JOHN COFFELTEditor

Coffee County Central High School Senior Aidan Hetrick recently saw a need at his school and decided to get to work, refurbishing the school’s aging outdoor classroom for his Eagle Scout service project.

Hetrick said he began tagging along to Boy Scot campouts with his older brother Drew during his preschool days. Now, in order to obtain the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouts of America, he had to plan and execute a service project that, as the Eagle Scout Association manual puts it, would “demonstrate leadership of others while performing a project for the benefit of their community.”

The Eagle Scout service project is considered the culmination of the Scout’s leadership training, requiring significant effort on their part.

Hetrick said he noticed the outdoor classroom built during the COVID-19 pandemic getting rundown and weedy. He began securing donations from area businesses and enlisted seven volunteers, and along with his dad, went to work.

“With the help of my volunteers we went in, moved all the mulch to one side…took up all the old landscape fabric that was there and put new down,” Hetrick said.

The Home Depot and Scotts Mulch Company donated the material for the project.

Hetrick built a boarder to contain the mulch and then went to work building a teachers’ table, a stand for the white board and a collection of new benches made from pressure-treated YellaWood.

“I wanted to do something that would be somewhat personal to me… to give back,” he said.

Hetrick said Eagle Scout projects put a big emphasis on leading groups of people.

“You have to give everyone directions, keep everyone on task and make sure everyone is hydrated,” he said.

Hetrick called his mother, Kim, the driving force to continue when he was asking for donations and was turned down.

“She would tell me to keep on going,” Hetrick said. “If no one gives back, there’s not going to be any growth in the community.”

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.