Monument to a century of Scouting
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Blake Sham, 9, and his sister, Courtney, 7, of Cranberry dug in after the ground-breaking ceremony for a Scouting monument at Cranberry's Graham Park July 7.
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It won't be completed before next summer, but fundraising activities are under way and the township crew has already started work on the fishing pond that will be part of a monument in Cranberry's Graham Park to celebrate a century of Scouting -- for boys and girls.
About 100 people -- most of them pint-sized and sporting the colors and uniforms of Scouting -- put a youthful face on the ground-breaking ceremony for the monument that took place July 7. It will honor the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America.
The site will include a plaza, the monument and a pond.
Known as the Centennial Scouting Plaza & Lake, the project is to be funded through a partnership of local civic organizations, led by the Cranberry Township Community Chest, with help from the township. Township officials believe the monument will be the only one in the country celebrating the centennial anniversaries of Scouting.
The tri-paneled monument will be blended with an open-air flagstone plaza at the edge of a fully-stocked fishing pond just beyond the Graham Park baseball campus. The feature will be handicapped-accessible. The triptych's first panel will depict a mother holding her young daughter's hand and a father carrying his young son; the second will show the boy and the girl as Scouts, saluting the American flag; the third panel will show the Scouts in graduation caps and gowns.
The Boy Scouts of America marked its 100th anniversary in 2010, while the Girl Scouts of America will celebrate 100 years in 2012.
Cranberry has 431 girls involved in Scouting, according to Amy L. Smith, manager of resource and troop pathways at the Wexford office of Girl Scouts of Western Pennsylvania.
In Cranberry and the southern tier of Butler County, there are 669 boys in Scouting and 2,100 throughout Butler County, according to Russ Cawthorne, the Butler County district executive of the Moraine Trails Council.
Community Chest president Bruce Mazzoni estimated the project will cost between $40,000 and $70,000 with Cranberry donating the land and manpower and a local engineering firm, Herbert Rowland & Grubic Inc., volunteering services for design and engineering.
First Published July 21, 2011 5:31 am
