3 Morrilton Scouts earn Eagle rank

Morrilton High School seniors Aidan Caig, from left, Will Cody and Ethan DuVall have been in Scouting together since elementary school, and they all earned the Eagle Scout rank earlier this month at a Court of Honor ceremony. “It was pretty special,” Cody said. They also balance Scouting with their academics and several school organizations, including band.
Morrilton High School seniors Aidan Caig, from left, Will Cody and Ethan DuVall have been in Scouting together since elementary school, and they all earned the Eagle Scout rank earlier this month at a Court of Honor ceremony. “It was pretty special,” Cody said. They also balance Scouting with their academics and several school organizations, including band.

MORRILTON — Morrilton High School seniors Ethan DuVall, Will Cody and Aidan Caig of Morrilton have hiked hundreds of miles and pitched countless tents together since they were Cub Scouts.

Now the 18-year-olds have earned the Eagle Scout rank together.

“It was something we felt like we could do and needed to do,” DuVall said.

Not to mention that all three young men said they know the rarity

of attaining the rank looks good on a college application. Only about 5 percent of Scouts achieve that rank, according to the National Eagle Scout Association.

The three Scouts are members of Troop 93, led by Sandra Freeman.

An Eagle Scout Court of Honor was held for the Scouts on April 2, which DuVall called exciting.

“I think we all were ready to have that conclusion,” he said.

DuVall joined the Boy Scouts about a year later than his friends, who started in first grade as Tiger Cubs. DuVall is the son of David and Beth DuVall, and Ethan’s father was an assistant scoutmaster and joined his son on campouts.

“I can’t even name all the day trips and hikes we’ve gone on,” Ethan DuVall said. “We attended the Gus Blass Boy Scout Reservation Summer Camp (in Damascus, Arkansas) three of four years; that was always fun.”

Cody said his stepfather, Jeremy London, introduced him to Scouting.

“I thought it was pretty interesting, so I went to one of their meetings and stuck with it,” Cody said.

Each of the boys named hiking 70-plus miles at Philmont

Scout Scamp camp in New Mexico as his favorite Scouting memory.

“Definitely Philmont,” DuVall said. “We hiked about 70 miles over 10 days one summer two years ago.”

Although that may not sound like fun to some people, the young men loved it.

“I think it was to learn some things just about ourselves — we had to carry about 50-pound backpacks and had to carry our own food — and learn leadership. We had a designated area to get to, point A to point B,” Cody said.

The hike was memorable for another reason, too.

“Actually, Will and I, we took our own trail, and he saw a mountain lion. It was over there looking at us, and we turned around and sprinted the other direction,” DuVall said.

Cody agreed that Philmont “was a pretty big adventure in our Scouting journey.”

And he recalled an encounter with a mountain lion, too. It was nighttime when he saw “a pair of eyes.”

“Ethan and I were walking back to camp on our last night that we were out in the back country,” Cody said. He saw a set of eyes glowing in the dark, “not close, but not far — I knew it was a mountain lion. It was pretty scary.”

Caig missed out on the mountain lion, but he enjoyed the trip, too.

“It was just the bonding experience, mainly. It drew me closer to those two and the rest of our troop that went with us, and just to be able to say I went out and did something like that,” Caig said. He said if anyone had told him a couple of years ago that he could have made a 70-mile hike, he wouldn’t have believed it.

Another of Caig’s favorite memories is a campout.

“We went on a campout; it was going to be what they call a Polar Bear campout because it was supposed to be below zero. The next morning when we woke up, it started snowing. We started our fire to cook our breakfast, and it started to snow,” Caig said.

Cody said he also enjoyed climbing Mount Baldy at Philmont; it’s either the highest or second highest on the Philmont Scout Ranch.

“I think it’s about 12,000 feet,” he said. “That was a pretty cool experience — we climbed about 3,000 feet up to it; it was really steep all the way. It was challenging, but it was rewarding once we got to the top.”

Getting to the pinnacle of Scouting wasn’t an easy climb.

“I think we kind of kept each other in it at times. We will admit at some points, we all thought about quitting, but we kept pushing and helping each other through, encouraging, ‘Don’t quit now — you’re so close,’” Caig said.

Despite all the other activities that could have distracted them — all three are in band and other school organizations — they stayed with Scouts.

“I guess just inspiration and motivation from my leaders [kept me in],” Cody said. “We had a scoutmaster when I was a little younger, when I had first gotten into the troop, and he kept us all motivated — planned things to do together and campouts and stuff.”

Cody is referring to state Rep. Rick Beck, R-Center Ridge.

Beck said he and others called the trio “the three musketeers.”

“These three guys have stayed friends through the whole thing. I’ve never seen that before, and I’ve been a scoutmaster for 12 years. They stayed together through thick and thin,” he said. “They are very supportive of each other, and they’re very smart, every one of them.”

And well-behaved.

“Boy Scouts aren’t always Boy Scouts, right?” Beck said, laughing. “But those three boys were never, ever a problem.”

Beck said their Eagle Scout achievement didn’t surprise him.

“They’re a good group of boys, and they’ll do fine in life,” he said.

The three young men said they realized as their Scouting career continued that the Eagle Scout rank was attainable.

“I think it’s mainly I saw it in sight, so I had to do it,” Caig said.

“I think once I realized how few Scouts actually reach it, I thought to myself, I might as well go for it and have what it takes to get it,” Cody said.

They had to earn at least 21 badges, and the three young men helped each other with their required Eagle Scout service projects.

DuVall built 70 wooden crosses as place markers for veterans at the Petit Jean Mountain Cemetery, operated by a small Lutheran church, he said.

“We had a spread sheet of the cemetery that we could identify where the veterans were in the cemetery,” he said. “We bought the wood; we had kind of an assembly-line process that me and the other Scouts went through. We had two table saws cutting the pieces and had a jig made … to place them in.

DuVall said he coated the crosses in polyurethane so they would look better and last longer.

“The head of the board actually sent me a letter saying they really appreciated it and loved the way [the crosses] looked,” he said.

Cody planned, designed and helped construct a ticket booth for the Morrilton Parks and Recreation Department at the baseball and softball complex.

“They didn’t have one at first, but … they’d started redoing the fields and getting better stuff there, so I figured why not add in a ticket booth to make it look a little more professional?” He said former Morrilton Parks and Recreation Director Larry Tarrant “thought it was a good idea, so I went ahead and did it.”

Caig built sound boards for the Morrilton Junior High School band room, which was on the department’s wish list.

“I thought it would help me learn, and I love to build things. I thought it would be fun,” he said. Caig drew the designs.

They were about 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide.

“You put them on the walls, and it keeps the sound from bouncing around and echoing, so they can have a better experience in band.” The school funded the project.

Caig said Scouting has been a positive influence in his life.

“I think it’s made me a better person in general. I’ve learned a lot of survival tips; I think it’s helped me with leadership skills. It’s made me a more outgoing person because I used to be really shy,” he said. He said Scouting is where he met Cody and DuVall, “and we’ve been best friends ever since.”

DuVall said he’s learned a wide range of skills through Scouting.

“I’ve learned leadership skills,” he said. “I’ve learned numerous outdoor skills, like cooking and [pitching] tents, conservation and stuff like that — Indian heritage — that’s a big thing I really appreciated and liked.”

And he said he’s enjoyed his friendship with the other Scouts.

The three Eagle Scouts expect their bond to continue after high school. DuVall plans to attend Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, where he will be on the band’s drum line.

“I think I’m going to go for creative media production with an emphasis on audio-video production,” he said.

Cody and Caig will go to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

Caig said he plans to major in mechanical engineering, and Cody wants to major in environmental soil and water science.

“I want to try to help conserve the soil and water and test water quality and help out the environment,” he said. “I think Scouts helped me have that interest because after Philmont, I really developed a passion for the outdoors and the environment and helping keep it clean.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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