Quincy Velez, a scout from Franklin Square’s Boy Scouts of America Troop 485, achieved the rank of Eagle Scout last year. He celebrated his achievement during his Court of Honor at Destiny Cathedral in Hempstead on Jan. 5. Velez’s friends, family, fellow scouts and members of the New York assembly and legislature, including Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, Assemblyman Ed Ra, Legislator John Giuffre and Legislator Carrie Solages, attended the celebration, which began at 1 p.m.
Velez, who is now 18, joined the Cub Scouts at age seven. Although, he admitted, it was only because his mother, Lynette Battle, pushed him to. “It took a while of getting used to,” he said. But now, there are many benefits he’s gained as a result of his experience with the troop, such as job preparation, crisis response and other valuable life skills.
“It taught me discipline,” he said. “More than anything, it taught me how to work with people, and how to become a better leader. It taught me how to be more engaged and understanding what’s going on around me.”
Velez said he currently has 31 merit badges, ranging from astronomy, cooking, emergency preparedness and, his favorite, shotgun shooting. “It was the hardest one,” he said of the shotgun badge. The badge took him two years to complete, but he said it was the most rewarding.
According to the Boy Scout website, scouts must complete all requirements, along with an Eagle Scout project, before they turn 18 in order to be considered for the rank. Velez said he completed his project last year, which focused on refurbishing his church prayer garden.
Velez said he and a team of scouts removed outdated trees, and then planted some flowers and a new banana tree in its place. He said the project was an effort to revitalize the garden, and pay tribute to community members in the armed forces who lost their lives. “It looks beautiful,” he said of the garden. “Everything just came together.”
The hardest part was asking his friends for help with his project, he said, because the day they started the project, it was raining heavily. He knew everyone would be working in difficult conditions, but he led his team and guided them through it. “I had to bring out the best in them, even on the worst day,” he said.
Battle said she is incredibly proud of Velez. She said one of the reasons she put him in the Boy Scouts of America was because his father died when he was three years old. “There was a certain discipline I wanted him to have that I knew I couldn’t teach him, but the Boy Scouts could,” she said.
It was important to Battle that Velez had positive male role models, as well as leaders in his life that he could relate to. She said his scoutmasters, who are husband and wife, have been instrumental in his development in the Boy Scouts, and have been a guiding force for him.
Gary Hansen, one of Velez’s scoutmasters, said Velez has always been determined to become an Eagle Scout, and regularly mentioned his goal of achieving the rank during their scout meetings.
Hansen said he’s known Velez since he was 11, and he has watched him mature and rise through the ranks ever since. “He was a very shy kid, at first,” he said. He admitted Velez did become a bit of a class clown, but now, he’s gotten more serious. Of course, Hansen continued, Velez has still maintained his sense of humor. “He’s a good kid,” Hansen said. “I hope he continues accomplishing his goals.”
According to Velez, the scout program helped prepare him for his current enrollment in a pilot program at Vaughn College of Aeronautics, which is located next to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. In the future, he hopes to become a pilot and create a $20,000 scholarship for the Boy Scouts of America, which would be gifted to the organization every year. “I want to give back to the community,” he concluded.