Zakary Watson

Additional Notes

In this new reality we adopted due to COVID-19 I felt I needed to talk about my journey with Nick and Zak and their Eagle Court of Honor.

Now troop 334 has had a very long history in celebrating the high honor of Eagle Scout. It dates back to the early 1970s. After the lackluster Council celebration of Eagle Scout #8, Jeff Craighead, the Troop Committee felt that we should do something more, and the birth of our Eagle Court of Honor happened. We have expanded it a little and tweaked it here and there but it has remained the same since 1976 when the first one was done. We have shared how we do it with many other troops in the region and they have adopted what we do.

So, in the fall of 2019, Nick and Zak made Eagle Scout, becoming the Troop’s 74th and 75th Eagle Scouts.

As we entered the New Year, I reached out to the families and the scouts to pick a date; something happened that rarely happens: we agreed to a date on the first try. April 18th, 2020, was good for all parties involved so we put things in motion.

Then, as we all know, starting on March 13th everything was shut down so we knew we had to cancel April 18th. We talked about it and thought of pushing it farther back in the spring, but we decided to be safe and push it back to the fall, hoping we might be coming out of lockdown by then.

So, we picked Sept 26th as the new date, and we got back to planning for this special night, and once again COVID-19 thwarted us. We realized we could not do it and again pulled the plug.

At this time, I reached out to the Eagle Scouts themselves and told them it is up to them, but if they preferred, we could do a virtual Eagle Court of Honor (Eagle Scouts adapt and overcome difficulties, after all). After thinking it over, they decided that it would be best for us to put it on hold till it was safe to try a "live" Eagle Court of Honor again; they realized that they did not want to do an Eagle Court of Honor just to have an Eagle Court of Honor, they wanted the Eagle Court of Honor of Troop 334!

So, once we saw a light at the end of the tunnel with COVID-19 restrictions, we talked about a date again, and surprisingly we got it again on the first try. The Court of Honor was finally held on September 18th, 2021. So as the saying goes the the 3rd time was the charm.

I want to congratulate Nick's and Zak’s patience and persistence to continue this time-honored tradition.

-- Dave Craighead, Scoutmaster, Troop 334