By Sarah Brown
Lebanon Local
Tiegan Seery, 15, of Lebanon’s Boy Scouts of America Troop 7088, completed his Eagle Scout project Sunday, Sept. 4, when he and his team finished reinstalling the original Linn County Veterans Memorial plaques at Timber Linn Memorial Park in Albany.
“I wanted to help the veterans over at the Veterans Memorial, and it was a close-by project that was fun,” he said.
Timber Linn became the site of the memorial (formerly the Linn War Memorial) in 1969 when the Albany Jaycees installed plaques listing the names of county residents who lost their lives in 20th century conflicts, namely World Wars I and II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
According to Linn County Veterans Memorial Association board member Randy Martinak, the memorial was expanded in 2005 to include casualties that weren’t listed originally, and the original plaques were moved to the expanded location. Now the memorial is undergoing further expansion, allowing the old plaques to be returned to their original location.
That’s where Tiegan stepped in to help.
“We moved them back and added the old plaques as well because there were two that were removed,” he said. “So, we added those back.”
Those two were war-memorial dedication plaques recognizing contributing individuals and organizations. They’d been sitting in Martinak’s garage for several years.
Tiegan was able to recruit about 20 other Scouts and parents from three other troops (322 in Albany, 350 in Lebanon and 121 in Keizer). The project took them two days to complete and included making posts for the extra plaques and removing the old posts from their current locations.
“We had to dig up the old plaques that were about two feet deep and had a lot of concrete attached to them, so they were very hard to move,” Tiegan said.
He found that digging those holes was the most challenging part of the project.
“We had an auger for digging the holes for the posts,” he said, “so I sent the adults over there and we had all of the children over digging (the posts) up with shovels. One of them was really, really big and nobody could lift it because it was about 500 pounds.”
But the experience taught Tiegan some important lessons.
“Leadership pulls you in many, many, many different directions,” he said. “Everybody needs to ask a question all at the same time, in waves.”
Also, “Concrete is hard to use because it’s a lot of prep to have it put in.”
Tiegan said it took “a lot of effort” to reach the Eagle Scout rank at his age but, he said, “I’m in home school, so I have a lot of extra time.” He now finds himself with more than two years left in the organization and possible plans to earn a Distinguished Conservation Service Award if he completes two conservation projects and earns related merit badges.
“(I’m) thinking about building bat boxes for Cheadle Lake and beehives for Veterans Legacy in Veneta,” he said.
Tiegan also hopes to add four more Eagle Palm awards to the two he’s already earned as an Eagle Scout. Every five extra merit badges will garner him a Palm.
Tiegan joined the Cub Scouts when he was in the second grade. His older brother’s involvement inspired him to join because it looked fun, he said.
“He got to go camping and do all the fun exercises,” he said.
The experience did not disappoint because Tiegan accomplished many things during his time in the Boy Scouts, including camping and earning merit badges. His favorite badges include rock climbing, rifle and shotgun.
Tiegan said his one takeaway from his time as a Scout would be “Learning to work together with people.”