Boy Scouts are known for doing good deeds, and a local Eagle Scout candidate in Sugar Grove found the means to give back to his church in a way that will likely pay dividends for decades.
Christopher Eby, 17, who attends Marmion Academy in Aurora, became a Scout eight years ago and when it came time to complete his Eagle Scout project, someone offered him a suggestion which he admits required a lot of reassurance before he took the plunge.
“I got into Scouting because my dad got me into it first and then my brother. Once I got into it, I liked and had an attraction for it, and I ended up making some great friends along the way,” he said. “In terms of my Eagle project, I wasn’t sure at first what I was going to do, but then a member of our church who is a general contractor, Mr. Dustin Hawkins, came up to my mom and asked if it would be all right if I did a project for our church.”
That project turned out to be a storage shed to be used to store lawn maintenance equipment and other items, a task that Chris said he wasn’t sure he had the skills to undertake but that he “ended up doing and loved it.”
“It seemed like something well beyond me as I’ve never done anything with carpentry before. I’ve seen my brother’s Eagle project, but I really had no clue how it was done,” he said. “He built a shelving unit at a local food pantry, but building a 12-foot by 12-foot shed seemed pretty impossible for me. The help that I had from the community, my mom, Mr. Hawkins, all of the church members that have been in carpentry forever, my Marmion friends, my girlfriend and her family, all of them helped me overcome my anxieties.”
Chris’ mother Dawn Eby said the shed was erected on the church’s Harter Road property which includes a pavilion for outdoor events.
“There was an old shed there, and the church was looking for someone to put a nice new one in its place,” Dawn Eby said. “The old one had critters in it, and we were looking to get a much bigger lawn mower for the church but it would not fit in the existing shed.”
She said her son had some concerns about the project.
“It’s a significantly big project,” she said. “Sugar Grove Boy Scout Troop 41 has had 10 to 12 Eagle Scout projects the last couple years including one from his brother Billy, but most projects in our area are not that big. Chris wondered how would he do that. He doesn’t know the first thing about carpentry – to him, it looked onerous. He and I met with Hawkins and convinced Chris he could do this with Hawkins as general contractor and getting the community on board.”
A new concrete base had to be poured for the shed in addition to dismantling the old structure.
The Rev. Joe Monroe, 53, who lives in Sugar Grove and oversees Sugar Grove United Methodist Church, said he had just been appointed to his position last fall while the Scout project was underway and had to play a little bit of catch-up.
“This was a great project for the church and I had just been newly assigned here. This was in the works and when I first was appointed, I was told, ‘Oh, by the way – the church is responsible to get the concrete work done’ and I made a few calls,” Monroe said. “The local Quikrete company donated all of it for us.”
The project began towards the end of July and lasted until mid-August. Money for the project and materials included donations from Home Depot as well as from church and family members. ABC Supply donated all the building materials.
Chris Eby, 17, of Sugar Grove, shows off the completed storage shed he and over 60 volunteers helped build last summer for Sugar Grove United Methodist Church. (Eby family)
The project in total required 518 volunteer hours.
Like all Eagle Scout projects, Chris’ main role was to coordinate the effort while assigning and monitoring others’ tasks.
“The whole point of the project was being able to delegate the work to other people as I don’t really know exactly what I was doing,” he said. “My whole job was to figure out a plan and with the help of 65 other people execute the plan by serving mostly as the director. I did some nailing and screwing and showing people what to do, but I also was directing others most of the time.”
Monroe said that “Chris had to step up and run that whole project and he did an amazing job in itself. He’s a great young man and hard-working. He lined everything up and made sure things were going according to plan.”
Chris was awarded his Eagle rank on Oct. 11, 2023.
His mother noted how the “community came together to make this happen.”
“At the end of the day, it took 65 volunteers to do this,” she said.
Her son said there many benefits to what was accomplished.
“I had a lot of anxiety going into it, but with the help of all these different people and the community it made the project so much less stressful on me because I was able to push the weight onto some other people to help me get through the process so it wasn’t just all on me,” Chris said. “I love giving back to the church and it’s given a lot back to me as far as my spiritual journey goes. The ability to give back was something that meant a lot to me.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
