CONWAY — Logan Bemis, a sophomore at Conway High School, joined the Tiger Cubs as a 5-year-old and decided after a few years in Scouting to see where it would take him.
It took him to the top. He achieved the Eagle Scout rank in August.
Logan, 15, is a member of Troop 392, sponsored by Peace Lutheran Church in Conway.
He joined Scouting as a student at Julia Lee Moore Elementary School in Conway, and he said he remembers going to an overnight camp-out at Peace Lutheran Church to learn about the troop, “how to cook with fire” and other skills.
“I decided to go ahead and continue with it and see where it took me,” he said of his Scouting journey.
Logan, a son of Toni and Jim Bemis of Conway, has two older brothers, one of whom is also an Eagle Scout. Logan said it was a combination of his brother and friends who inspired him to first join the Scouts.
“Being an Eagle Scout means that I’m able to take the skills throughout the years, and once I walk out of the troop meeting, it doesn’t mean I forget those skills. I take those and share them throughout my community,” Logan said.
His Eagle Scout project was creating activity sensory boards for the Arkansas Pediatric Facility in North Little Rock, a residential facility for children and adults from birth to age 21 who have severe to profound intellectual and developmental delays.
The lap boards, which are detachable, are placed on children’s wheelchair trays to provide activities that help them with touch, sight, hearing and problem-solving.
Logan had to create a budget, raise money, purchase materials and organize and lead a team of Scouts, parents and friends to help complete his project, said Nicole McDaniel of Conway, a member of the Boy Scout Foothills District’s Media/Marketing Committee. Her son, Liam Daugherty, is also a member of Troop 392.
The idea for Logan’s project came from another mother of one of his fellow Scouts. Leigh Walls of Conway, whose son, Luke, is in Logan’s troop, is a speech-language pathologist at the Arkansas Pediatric Facility.
Walls said she told Troop 392 Scoutmaster Chris Scott that the facility could use sensory boards, if any of the Scouts wanted to take on making them as a project.
Logan said the idea piqued his interest.
“I thought that was something that was unusual; nobody had ever done that before,” Logan said.
Logan and his fellow Scouts made four of the sensory boards, using wooden cutting boards because they were easy to clean, he said.
Walls said the boards have items attached to them for the residents to manipulate.
“Some of them make noise; some of them move; some open and shut,” Walls said. “He didn’t do anything that required batteries. One has a lock and a bell. … Another one has a toy attached to it,” she said. “It gives them things to do that also encourage them to use their senses of touch, auditory — things that they hear — and some of it is cause and effect. If I ring a bell, it makes this sound; if I shut this, oh, it’s loud.”
Logan said he visited the North Little Rock facility for the first time when he was planning the sensory boards.
“We got to meet the children we were helping — it was a new experience,” he said. “We used a bunch of different websites that helped us, but the main way we figured out what items we had to put on the boards is, we were looking at certain children’s needs and what they could develop in.”
Logan said he and other Scouts have since visited the Arkansas Pediatric Facility to watch the residents interact with the sensory boards.
“They really did enjoy them, especially all the sounds [the boards] made and how they could interact with all the different things,” he said.
Walls said Logan unexpectedly came in with something else for the residents.
He made sensory bags, too, she said, which are gallon-size plastic freezer bags filled with hair gel and objects — some soft, some hard — inside the gel for the residents to feel. For example, one has plastic fish and blue gel in it, she said. The sensory bags can be used on desk tops or on the floor by residents.
“He went above and beyond what we asked,” Walls said.
Logan said the sensory bags were his mother’s idea, based on something she saw on a website.
“It turned out to be a good idea,” he said.
Toni Bemis is one proud mama.
“I am very proud of him; this is my second Eagle Scout,” she said.
Logan’s older brother Brandon, 18, achieved the Eagle Scout rank a couple of years ago, Toni said. Brandon is a physical-therapy major at the University of Central Arkansas, Toni said. Her third son, Matt, 20, a UCA junior, didn’t have an interest in Scouts, she said.
“Two [sons] had strong friend support and leadership support and went from Tiger Cubs all the way through,” Toni Bemis said.
Walls pointed out that Scouts have until they are 18 to achieve the Eagle Scout rank, and Logan did it early.
“A lot of kids don’t make it this far,” Walls said. “This kid’s just awesome, anyway; he’s very humble.”
To achieve the Eagle Scout rank, Logan had to fulfill requirements of leadership, community service and outdoor skills, as well as complete specific tasks for merit badges.
He has earned 30 merit badges, and he said first aid is his favorite because so many of the other merit badges also rely on knowing first aid.
He’s made a lot of memories as a Scout, too.
“The funniest one was, we go on a Flapjack 20 camp-out in January — I believe it’s the first weekend of the full moon — and you do a night hike, 20 miles. At the end of that, they serve you pancakes,” he said. “Our troop was one of the very last ones to finish, and they had no pancakes left. They found one [pancake], and we all had to divide it. I believe there were six of us.”
Logan said he will wait to have his Eagle Scout ceremony until two of his friends in the troop achieve the rank, adding that they are close to making it.
Logan Dawson and Joseph Winningham, also Conway High School students, just need to complete some paperwork, Logan said, before achieving the Eagle Scout rank.
He helped both of them with their projects: Logan Dawson created a duck habitat at a lake in Bald Knob, and Joseph helped repair bridges at Mount Magazine.
Logan Bemis has achieved his primary goal in Scouting, but he won’t rest on his success.
“I plan to give back to my troop by helping the younger Scouts who are just joining … and help them develop their Scouting,” he said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.