August 7, 2016

Luke Swank's Eagle Project


Luke Swank's Eagle Project
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for August 7, 2016


Last week we all helped Avery complete his boy scout Eagle project so this week it was Luke's turn.


To earn the boy scout rank of Eagle, the scout is expected to lead a large project that will benefit the greater community as a whole.  Luke decided to help out the elementary school robotics team by designing and building 25 trays for them to use to build their robots.  Our neighbor, Jim, was kind enough to help Luke design the tray and participated in the production process.


We had a great turn-out of volunteers to help him build the trays.  19 volunteers came to our house on the first build night and 10 came on the second.


Luke tends to be on the quiet side at school so I was really curious to see how he'd be in a leadership role like this.  I was pleasantly surprised.  He was very engaged in every stage of the project and did a good job at teaching the team and leading them to be productive while they were here to help him.


The trays had some complicated procedures that needed to be done to them so the production output was kind of slow at first.  But as the night progressed, the team started spitting out the completed trays left and right.


Avery helped out his twin brother similar to the way that Luke helped him last week on his eagle project.  I don't think either of them would ever admit they were "led" by the other, but it's nice they can both step in there and help each other when needed.


Grandma Linda came over and helped cook for the volunteers again.  We had tacos in a bag which she hadn't experienced before, but I think she can now be considered a fan.


Luke's eagle mentor has been Troy Brown who is also helping Avery with his project and recruited both boys in the program 10 years ago.  We're very lucky we met him way back when.


Blake Erickson is the boys Troop Leader and acted as a volunteer on each night of both of their projects.  That was so nice of him! The boys now need to do a write-up of their projects and Mr. Erickson will nominate them to the council to earn the rank of eagle.  We're very proud of both of our boys for this accomplishment.


We are so blessed to have so many wonderful friends in the community who helped the boys with their projects.  They're such good people.


On the second night of the project it was extremely hot outside, so we brought the volunteers inside for the finish -up work.  Luckily, most of the heavy assembly work took place on the first build night.


Luke instructed us how to add the handles, clips, and pads to each of the trays and then we pushed them through the assembly line.  The project was finished before we even knew it!


So as a reward to the volunteers, we gave demonstrations of our HTC Vive virtual reality system.  They all seemed pretty impressed with it.  It was a nice way to end Luke's eagle project.

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