As the time came for local Boy Scout Jacob Cantrell to seek out ideas for his final Eagle Scout project, the 17-year-old said he had one goal in mind.
“I wanted to leave a lasting impact and have something that I could really be proud of,” Cantrell said during a recent interview inside the welcome center of Lynchburg’s historic Sandusky House, the 214-year-old home that was taken over and used as the Union headquarters in the Battle of Lynchburg during the Civil War.
A junior at Brookville High School and the Central Virginia Governor’s School, Cantrell is a fourth-generation Scout, along with his father, both grandfathers and a great-grandfather. His brother, Josiah, will begin an Eagle Scout project soon.
Cantrell graduated to Eagle Scout status in July 2021 after earning 28 merit badges with Troop 50. The troop dissolved shortly after Cantrell completed his project, he said, and is now a member of Troop 10, which meets at Heritage United Methodist Church.
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His journey to Eagle Scout lasted about four years, after his father, Phillip, convinced him to join the Boy Scouts in 2017. He even remembered his first night in Scouts, which just so happened to be the group’s popcorn night.
“It wasn’t like where you learned to tie knots or something you’d associate with scouting; they were wanting you to go out and sell popcorn,” Cantrell said with a laugh.
But after playing games and getting to know members of the troop, Cantrell told his father that he really thought it was for him.
The elder Cantrell said his son’s journey through Scouts has been one where “he’s always identified a task, researched on his own what needed to be done, and then self-motivated himself to do it. Those are habits of the mind that will last a lifetime, and take him very far.”
Jacob admittedly didn’t know much about the Sandusky House before he started on his project, and after trying to get a few other ideas off the ground before his final one, Cantrell said it was one of his scout leaders who put him in touch with Greg Starbuck, the executive director of the museum, to schedule a tour and to see some of the things that needed to be done on the property.
After doing some work clearing brush on the property, Cantrell said, Starbuck showed him and his fellow Scouts “these old benches, that were Civil War-era benches that he had been meaning to find someone to reconstruct them.”
The benches, which once sat on the porch of the Sandusky House, had been out of commission for a majority of the time that the University of Lynchburg owned the house, Starbuck said. They were weathered and decaying with chipped paint, a visual testament to the age of the benches.
The executive director kept one of the originals as a model for Cantrell but had to discard the other one because it fell apart.
Starbuck, a former Eagle Scout himself, said he waited years for the right person to come along to reconstruct the benches for the front porch.
“We went for 15 years without any benches,” Starbuck said. “When we bought the house in 2001, there were the two benches up on the porch. We really wanted to get those recreated. You go to any park and you see benches everywhere. But these are benches that are both part of the historical presentation but also serve the function of benches.”
Despite very minimal woodworking experience, Cantrell said he “jumped at the idea” of fixing the benches, not only giving him an Eagle Scout project that will provide him with the opportunity to create a “lasting impact” but also allowing him to spend time with his grandfather, a former Scout, to learn more about woodworking.
While the whole project took about a year to complete, Cantrell said, the process of crafting the benches with his grandfather only took about a month. Made out of Spanish cedar, the benches were built for the long haul.
“Spanish cedar is a wood that’s used in preservation a lot,” Starbuck said. “It doesn’t rot like the old benches. Those benches will probably be here through his lifetime ... they’re going to last and last.”
The new green benches, which feature plaques with Cantrell’s name on them, now proudly flank the front porch at the Sandusky House, making that part of the experience on the property “whole,” the museum’s director said.
“It completes a missing part of our restoration of the house,” said Starbuck.
“It really teaches these young Scouts how to plan, prepare and execute a project. That’s great training. It really gives you a head start on real life and the Eagle rank will be something ... I know with experience, will be something he’ll carry for the rest of his life,” Starbuck said about the “pretty laborious process” of becoming an Eagle Scout.
Although his Eagle Scout project is now complete, Cantrell has no plans to take time off.
He said his next task will be helping his brother complete his Eagle Scout project, which he hopes to finish soon. Additionally, Cantrell said, he plans to continue Scouting throughout college, where he plans to study microbiology.
“I want to continue to raise awareness for this program so people can have the same experience I did,” Cantrell said.
As for what he thinks the benches will stand for in the many years they sit on the property, Cantrell said, “It will stand as a reminder of preservation. There’s a lot of history in Virginia and Lynchburg, and I think a lot of times history gets lost without people realizing it.”
He added, “It’s really a very simple homage to being able to ... keep this area in the condition it was 200 years ago. And I hope people will look at them and sort of know that even when our democracy is tested and even when our country is tested, we’ve persevered before because those benches represent that. And we can do it again.”