Joseph Anason's Court of Honor in Schuster Park at 6pm this Afternoon
Friday, August 16th, 2019 -- 2:29 PM
-Today, August 16th at 6pm, in Schuster Park at the new band shell, Joseph Anason will have his Eagle Scout Court of Honor to highlight his career in the scouts.I spoke with Joseph and he talked about his time in the scouts.
“So, I first started in 1st grade under Judy Morrow. I’ve been involved all way until the age of 18 and, even now, I’ve been helping out occasionally. Some of the activities that we do are selling popcorn around the community. We also do Camp Phillips, we got to leadership camps, I’ve done away events, for example, we went to Bloomington, Indiana for leadership activities. Other projects that we’ve done include cleaning up trails at the Arboretum, we’ve cleaned up Levis, cleaning up campsites and more.”
Joseph then talked about some of the other high activities he was involved in throughout high school.
“In high school, I ran cross country in track. I’m also a double black belt in martial arts and I did all this while maintaining a 4.0 GPA.”
Joseph then talked about why he decided to pursue the new band shell as his Eagle Scout project.
“I was able to start my project when I was 15 and I have until 18 to finish it. So, I decided I wanted to do something a little bit larger since I had the time to do it. So, I took about a year/year and half trying to get approval process and figure out what I wanted to do. And the idea came up for Heritage Days in that we have bands, but we don’t have a permanent band stage in the park. So, that’s where the idea came from and I got approval from the city and the scouts to start doing the band stage project. For that project, I needed a blue print and then a plan explaining it would help sustain bands in the park.”
Joseph talked about the donations he received to have the band shell built and he said the businesses and groups he reached out to were very open to the idea.
“So, I went around asking for donations from different businesses. I wrote up grants to the Listeman Foundation and I asked different individuals. I did many different interviews and meetings with the different clubs around town. I think, in all, I had over 30 or 40 sponsors that would donate to the project to raise up the $33,000 and some odd dollars. A lot of them were excited to hear about this project. They agreed that the community needed something like this. That we don’t have the availability of bands to come in and this would be a nice addition to the community.”
Joseph then explained the Court of Honor he’ll be participating in this today.
“That program is a presentation of my scouting career. So, we go back and talk a little bit about where I started in 1st grade with the Tiger Scouts all the way up to my Eagle Scouts. And then we do the presentation of my award for the Eagle Scouts. So, they’ll do the neckerchief, the medals, I’ll be giving out some mentor pin and parent pins to everyone that has helped me with the community project. It recognizes everyone that helped me with that. So, it will be about an hour long ordeal. It will be showing what’s coming ahead or where do I go from here.”
To wrap up our interview, Joseph talked about why young children should be involved in the scouts.
“The opportunities that are there for it. Opportunities and leadership. I’ve had multiple opportunities to do all these different things. You have plenty of opportunities to get out and do something that you normal wouldn’t be able to do. You learn a lot of life skills as well.”
Once again, the Court of Honor for Joseph is being held this afternoon at 6pm in Schuster Park at the new band shell.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.