Six Lake Stevens friends earn Scouting’s highest honor

Published 12:01 am Sunday, November 29, 2009

Alan Vandergrift spent Thanksgiving in Oregon. By early Friday, the University of Washington freshman was on his way to Lake Stevens, where he grew up. He wasn’t about to miss Ryan Smith’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor.

Smith and Vandergrift are more than boyhood friends. Along with four other young men — Tylor Jones, Kyle Christensen, Grady McGuire and Kim Talbot — they are Eagle Scouts from the Raven Patrol of Lake Stevens Boy Scout Troop 42.

Smith, the last of the six to earn his Eagle, was to be honored at the ceremony Friday afternoon at the South Lake Stevens Grange. The others all planned to attend.

Jay Colacecchi was the boys’ scoutmaster for several years. The Lake Stevens man said it’s rare for an entire patrol to stick with it all the way to Eagle Scout.

Colacecchi, 51, was a Boy Scout in California, but stopped short of the Eagle rank. It’s a small percentage of all boys in Scouting who complete the program through Eagle Scouts, he said. “Depending on what you read, some say it’s 2 percent and some say 4 percent. It’s very unusual to have a whole patrol — six guys,” Colacecchi said.

“Being their age, for some kids it’s not cool anymore to be in Scouts,” he added. “With sports, extracurricular things and so many of them starting AP (advanced placement) classes, it’s a lot of stress.”

Tammie Jones, Tylor’s mother, said her son was always proud to be a Boy Scout. “Tylor never thought of Scouts as nerdy. It was part of their lives, and they loved it,” she said.

“We had something really unique, a lot of spirit for what we did. I loved it,” said Tylor Jones, who’s in an engineering program at the University of Washington. “We had fun as friends and did stuff together outside of Scouting.”

For his Eagle project, Jones installed a chain-link fence at a church playground. Each earned their Eagle ranks at different times, but Jones said “we were all pulling for each other.”

Christensen, who attends Western Washington University, stayed with his troop in Lake Stevens after his family moved to Granite Falls. He became an Eagle Scout in February after completing a landscaping project at a Granite Falls church.

He values his Scouting friendships and laughs at a memory from Scout camp near Hood Canal. “We were on a makeshift raft paddling across the lake in race, and trying to keep it afloat,” Christensen said.

It was a challenge juggling high school, sports and Scouting. “I ran cross-country,” Christensen said. “No one really understood how busy I was.”

For Kim Talbot, who became an Eagle Scout in the fall of 2008, family support was helpful. “My parents are really involved with Scouts,” said Talbot, an Everett Community College student whose Eagle project involved installing rest areas on a trail in Eagle Ridge Park.

Talbot said he takes away from Scouting leadership experience and an appreciation of giving back to the community.

McGuire, another University of Washington freshman, built a nature trail at Everett’s Forest Park for his Eagle project. Through high school, he took advanced-placement classes and participated in rowing. McGuire said he learned time management and figured out how to get things done through Scouts.

His best memories are “going to summer camp with these guys — we went every year with each other,” McGuire said. “We definitely helped with each others’ Eagle projects. And we all plan to show up for Ryan.”

An hour before his Court of Honor on Friday, Smith said his Scouting peers all encouraged him to complete his Eagle rank. Some, he said, went so far as to tell him, “You know you can.” His favorite Scouting activity was a 50-mile backpacking trip in the Cascades.

Now a student at Shoreline Community College with an interest in music, Smith finished his work for an Eagle on Sept. 16. His project was building a life-jacket cabinet at North Cove Park on Lake Stevens.

Lifelong friends, all six are now Eagle Scouts.

“Some get it done as early as 15 or 16, some all the way up to their 18th birthday,” said Colacecchi, the former scoutmaster. “I love to see boys get it early, but I also love to see them hang in there.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.