By Matt Wiley
It’s an honor shared by only about two percent of all Boy Scouts across the country since 1912, but one New Tampa resident is soaring above his peers. After nearly ten years of hard work and determination, Benjamin Geller has earned the status of Eagle Scout, the highest rank a member of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) can receive.
Geller, 17, a Tampa Palms resident who is a junior in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at C. Leon King High in Tampa, was honored as an Eagle Scout during a ceremony on Jan. 18 at St. James United Methodist Church in Tampa Palms, where his Troop 142 regularly meets.
The ceremony marked the culmination of a ten-year journey for Geller, who began Scouting at age eight, to earn the distinctive honor. Most kids who join BSA at a young age don’t end up continuing on to become Eagle Scouts. In fact, according to the National Eagle Scout Association (NESA), today only about five percent of all Boy Scouts go on to become Eagles.
“(Becoming an Eagle Scout) was a lot of hard work,” Geller says. “But, I had a lot of fun with it, too.”
In addition to earning all 21 of the merit badges required to advance to the rank of Eagle Scout, Geller says that the culminating project was the most difficult.
According to NESA, to become an Eagle Scout, a Scout has to plan, develop and give leadership to others in a service project helpful to his religious institution, school or community.
“My project was building a pergola for the Fisher House at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa,” Geller explains. “It’s like a gazebo, but it still lets some light through. I made it for the families staying at the Fisher House (the residence located next to the hospital that houses the families of the wounded warriors being treated at the hospital for extended periods of time, all at no charge to those families). I also did some gardening around it.
Geller says that the actual construction of the wooden pergola occurred in early July of last year.
“The actual building took about nine hours the first day and then I came back the next day for about two hours,” Geller explains. “So, it was probably about 11 or 12 hours of actual physical building. But, the planning took about four to five months.”
Geller says that he had to raise about $1,000 to build the pergola, so he conducted three car washes that raised more than $300 each time.
As part of the leadership aspect of the project, he had to plan the car washes, as well as enlist the help of and manage fellow Scouts and friends. During the construction of the pergola, he says that he had the assistance of eight Scouts and four adults with construction and building expertise.
“The most difficult part was definitely the project,” he says. “It took the most amount of time and everything I planned ended up taking longer and becoming more difficult than I thought it would be.”
However, becoming an Eagle Scout was well-worth the work, he says.
“The most rewarding part about Scouting is looking back and seeing myself change,” Geller explains. “It’s great to look back at all of the fun I’ve had and how much I’ve grown.”
Scouting also has allowed Geller the opportunity to take part in several “high-adventure” trips with fellow Scouts from across the country. Among those was the retreat to the Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimmaron, NM, BSA’s largest national adventure base that has been attended by more than one million scouts since it opened in 1939. Geller says that while at Philmont, he took part in a 108-mile, 10-day hiking trek through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Cimmaron.
Geller also has attended two National Boy Scout Jamborees, one in 2008 to commemorate the 100th year of Scouting and the most recent in 2010 at the 10,600-acre Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in the New River Gorge National river area in West Virginia.
“It was a great time,” Geller says. “We took part in rock climbing, zip lining, archery, rifling, mountain biking and skateboarding. It’s just thousands of scouts (45,000 to be exact) from across the country that come together to take part in high-adventure activities.”
Geller says that in addition to the high-adventure events, it was the friends he’s made who helped him stick with Scouting through the years.
“A lot of them will be becoming Eagle Scouts in the next year or so, too,” he says.
Geller says that once he graduates from the King IB program next year, he plans to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville, followed by law school, and he says his experiences in Scouting will help.
“The discipline and work ethic I’ve learned will help me in just about anything,” he says. “Scouting teaches leadership and hard work and the proper ways to build character and value. It’s taught me to take on a leadership role and how to talk in front of groups, as well as perseverance.”
Congratulations, Benjamin!
For more information about BSA, please visit Scouting.org.
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