Gardens at the Woodland Park Zoo. Certain landscaping plants are used as supplemental food for the animals, and the directory assists volunteers and zoo personnel in harvesting the correct ones.
- Ian Munro and friends renovated the Outdoor Classroom at Mercer Island High School. It had fallen into disrepair and had been used rarely in the previous few years. They cleaned cement, replaced benches, cut back trees and brush, and a gravel path and steps were installed. Ian worked with Tony Kuhn, the Maintenance Director of the MI School District. One teacher liked the finished area so much that he and his BRIDGES group students expanded the classroom even further.
- Nelson Tate chose to repair and rebuild benches at Mercer Island High School because he wanted to give students a place to enjoy being outside. Together with a group of seven friends, he took out the old benches which were rusted and broken, and replaced them with new wooden benches.
Congratulations to the four young men for these impressive achievements!
