Brothers praised by Eagle Scout court of honor

Zach and Jeff Deal, both Eagle Scouts, know the importance of community service as well as the value of having a good time. Although the Deals finally achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in December of last year, they received praise from scout leaders in a court of honor for their accomplishments at the end of last month. "To become an Eagle Scout there's several requirements and one of them is to plan, develop and give leadership to others in a service project helpful to any religious institution, any school or your community," said Zach and Jeff's mother, Jennifer Deal. "So they have to plan and develop and lead it, which doesn't necessarily mean they have to do it themselves." The 15-year-old Deal boys are triplets, along with their sister Caitlyn. They live near the industrial park between Sidney and Gurley and are going into the 10th grade in the Leyton School district. The boys received assistance with their Eagle Scout projects from family, friends, the restof Scout Troop 92 and the Gurley Lyons club which is Troop 92's charter organization. "They support the boys in a lot of their projects," Jennifer said. The boys completed their projects, last summer in anticipation of the Gurley centennial celebration that took place earlier this summer. Each of the Deal boys fixed up a section of the park in Gurley and both undertakings posed different challenges. "Mine was to refurbish the picnic shelter and make it better because the roof was sagging," Jeff said. Jeff Deal and his team put in some new support poles and painted the old ones. They alsoclipped nails that were poking through the roof and repaired broken benches on the picnictable. They put a fresh coat of paint on everything.Zach Deal's plan was a bit more time consuming from start to finish."My project was repairing the play set," Zach said. The set required refinishing and resealing. Zach and his team also replaced the sign and the ladder.

"The deck panels were pretty saggy, they almost were cracking when I was standing on them so it was a good idea to replace those so no one fell through," Zach said. The playground structure was around 15 to 20 years old, Jennifer added. The boys believe both structures are safer now than they were before the repairs. The Gurley Lyons Club paid for the upgrades, while the Deal boys provided all the labor and planning. "It was a lot of work," Jennifer said. "It was a great learning experience. With scouting, it's a great leadership program, but until you have to plan the project from start to finish, you don't really understand every aspect of it and the boys learned a lot." The Deals acquired quite a bit of knowledge while working on the these projects. Some parts of it will be more useful in the future than others. "Kind of like, don't get that sealer on your face," Zach said. "We finished sealing it, a fewhours later our skin felt like it was burning and we thought, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to touch our face." They also admitted to trying to paint each other while working on the picnic shelter. Zach's project took much longer because he had to track down parts for the aging playground and get bids from the lumber yard. "It was a lot of work for him," Jennifer said. "The parts had to be custom-made because of how old the play set was," Zach said. It took a few weekends for work on the play set to be completed once Zach received all the parts. Jeff's project took a little less time. Each project took around three months fromproposal to finish. Both boys have been involved in scouting since elementary school."I think our mom suggested it," Zach said. "She said it would be something fun because all our friends are doing it. We liked camping a lot." They started when they were around seven or eight in the cub scouts."They've gone all the way from tiger cubs to eagle scouts," Jennifer said. The Deals do a lot of community service work with the boy scouts, as well as with their 4-H group."Really one of the purposes of scouts is to help other people," Zach said. "It's in the scoutlaw and it's in the scout oath. It's really one of the main points of scouting." Eagle Scout is the boy scout's highest honor, and not many make it that far.

"It promotes leadership and random acts of kindness," Zach said. "And the thought that, if someone needs help, help them." One of the boys' favorite scouting activities was their yearly tree plant at Fort Robinson State Park. Jeff said his favorite scouting memory was completing the tree plant during a blizzard."We were in a summer tent and we didn't know it was a summer tent," Jeff said. Jeff and Zach shared the tent with some friends as well as a small amount of snow. "Zach's sleeping bag froze shut," Jeff said. "It was funny. Our dad came in and told Zach to get up and he couldn't get out so he picked up the sleeping bag and started shaking it until he fell out." They were snowed in for three days and received a special scout patch for it.For obvious reasons, this was not Zach's favorite scouting memory. "I liked the paper boat races at the canoe derby," Zach said. "I thought that was fun because you just build a boat out of cardboard and it really didn't matter if it floated or if it could get you across the lake or not. Really that was a time that you could see grown boys who were life scouts just act like idiots." The Deals seemed to have fond memories of most of their scouting experiences, no matter how unappealing the task they set out to complete. "The funny thing about their troop is, they turned everything into a social activity," Jennifer said. "Where most kids would be dreading ditch clean up, they were excited to go." The boys' plans for the future are to finish high school and go to college. Both say they think they'll do community service work in the future as well. "I'm very proud of them," Jennifer said. "It's a lot of work."