Wantagh Boy Scout to honor veterans

A Wantagh Boy Scout is taking on one of the most extensive community service projects in recent memory as he works his way toward the Eagle rank.

Peter Dugan, 16, a sophomore at MacArthur High School, will be erecting a Vietnam veterans memorial at Wantagh Park, in addition to other work he has already completed. The monument will be made of black granite and include a symbolic quote and the POW/MIA symbol. There will be a fallen soldier statue on top.

Dugan and his nearly 25 volunteers spent the last two weekends of March preparing the site, adjacent to the administration building. They removed old wooden posts and installed new ones, along with stringing nautical rope from post to post.

The group also fixed up a shell walkway. They cleaned all the shells, put down new ones and leveled the path. Later this month, he plans to have the monument installed. Because it will weigh about a ton, a crane will likely be needed.

Dugan had to raise nearly $8,000 for his project. At a Tony Orlando concert for veterans last summer at Eisenhower Park, he sold wristbands and car magnets. When the veterans learned what he was selling for, they were happy to chip in, he said.

Last June he held a car wash at East Broadway Elementary School, and in June did a bake sale at Grace Episcopal Church in Massapequa.

“It’s probably one of the largest fundraisers our troop has ever had,” said Scoutmaster Mark Elkin, of Troop 689, which is based in Seaford. “That’s a mammoth amount of money for a single scout to raise.”

In order to become an Eagle Scout, the highest honor in Scouting, a boy must complete a community service project, in addition to earning a minimum of 21 merit badges and other requirements. Dugan has been in the scouts since first grade, when he was a member of Cub Scout Pack 689.

He said he chose to do a project that honored veterans for his grandfather, who served two tours in Vietnam. “He’s just touched by it,” Dugan said. “He’s speechless.”

Dugan said that the project has been in the works since last January, and it was approved by Scout leaders in May. This May, he hopes to submit his project book, then appear before an Eagle Board of Review in anticipation of a Court of Honor ceremony in 2016.

He said completing work would not have been possible without the help of his volunteers, mostly other members of his troop. Dugan helped several scouts with their Eagle projects in the past, and many came back to return the favor.

A community service project requires a lot of planning, he explained, from fundraising, to getting necessary approvals, to assigning tasks to his volunteers. “Organization skills are definitely key to this,” he said. “Hard work will always pay off.”