Plummer earns Eagle Scout; Honor Court held in May

Noreen Hyslop photo Eighteen-year-old Mark Plummer was presented with his Eagle Scout at a special ceremony recently held in his honor. The 2008 local grad significantly improved the grounds at Southwest School, providing for a more attractive setting and also designing and installing a new drainage system in an area on the school's playground.

Plummer's first order of business was to improve an area around a piece of playground equipment located on the first grade playground.

"The pea gravel under a piece of equipment," Plummer explains, "had been moving down the slope on which it rests, and so there was no longer a six inch base of gravel, as the Consumer Product Safety Commission mandates."

School maintenance personnel periodically moves or adds gravel to the site to keep in compliance. The long-time Scout, after meeting with Principal Sherry Matthews and discussing the options of the project with his unit leader, Bob Martin, elected to level out the ground around the piece of equipment and install not only flexible drainage pipes at the site, but also a retaining wall that now keeps the gravel in place.

The ambitious Plummer also saw a need to replant and landscape a planter area on the school grounds near the northwest entrance to the building.

Finally, Plummer, soliciting the aid of fellow Scouts in Troop 200, constructed and installed a wooden bench to be utilized by students and guests.

Efforts that went into the Eagle Scout project at the elementary building were anything but elementary in design. Plummer utilized an excavator, a transit, lots of manpower and a good degree of ingenuity in carrying out his initial plan.

"We began the project in early October," he recounts, "and it was completed in late November."

As all Scouts who are pursuing their Eagle are encouraged to do, Plummer enlisted the help of his junior counterparts for much of the legwork during the project.

"It's how the younger boys learn," says Mark's father, Bruce, who along with his wife, Kay, has played an instrumental role in the lives of hundreds of boys and girls involved in the Scouting arena over the years.

For the garden improvement project at the school, the boys, under Mark's direction, removed old gravel, shrubs, groundcover and a withered cedar tree from the area before laying a new block barrier for the garden and placing several new plants in place.

"Mark's work not only significantly improved the appearance of our school grounds," Principal Matthews confirms, "but it corrected a continuing drainage problem in the area of the playground equipment. Mark did an excellent job in all areas and we were just so pleased that he chose Southwest as his project."

Every aspect of an Eagle Scout project is meticulously documented and that documentation is brought before a panel before the candidate is approved as an Eagle Scout. Each phase of the project is recorded in a notebook, with every expense noted and each minute of planning and physical labor recorded.

"It's a lot of work," says Kay Plummer. "But, this is something that Mark has worked toward since he was a Tiger Cub at six years old and we're both very proud of his efforts and the diligence he has shown in completing his project."

Mark was granted his Eagle Scout rank at a recent Court of Honor held at Wesley Hall at Dexter's United Methodist Church.

Mark will enter Missouri University of Science and Technology at Rolla in the fall to pursue a degree in geological engineering.