When you think of Scouts, you might think of teenagers building sheds and earning badges. Many aspire to become an Eagle Scout, the organization’s top rank, through projects involving hammers and nails, wood and concrete. When it was time to begin thinking of his Eagle Scout Service Project, though, Belmont student Max Ruban, 14, had a different idea.
“While I was looking for things to do, I found this Library of Congress thing called the Veterans History Project,” Ruban said. He decided to work with local veterans to capture their stories for the Library of Congress.
Thus began Max’s long process of pitching, revising, and toiling away at his Eagle Scout Service Project. Scouts who hope to attain this ultimate level in Scouting America must complete a rigorous proposal and review process. Ruban needed to get the project approved by his scoutmaster, a committee of adults in the troop, and then submit it to The Spirit of Adventure Council, the Scouting America district organization for Metro Boston.
“When [Max] came and said, ‘This is what I’d like to do ’… I was like, ‘This is fabulous because it is so original,’ ” Ben Amidon, Ruban’s scoutmaster, remembers.
The Eagle Project Proposal requires scouts to have a beneficiary, someone who can explain that the project will have a tangible positive impact. Ruban’s beneficiary is Paul Hurley, membership chairman for Waverly Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 1272. Hurley, 77, welcomed Ruban to the VFW to pitch his project and sign up veterans to volunteer. Many veterans from that meeting were willing and happy to share their experiences, Ruban said.
Ruban also had to navigate the guidelines from the Library of Congress, which included sample questions and forms, as well as a minimum age limit of 15 years old for volunteers conducting interviews. He organized his fellow scouts to sign up to interview the 11 veterans who spoke to them. Ruban ran the behind-the-scenes logistics of the interviews, supplementing the list of questions to ask the veterans, reserving space in the library from the Belmont Historical Society, working the cameras and microphones with help from staff at Belmont Media Center, and coordinating all those working on the project, on camera and off. Ruban’s project management ties directly into a key tenet of an Eagle Scout Service Project: Ensuring that the scout gains experience planning, developing, and leading a project.
Since 2000, “the Veterans History Project has collected, preserved, and made accessible the firsthand narratives of U.S. military veterans.” The database is now home to more than 120,000 oral histories featuring veterans and their family members discussing experiences in conflicts from World War I to the present.
While Ruban’s interviews have been accepted by the Library of Congress, it can take up to 18 months for the Veterans History Project team to publish the interviews. In the meantime, many of Ruban’s veterans are excited that their stories will soon enlighten, instruct, and guide generations to come.
“Nobody can discard it, nobody can trash it,” Hurley said about his interview. “It’s going to be there long after we’re all dust.”
Bob Upton, Belmont’s veterans’ services officer, was encouraged to see a young person so enthusiastic to support veterans. Upton sees a lot of overlap between Scouting America and veterans.
“They also have an oath that they take,” Upton said.
For Ruban, the project also put faces to the term “veteran,” his mother Alexandra Ruban said. He is able to see conflicts he’d only read about in textbooks come alive in the faces of Hurley and Upton, now recognizing them as individuals. That’s what means the most to Hurley.
“We were people first, before we ever decided to put on a uniform,” Hurley said.