The road to becoming an Eagle Scout requires long hours of selfless service to the community. Since the creation of the rank in 1911, only 4 percent of Boy Scouts have been awarded the badge. For Austin Erich, of Ridgway, Pennsylvania, the service project that led him to scout success was one that honored the forgotten veterans of the Civil War in his local area.
The project to restore graves for American’s Civil War soldiers began in 2017, when the Memorial Day tradition of the boy scouts took Austin and his father, Chris Erich, to a local cemetery. As they laid American flags on all the graves in honor of the soldiers’ service, Austin noticed the poor condition of many of the older ones. “I looked at my dad and said, ‘We can’t read these names,’” Austin recalled to the Courier Express.
