Best Friends Shared Their Eagle Scout Court Of Honor

By Shannon Hicks

Two young men who have been best friends all their lives recently combined their Eagle Scout Courts of Honor, celebrating an achievement in a dual ceremony at Newtown Meeting House.

Hutch Bermingham and John Moller were honored on January 14 with a ceremony that combined “just the right amount of tradition, newness, and humor,” Hutch said recently. Like many events this snowy winter, the boys had to hastily reschedule their ceremony after it was snowed out of its original January 7 date.

Hutch and John are members of Newtown Boy Scout Troop 270, led by Scoutmaster Peter Lubinsky. They both joined Boy Scouts when they were 11 years old, and have continued with Newtown’s program.

Hutch, 18, is the son of Sherry and John Bermingham. John’s parents are Gina and Barry Moller.

Scouts looking to achieve the rank of Eagle have a number of requirements to fulfill before they move from the rank of Life Scout and begin considering the process of becoming an Eagle Scout. They need to be active with their troop, demonstrate they can live by the organization’s principles, earn 21 merit badges, and other important steps.

The most familiar step in the path to becoming an Eagle Scout is the Eagle Service Project. These projects should be about service to others — Scouts are encouraged to do something that will benefit an organization other than Boy Scouts — and both boys found ways to benefit the town and its residents with their choices.

Projects must demonstrate a young man’s ability to lead, plan, delegate, and prepare for the unexpected. There is no minimum nor maximum time, and projects do not need to involve money or construction.

Projects must also be unique to each Scout (Scouts cannot jointly work on a project, in other words).

For his Eagle Scout project, Hutch followed a suggestion from his mother and decided to help The Pootatuck Watershed Association, Inc (PWA) with a project it started in time for Earth Day 2008, marking storm drains with semipermanent stickers that advise people “Don’t Pollute … Drains To Waterways.” Blue and green markers, each four inches in diameter, are affixed to the top of a catch basin with an adhesive that is expected to last at least 30 years.

“[The drains] lead into water runoff areas, which can very quickly lead into groundwater, which can eventually lead to chemicals in our drinking water,” said the Eagle Scout. “Granted, they can get filtered out, but that’s a pain. They’re not sewers.”

“There was a lot of remapping to be done too, because a lot of the maps are old and outdated,” he said. Public Works supplied safety vests for Hutch and his volunteers. Hutch worked with PWA to organize the project, which meant collecting stickers and the glue, and volunteers.

“An Eagle Scout needs to show leadership and organizational skills, so it’s important for his project to bring other Scouts and volunteers together and show them what needs to be done,” he explained. “It was a simple, good idea, so I ran with it and it ended up working out very well.”

Hutch’s crew was able to complete all of the stickers on the storm drains they wanted to mark in just one day.

John’s project was the continuation of clearing a trail along the Newtown-Monroe border that had been started by a friend of his.

“This included clearing 600 feet of the trail, and setting up a barricade at the end with a sign saying this is the end of the trail,” he said.

Neither boy had any problems with their projects. Unlike many Eagle Service Projects, neither needed to solicit funds.

Hutch and John both began thinking about their projects late last winter, and were able to organize everything so that they were finished with planning and execution by spring. Once projects are completed, Scouts meet with their troop’s leader for a Scoutmaster Conference. John finished work on his project at the end of April and was able to meet for his Scoutmaster Conference on May 12. Hutch’s conference was held in early summer.

Once through that, it is on to a Board of Review with members of the local council; for Newtown Scouts this is a meeting with Connecticut Yankee Council members. Then the paperwork is sent to the national board, based in Texas, which looks over everything and signs off on each project.

Because of the time it took between fulfilling their Eagle rank requirements and hearing word from the national board, neither boy was able to schedule his court of honor before it was time to return to school for the 2010-11 academic year. Hutch has finished one semester at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and is in the process of transferring to another school. John, who is also 18 years old, is a freshman at Susquehanna University.

A mutual friend of Hutch and John, Matt Bodwell was hoping to celebrate his achievement of Eagle Scout rank during the January ceremony at Newtown Meeting House, which would have been the first triple celebration for the troop.

“He wasn’t going to be able to have his full family there that day, though, so we went with the double ceremony and asked Matt to be our master of ceremonies,” Hutch said. “It was actually tough to get enough people to do the ceremony, with both of us participating. We called so many people, and many couldn’t be there, but we ended up with just the right amount of people for the ceremony.”

An Eagle Scout Court of Honor is as unique as each Scout being honored.

“The Eagle Scout himself has the final say if something is going to be in or not,” said Hutch. “I really enjoyed ours. We had a lot of people tell us they liked it, too.”

A reception followed the formal event, which lasted a little longer than usual due to the number of honors announced and readings that were done for both Scouts.

“It’s a relief to not have this looming over me any longer,” Hutch said. “The project is probably the number one snag people get caught on, but the adults who lead our troop are very helpful in coming up with ideas. There work all around town and there is always something to be done.

“I’m proud to have finished this,” he said of not just the service project, but the rank he has attained. “There were a lot of instances when I could have given up but didn’t. Being an Eagle Scout opens up something new. Employers will look at that.”

“To reach the rank of Eagle is to master many of the aspects of the Scout oath and law in one’s everyday life,” said fellow Eagle John. “It is a great achievement that has taken much time and effort.”