Seven Canfield Boy Scouts earn prestigious Eagle honors

CANFIELD — They tied him up with lifejackets and rolled him down a hill.

No big thing — it was actually pretty fun, said Mark Hahn, one of seven Eagle Scouts from Boy Scout Troop 115 in Canfield who graduated high school this year.

His fellow Eagle Aaron Kwolek had one second-guess, though.

Maybe the bucket on Mark’s head was a bit much.

But if Mark and his friends were able to endure five-foot swells in Ontario’s Georgian Bay, in a storm, in canoes, with yachts going by, then maybe the bucket wasn’t such a big deal either.

They’ve been through a lot together, these friends, including that weeklong camping and canoeing trip on the French River, where the bay was the halfway point, in the summer of 2004. They’ve taken a few trips to the historic battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., and spent the night once on the USS Little Rock in Buffalo, N.Y., a World War II guided missile cruiser that is now a museum.

“We went whitewater rafting on the New River,” said Eagle Matt McKinney.

“We’d have three more Eagles if we hadn’t gone on whitewater rafting trips,” Aaron said.

Seven Eagles is plenty from one troop though, when so few Scouts achieve the rank — the organization’s highest. Only about 5 percent who set out to get there do so. Famous Eagles include Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States; film director Steven Spielberg; TV journalist Walter Cronkite; and William C. DeVries, M.D., who transplanted the first artificial heart.

Like their famous counterparts, Canfield’s newest Eagles are going places.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com