Oswego Teen Nears Eagle Scout Honor By Blanketing Others With Support

OSWEGO, IL — Nathan Martinez will be the first to admit that he has never been much of a builder.

That doesn’t mean he’s not creative and doesn’t envision how things could look, but when it comes to the actual building part of the equation, it’s just not up his alley. But without knowing it, he may have inadvertently become a bit of a community builder — all in the name of a worthy cause that helps others in need.

When the 17-year-old Oswego High School junior from Montgomery needed a service project to complete his Eagle Scout, the highest honor given out by the Boy Scouts of America, he found himself on an interesting journey, trying to find something that would meet the Eagle Scout requirements, but that would also make a difference.

Martinez and a team of volunteers recently made and donated 140 blankets to Project Linus, a national not-for-profit organization that supplies blankets to local hospitals for pediatric patients as well as to local shelters and other agencies.

Martinez came across the organization’s homepage and saw that the group was in desperate need of blankets as another Chicago winter starts to settle in. That’s when he knew he had found the project he was meant to complete.

The total tally of blankets he took on, however, was more than Martinez ever imagined. He originally set out to do 20-40 blankets, but when he got more community support than he expected between the donations of fleece material he collected and volunteers who constructed the blankets for the project, the project grew by leaps and bounds.

“Especially with the holidays coming up, the fact we were able to get so many blankets to (Project Linus) was great,” Martinez told Patch on Sunday. “I’m really hoping Project Linus can get the blankets to people in need in time for the holidays.”

Martinez partnered with friends and fellow scouts from Blackhawk Troop 11, which is based in St. Charles, and set up a blanket-making session at the United Methodist Church of Aurora. He arranged the volunteers into groups — each of which took on an individual part of the blanket-making process. One group cut the material, while another group tied the blankets.

Each blanket required 10 to 20 minutes of cutting and then each blanket required about 40 minutes of tying each part of the blanket. While he started modestly in his goal as to how many blankets he and his team could tackle, the support Martinez received from his fellow Scouts and friends and families inspired him to grow the project as much as possible.

The initiative Martinez showed impressed his father, Joe.

“Being an Eagle (Scout) project, he has to set everything up himself,” Joe Martinez said on Sunday. “He had to get all the groundwork started and recruit the volunteers and I’m just proud of the project he chose. He thought a lot about it.”

Between the people who donated material for the blankets and those who donated their time to help create them, Martinez estimates he had about 100 people chip in to help him reach his goal. The Eagle Scout award, which 181 scouts from Troop 11 have completed in the troop’s history, is designed to teach scouts valuable lessons.

Like with other Eagle Scouts, the honor is meaningful to Martinez as the award is not one that can be purchased but instead only comes through dedication and hard work, Martinez said.

The project emphasized teamwork, time management, leadership, and delegation — all of which Martinez put to good use during the charitable effort. But the biggest lesson was one Martinez didn’t necessarily expect when he started.

“(The community support) taught me that I shouldn’t doubt anybody,” he said. “I had a lot of doubt at first and I doubted that a lot of people would donate which is why the goal (of blankets) was so small, but then as more people started to donate, I started to appreciate my community a lot more and I was grateful that so many people were willing to help me.”

The blanket project was among the final steps Martinez needs to complete his Eagle Scout. The process has involved a lot of work, but the effort has all been worth it as the long-time scout moves closer to the biggest honor in the scouts. Between managing his time between school and other responsibilities, Martinez said he is proud to join the others from Troop 11 that have achieved the honor he is now within weeks of finishing.

Troop 11 Scoutmaster Rick Scalzo said that Martinez took on a leadership role throughout the project and organized the two work days when the 140 blankets got completed. Martinez also partnered with a project leader from Project Linus, who assisted Martinez will the completion of the blankets and made the project attainable.

But it has also provided him lessons like the one he garnered from the blanket project. He said that his awareness of the number of people in need from around the community has grown exponentially throughout the recent charitable effort, which has opened his eyes to important values he will carry throughout his life.

“This has taught me that doing things for other people and doing things as a group and as a community for other people in need is really important,” Martinez told Patch. “It made me feel really good about myself and it was a lot of fun making the blankets for other people and we tried to make as many as possible and make sure we made them as good as they could be.”

He added: “I think people are naturally good at heart and doing things for other people is a great way to bring people together.”