Blazing a trail through Ashburnham
Eagle Scout brothers clean up around Briggs Elementary
By Lindsay Sauvageau JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

Tony Faler

Tony and Matt Faler might look like your average teens: eating, sleeping, skiing and playing video games in their free time, but these brothers are truly Eagles at heart.

Tony, 19, and Matt, 18, have been Boy Scouts since they were young. Climbing the scout ranks, the boys learned life skills, survival techniques and, above all, the importance of community service and enjoying life.

Matt, an Oakmont senior hoping to go to Mount Wachusett Community College to study nursing is a Boy Scout lifeguard, a certified scuba diver and a member of the Wachusett Mt. Ski Patrol. He is a Spartan Scholar, a member of the robotics team at Oakmont and, of course, an Eagle Scout.

"Matt helps me at home with his younger brothers enabling me to go to work and school," said Martha, Matt and Tony's mother. "During the summer he devotes his time to Camp Wanocksett, the Boy Scout Camp in Jaffrey. Matt is truly awesome."

Tony, an architecture major at Fitchburg State College, spends his summers and free time throughout the year at the Boy Scout Camp teaching young boys the skills of climbing. He too is a certified scuba diver and was once a member of the Oakmont robotics team. He is a member of the leadership program at FSC as well as a dean's list student.

Matt Faler

"To become an Eagle Scout you must first join the Boy Scouts," jokes Tony, while explaining the scout ranks. "You have to learn stuff and memorize what it means to be a Boy Scout. Then there's Tenderfoot where you learn skills and stuff like how to make certain kinds of knots. Then Second Class and First Class which are simply learning more skills in every area you can think of from knots to first aid, everything under the sun."

"Then there's the Star and Life ranks," cut in Matt. "Scouts must fulfill certain community service hours and earn merit badges."

"And to become an Eagle Scout, there are 24 required badges you have to get, for swimming and life guarding and first aid. And you have to get all the required badges and do a service project with so many hours and you have to do it all before you're 18," finished Tony.

As part of an Eagle Scout project the brothers had to demonstrate leadership of others while performing a project for the benefit to their community. This is the culmination of the Eagle Scout candidate's leadership training, and requires a significant effort. The project must benefit an organization other than the Boy Scouts.

For their Eagle Scout projects, the boys separately helped clear and fix up walking trails behind John R. Briggs Elementary School. Taking the trail to the left, Matt cleared away brush from the site, fixed up benches and cleared the area around a vernal pool for the students to hike the trail and study the pool. Matt spent nearly three or four hours a day (a total of 140 hours) with help from other scouts on the project.

Taking the trail to the right, Tony also racked up the man-hours clearing a trail, though it was not the path of least resistance.

"I had to redo the whole trail," he said. "It was there but you couldn't even find it."

Tony and his crew not only remade the trail but refurbished and recreated from the remnants of an old amphitheater, a beautiful outdoor oasis.

"The place was trashed and the benches we all damaged. There were still posts in ground from before which weren't in bad shape so we used the same poles and refaced the benches,"

said Tony.

The boys' younger brothers, Zach and Michael, both Briggs students say they use the areas cleaned out by their brothers at least once a day.

"We use it all the time. We do a lot of project out there," said Zachary, the fourth grader. "We've done programs around the vernal pools."

Matt and Tony's mother says she's proud of her sons and the work they have done to help the community.

"It's nice that the kids are learning about the stuff that's right in their backyards and helping out," she said.