Making things right
By Tammy Mathison
hendrickspioneer@gmail.com
In an era that finds most teens glued to a television or computer, fifteen-year-old Andrew Puetz of Clear Lake, S.D. has found a better use for his time and has set his sights on being in league with such notable people as astronaut Neal Armstrong and former President Gerald Ford.
For the past year-and-a-half, Andrew has been working at achieving the rank of Eagle Scout – the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America; a rank that, since 1911, only two percent of the entire Boy Scout membership ever achieves.
According to Wikipdia™ “Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). A Scout who attains this rank is called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than two million young men. The title of Eagle Scout is held for life, thus giving rise to the phrase “Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.”
Requirements include earning at least 21 merit badges and demonstrating Scout spirit through the Boy Scout oath and law, service and leadership. This includes an extensive service project that the Scout plans, organizes, leads and manages. Eagle Scouts are presented with a medal and a badge that visibly recognizes the accomplishments of the Scout. Additional recognition can be earned through Eagle Palms, awarded for completing additional tenure, leadership and merit badge requirements.”
Andrew has already more than met most of the requirement, having earned 46 merit badges. What remains is completing a service project and meeting with the (Boy Scout) Council.
For his service project, Andrew chose to do some work in the New Grove Cemetery located southeast of Hendricks.
“My great, great, great-grandparents are buried here,” said Andrew.
“I wanted to do a project that, 50 years from now, if I ever bring back my kids, I can show them what I did and bring back the memories of what my grandparents showed me – to show them the memories I had when I was a kid.”
Andrew’s parents, John and Lori Puetz said that they have been coming to the cemetery for over 25 years on Memorial weekend to plant flowers by the headstones of Lori’s relatives.
During their yearly visits, the Puetz family, John, Lori, Andrew and Eric, took notice of the aging condition of the cemetery. Andrew thought that fixing up the cemetery would be a good Eagle Scout project.
As part of his project, Andrew, with help from his family, spent over 300 hours cleaning all of the headstones, at times a painstaking process much like an archeologist will clean a fossil. Appropriate, gentle cleansers and scrubbing tools were used along with a plastic scraper and toothbrushes to remove the buildup of lichen from the headstones.
Once they were cleaned up and readable, Andrew was able to plot the cemetery to make a new directory as the original directory was lost in the fire in 1927 when the New Grove Church burned down. He plans to either have a laser engraved or book-type directory in a metal box available at the cemetery.
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