Becoming an Eagle Scout is no small achievement; only about 5 percent of Boy Scouts ever earn this prestigious rank. Earlier this month 17-year-old Alex Bradley of Mattituck completed the requirements and became an Eagle Scout.
“When a young man becomes an Eagle Scout that is quite an accomplishment,” said Alex’s troop leader Ed Thompson. Alex is the first Eagle Scout for Thompson and the 52nd from Troop 39 to achieve the ranking.
Eagle Scouts must complete a wide range of tasks to earn the rank, working their way up through all the levels of scouting, earning merit badges, attending scoutmaster conferences and facing a review board. Alex, who has been a scout since he was kindergarten age, has devoted enormous time and energy to achieving Eagle rank: earning badges, performing community service and taking on positions of responsibility.
“It’s not just about camping and learning to tie knots,” said Alex. “I’ve learned a lot of moral and practical lessons; lessons in leadersip and character.”
An important part of becoming an Eagle Scout is choosing and executing a service project which demonstrates leadership abilities and benefits the scout’s community.
Alex, a Native American history buff, found the perfect project at the Southold Indian Museum.
“I went to the museum looking for a project and they told me that they had boxes full of spoils from an archaeological dig in Glen Cove,” he explained. “They were building a developement and when they did an archaeological check they found an area where prehistoric people dumped shells and food waste. They also cooked there; it was a ‘kitchen’ site, a place where people gathered, so they found tools and other things.”
The company that performed the dig removed most of the large artifacts and the spoils — boxes of dirt — were packed up and sent to the Indian Museum where they were stored in the basement.
Alex rounded up a group of volunteers including relatives and other scouts and they spent hours sifting through the dirt, looking for artifacts that the archaeologists had missed.
“I had to learn from museum volunteers what to look for and then I had to teach the volunteers,” said Alex. “There were a lot of shells, but the important thing was to find the most complete ones and the most interesting ones, for example the shells of extinct species of shellfish. And the turtle shells and bones we found tell us about the diet of these people.”
Once the search for artifacts was complete Alex helped prepare the labels and the collection was installed in a display case along with some of the larger artifacts from the dig which were gifted to the museum.
Alex, who is a member of the National Honor Society, Tri-M music honor society, the All State Chorus and the Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association’s youth advisory committee, plans to study Native American history in college. He will age out of Boy Scouts when he turns 18, but he will always be an Eagle Scout.
