Firefighter Dustin Botzum has joined a long list of distinguished men who have attained the rank of Eagle Scout. Among this group are Sen. Richard Lugar, Former President Gerald Ford and Astronaut Jim Lovell. The Eagle Scout award is performance-based achievement whose standards have been well-maintained over the years. Not every boy who joins a Boy Scout troop earns the Eagle Scout rank; only about 5 percent of all Boy Scouts do so.
Dustin has been a member of Scout Troop #374 since the first grade and worked his way up through the scout rankings. To achieve the rank of Eagle Scout, a scout chooses a community service project and is then responsible for bringing this project to completion. Dustin chose to do an expansion of the Garden of the Lambs section of our (St. Joseph Cemetery on Mesker Park Dr.) cemetery for his Eagle Scout project. "I have a baby sister entombed at St. Joseph and my family has grave plots there. My Mom and Dad will be buried there and I thought if I do this project, then there will be a section that I did that will be there forever. When I or my family visit the cemetery, they will see what I did and they will remember," he said.
Making this project a reality involved drawing up the landscape plans and getting estimates for the cost of plants, trees and other materials that would be needed. He presented this initially to the local Boy Scout Board for their approval and then to the Board of Directors of St. Joseph Cemetery.
The most challenging part of this project for Dustin was raising the funds needed to complete the project. "I had to approach a lot of people and businesses asking them for money. It was tough asking people for the money and I had to present the project to them also so they could decide if they believed it was worthwhile to donate the money for me," he said.
Once all the money was raised and all the materials were purchased, Dustin had to supervise the actual work. "It was quite a challenge to get folks to work on days I needed them. Everyone had other things that interfered with the dates I had planned to work. But in the end everything worked out just fine," he said.
As Dustin wrote to all those who helped him in this project, "...please remember in your thoughts and prayers not only the people who have lost love ones, but the little lambs themselves. As I travel through life, may I, in turn, pass on to others the lessons of nobleness you have taught me."
Congratulations, Dustin on a job well done.