Eagle Scout project connects people with deceased loved ones

Published 5:00 pm Monday, September 22, 2025

ARLINGTON — As part of an Eagle Scout project in Arlington, high school sophomore Michael Powers built a way for grieving members of the community to speak to loved ones who have passed.

Powers, 15, has been a Boy Scout for three years, he said in an interview.

“Only around 5% of scouts make it in the average time,” he said. “It takes three years.”

To become an Eagle Scout, scouts must complete a significant community service project, among other requirements. For his project, Powers constructed a wind phone — a disconnected phone people use to talk to deceased loved ones — in Arlington’s Country Charm Park.

Powers decided on the idea because “it just really stuck out to me,” he said in an interview before the ceremony. “It just seemed like something that really was needed here.”

The first wind phone was built 2010 in Otsuchi, Japan. Now, hundreds of wind phones exist across the globe, according to mywindphone.com.

“It’s a lot nicer to also have something sentimental,” he said. “We have enough benches and tables.”

Several painted rocks with the names of people who have passed sit around the wind phone. Many of the names are people who died in the 2014 Oso landslide, which claimed the lives of 43 people.

“My coworker’s sister perished, and I talked to her about this project,” Arlington Community Engagement Director Sarah Lopez said in an interview. “She could relate to the passing of loved ones and having them still be connected to you.”

Edmonds resident Judy Ness told The Herald that she came up with the idea three years ago while she still lived in Arlington.

“I watched a segment on TV about the wind phone,” Ness said, “and I got to thinking, ‘Why not Arlington?’”

Ness gave Lopez the idea because she keeps an ongoing list of potential Eagle Scout projects, Lopez said.

“Some people passed on that one and chose other projects,” she said, but Powers was the perfect Scout for the project.

“He just loved the idea, and his mom was so supportive,” Lopez said. “They brought people into the project to help, and it made it more special. He wasn’t just building the structure, he was into the project. He liked what it stood for.”

Powers built the wind phone over the summer with help from his family and members of the community, he said.

“This project could not have happened without everybody,” Powers said during public remarks. “We couldn’t have done it without all of you. So every donation, every hour of work, every encouraging word, really helped bring this project to life.”

The project wasn’t just his, it was a community project, he told The Herald.

“I have like a million email strands from the community,” Powers said. “Almost everything here — aside from the structure, how the structure looks and the phone itself — everything was a suggestion by the community.”

Powers still has to go through a review process to see if the project is good enough for him to become an Eagle Scout. However, “I’m very confident,” he said.

Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay