 |
|
||
Earning every merit badge offered made one Scout a celebrity at the jamboree. Date published: 8/2/2001
For the past 10 days, boys gathered around the Merit Badge Midway at the National Scout Jamboree to learn about railroading, aviation, wood carving, forestry and the like.
But not Patrick McHammond. The 17-year-old Eagle Scout from Morehead City, N.C., already has every last one of the 74 merit badges represented at the midway. He also has all 45 of the badges that weren't represented there. Earning all 119 merit badges is a feat so special that Chief Scout Executive Ray Campbell came to Patrick's camp during the jamboree to present him with a special award. Patrick said he didn't originally set out to get all 119 badges. "I really didn't think it was possible, to be honest," he said. As he found out, it is possible, but rare. No official count of Scouts like Patrick is available because Boy Scout Councils do not keep achievement records on individual Scouts beyond rank. But earlier this year, another boy, Jared Thatcher of Kansas City, Mo., finished up the cinematography badge to earn the full complement just days before his 18th birthday. Patrick said his motivation came in part because of an experience he had when he first graduated from Cub Scouts, and met boys with uniforms so decorated that the drab brown cloth was barely visible. "At my first Boy Scout meeting, all I had was the Arrow of Light badge on my uniform and I felt so naked," he said. The next summer he came to the 1997 Jamboree and earned a few of the hardest badges--in railroading and aviation. That's when he was bitten by the merit-badge bug. "I set up a schedule in a binder to figure out how many I needed to earn a week," he said. "Sometimes in a one-week period I was working on five or six. Sometimes I'd get one done." His scoutmaster, John Borley, said Patrick earned all the merit badges while also serving as a leader of his 90-boy troop, being part of a very competitive swim team, and practicing with his school's drill team.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
||||||||||||||
