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Bridge Project

Putnam’s Troop 21 Senior Patrol Leader Richard L. LaBonte Jr., is pictured here hammering a nail during his Eagle Scout Service Project, while Scoutmaster Peter A. Lombardo looks on. Photo by Vikkii LaBonte.

 

 

PUTNAM — Think of it as a really hard, really important job interview. It has to be, because this job lasts for life. Recently, 16-year-old Richard L. LaBonte Jr., successfully finished his interview. 

This means the young man from Pomfret is Troop 21’s brand-new Eagle Scout.

“I learned from being in Scouts how to talk to people and to try new things,” LaBonte said, as he emerged from his Eagle Scout Board of Review Dec. 21. 

Troop 21’s new Eagle Scout, the son of Richard, Sr., and Vikkii LaBonte, has indeed tried many “new things” since he became a Scout in 2011 – camping, hiking, fishing, rock climbing, swimming, rappelling, astronomy and the host of other activities that Scouts do. 

Add to that earning 21 merit badges, holding a responsible leadership position in Troop 21 for most of the last five years and performing plenty of community service along the way, and you get the 350 or so requirements LaBonte had to complete in order to earn Scouting’s highest rank.

After a Troop 21 Scout has completed the requirements for the rank of Eagle, he must be reviewed and passed by a combined Eagle Scout Board of Review, made up of adult leaders from Troop 21 and the Nipmuck District of the East Hartford-based Connecticut Rivers Council of the Boy Scouts of America. 

Counting the time needed to fill out the paperwork, LaBonte’s board of review took just under an hour.

“I  learned (from being a Scout) that when you’re the leader, everyone looks up to you to make the right choice,” LaBonte said shortly afterwards.

Indeed, the Boy Scouts of America requires that an Eagle Scout candidate show his leadership by planning and leading others in successfully completing a significant service project to benefit the candidate’s school, church or community. 

For his service project, beginning last March, LaBonte spent over four months leading a group of 16 Scouts and adult volunteers who demolished the old, decrepit, 40-foot, wooden footbridge and assembled and stained a new one spanning Creamery Brook at Brooklyn’s Donald Francis Recreation Park on Rt. 6. LaBonte and his crew finished the bridge in July.

Nationwide, the Boy Scouts of America’s national office in Irving, Texas, said that in 2015 a total of 8,503,337 hours were spent working on Eagle Scout service projects. 

That averaged out to over 150 hours each. LaBonte and his crew beat that number, however, putting in a total of almost 200 hours overall.

In addition to a service project, an Eagle Scout candidate must earn a total of 21 required and elective merit badges. LaBonte has 22. 

LaBonte is a junior at H. H. Ellis Technical High School in Danielson where he studies electronics.

Troop 21 Scoutmaster Peter A. Lombardo, of Putnam, said new Eagle Scout Richard LaBonte may never be famous, but that’s not the point.

“Richard has come so far and done so well in his five years with Troop 21,” Lombardo said. 

“He’s set himself up with a great foundation to succeed in life. I’m so proud of him.”