Duty and Honor

Members of Boy Scout Troop 34, based at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, recently completed a community service project that was a great source of civic pride, for the scouts, as well as for the Memphis community.

The project came into being this summer. While attending camp at the Memphis College of Art, I went to Overton Park to do some sketching and noticed that someone had spray-painted graffiti on the World War I memorial, The Doughboy. The base of that beautiful statue had been defaced with antiwar sentiments. It was so sad to see such an iconic memorial devalued and I wanted to do something about it. I called our Scout Master, Dan Eason, and asked if we could take on the clean-up of the statue as a Scout service project. He advised that we should go through the Parks Commission; first for approval and, secondly, for directions on how to safely clean the bronze statue. I contacted Director of Park Services Cynthia Buchanan with our request and she responded quickly, with both approval and directions.

So we "gathered our troops" and a group of Scouts from Troop 34 met at the Memorial Plaza in Overton Park to clean up the statue. We used a pressure washer and a lot of elbow grease to remove the graffiti, and after a morning of hard work, the statue had been restored to its former glory. Our group also picked up litter from the surrounding plaza, in an effort to leave the area in as neat a state as possible.

It was our duty, and an honor, to participate in this special community service project. And while I know that the First Amendment guarantees the "Freedom of Speech," and that everyone is entitled to their opinions, I don’t believe that our founding fathers meant to imply that someone should deface public property with graffiti as a means of expressing their views—especially not when their words are designed to mar a memorial intended as a tribute to those who gave their lives for our country to protect our freedoms. Those soldiers did their duty, and we in turn, had a chance to do ours.

It is our hope that our community service project restored the dignity of those who deserved to be recognized with honor and our respect. 

by Ellis Adams Keplinger