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Proud father James writes about Dustin:
Dustin is now in the final paperwork process for his Eagle rank in Boy Scouts. (Boys cannot be Boy Scouts after age 18, and that's coming up pretty quick here.) He completed his service project. He chose to install a municipal-grade flagpole in a prominent city park. Eagle projects, besides being service projects are the first taste of project management that the lads get - complete with things not going as they might have expected or desired.
His had complications too, but he did well. We keep telling him "It's not what life throws at you, but how you deal with it." He did good. Below is a nearly accurate story from our local paper which is noted for getting stuff wrong. I attached a few pix too, and copied Bill for the web. There's lots more pix because he had to document the project in pictures for his submittal to BSA national. These here are just the very end of the dedication ceremony he did on June 10. He and the boys did the hole-digging and concrete work on the 9th. One of the boys dad works concrete and was Dustin's "field expert" on that.
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Scout Directs Flag Project
By: Venice Buhain of The Olympian
OLYMPIA — Raising a flagpole wasn’t something that Dustin Jablonski, 17, had ever done, but he directed about half a dozen other Boy Scouts at Priest Point Park on Sunday, maneuvering a 20-foot flagpole into the ground. “He never used to be this bossy,” his father, James Jablonski, joked, as the flagpole went up. Jablonski, a junior at Olympia High School, organized school friends and fellow Boy Scouts to put up the flagpole at the rose garden in Priest Point Park for a Boy Scouts service project over the
weekend.
They spent all Saturday in the rain pouring concrete, and the metal pole went up on Sunday. “It’s been a pretty serious learning curve for me,” said Jablonski, a member of Boy Scouts troop 48. The cost of the project was $950, which he raised through donated materials and money from local businesses and veterans groups, Jablonski said. He got the concrete and a ton of advice from concrete company Glacier Northwest of Seattle, he said.
David Hanna, the associate director of the Olympia Parks, Arts and Recreation department, said that the city works with volunteers and neighborhood groups on their ideas for park improvements and amenities. “We try to do whatever we can,” he said. “We have neighborhood-initiated projects.” After consulting with Rod Lobe of the city’s Parks, Arts and Recreation department on what the requirements for the flagpole would be, Dustin Jablonski raised enough money for the flagpole, a 3-by-5-foot flag and lighting for the flag, so it can be left up at night.
Jablonski completed the project as part of his application to become an Eagle Scout. His mother, Zandra Brown, said that the project also will be his culminating project at Olympia High School. “He didn’t want to do a trail or something that would grow over eventually. He wanted to give something that the community could enjoy,” Brown said.
Venice Buhain covers education for The Olympian. She can be reached at 360-754-5445 or vbuhain@theolympian.com.
This article can be found at The Olympian
