Scout Cleans Cemetery For His Eagle

HEUVELTON - Thomas G. (TJ) Jacobs celebrated last month's 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America in high-achieving style.

He got his Eagle badge.

Mr. Jacobs, an 18-year-old senior at Heuvelton Central School and a member of Troop 9 in the village, passed the Eagle Board of Review and received the Scouts' highest honor on Feb. 21. The 100th anniversary was Feb. 8.

To obtain his Eagle badge, Mr. Jacobs, with help from family, friends and fellow Scouts, led a weeding and cleaning of about 150 memorial monuments at Notre Dame Cemetery in Ogdensburg. The community service-oriented project, an Eagle requirement, was done over three weekends last October.

Good Scout that he is, Mr. Jacobs relished the task at hand and was proud of the results.

"It felt really good as soon as it was done and I was one step closer," he said Saturday. "It also felt really good to help out your community."

Mr. Jacobs, the son of Thomas G. and Sue A. Jacobs, got the idea for his Eagle badge project from Ogdensburg resident William Seymour. Last year, Mr. Seymour and his family cleaned memorial monuments at St. Mary's Cemetery in Ogdensburg.

The job of cleaning the monuments was basic grunt labor that no Scout should shy away from. It was nothing fancy. A pail of water, a toilet bowl scrub brush and, courtesy of Fox & Murray Funeral Home, Ogdensburg, a high-pressure hose to wash off the loosened dirt and grit.

"Just water from out of the spigot at the cemetery," Mr. Jacobs said.

Mr. Jacobs was never alone. One weekend, a few buddies and fellow Troop scouts showed up to help. The next weekend there were 10 of them.

And let's not ever forget a very special couple.

"My parents were always there to help," he said.

As earnest and devoted as he was, Mr. Jacobs admitted that his eye on the Eagle prize wavered now and then. It happened to a few other Scouts as well.

It's hard work, this Eagle badge business.

"There was one point where I did not want to do it anymore," he said. "My friends dropped out."

But not this Scout.

"There was a lot of support for me to keep going for the Eagle," he said. "I just want to thank everybody who made it possible."

Mr. Jacobs plans to attend SUNY Canton next fall to study criminal justice.