On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong walked into the pages of history by stepping onto the moon’s surface. And then he did something almost as remarkable: He retired to become a college professor and private citizen, declining offers to cash in on his celebrity. As one Ohio neighbor told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 2009, “He just wanted to be a citizen in the community and take his place.”

Armstrong grew up in rural Ohio, moving 16 times for his father’s job. In 1947, he enrolled in Purdue University’s aerospace engineering program but soon joined the U.S. Navy. A naval aviator at age 19, Armstrong flew 78 missions over Korea. After his service, he completed his degree at Purdue and then became a civilian test pilot with NASA, logging 900 hours in a variety of aircraft. He earned his Eagle Scout in Troop 14 in Wapakoneta, Ohio in 1947.

In 1962, Armstrong joined NASA’s astronaut corps. He served as the pilot on the Gemini 8 mission and then became commander of the historic Apollo 11 mission.

Armstrong received countless honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. His description of himself was more modest: “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer.”

Photo source picryl.com

Some athletes approach sports with deadly seriousness, but not Willie Banks. One of America’s greatest triple jumpers, Banks fired up spectators before competitions and mingled with them afterwards. During some jumps, the flamboyant athlete’s sheer joy erupted into laughter.

Some of that joy stemmed from Banks’ triple-jump success. He set his first American record in 1981 at 56 feet, 7¾ inches and went on to beat that record six times, improving by more than 2 feet. In 1985, he set a world record of 58 feet, 11½ inches.

During his career, Banks represented the United States in 18 international competitions, including world championships in 1983 and 1987 and the Olympics in 1984 and 1988. He won a silver medal in 1983 and was named the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Athlete of the Year in 1985. He joined the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1999.

“I have been fortunate enough to receive many awards and accolades,” Banks says. “In retrospect, I believe none of my achievements could have been accomplished without the lessons of desire, determination, and dedication learned from Scouting. My struggle to become an Eagle Scout provided me the necessary resources to be a success in sports, academics, and business.”

Photo source picryl.com

Beard merged his organization into the Boy Scouts of America when it was founded in 1910. Beard became one of the first National Scout commissioners of the Boy Scouts and served it for 30 years. He later became the editor of Boys' Life magazine, the BSA official magazine, and wrote a monthly column for youth. The work of both Beard and Ernest Thompson Seton are in large part the basis of the Traditional Scouting movement.

Beard also helped his sister organize the Camp Fire Girls. Beard was a Freemason, initiated in the Mariners Lodge No. 67 (New York City). An award for Masonic Scouters has been named in his honor.

Beard founded Boy Scout Troop 1 in Flushing, New York, which is believed to be one of the oldest continuously chartered Boy Scout Troops in the United States. He became an Eagle Scout at the age of 64 on February 15, 1915.

Prior to the establishment of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, Dan Beard was recipient of the only "gold Eagle badge" awarded at the Second National Training Conference of Scout Executives held in 1922 in Blue Ridge, North Carolina.

Dan Beard was also involved with the Culver Academies' summer camp program for many years, which used his "Sons of Daniel Boone" program. This program still exists as the Academy's Culver Woodcraft Camp.

Beard died on June 11, 1941, ten days before his 91st birthday, at his home Brooklands in Suffern, New York. He was buried near his home at the Brick Church Cemetery in Spring Valley, New York. The National Program Director of the Boy Scouts of America, E. Urner Goodman, was selected to be in charge of the beloved youth leader's funeral in Suffern. An estimated 2,000 people lined the funeral route to the cemetery in Monsey, New York, where 127 Boy Scouts formed an honor guard and assisted with traffic control.

The BSA offers the James E. West Fellowship Award; an advanced level is the 1910 Society which in turn includes levels of contributions—the Daniel Carter Beard is recognized for a gift of at least $100,000.

Photo source Wikimedia

As a child, Stephen Bechtel Jr. took frequent trips to the Hoover Dam, a massive structure that his family’s business—the Bechtel Corporation—was building in the Nevada desert. As an adult, he became president of the company, growing it into one of this country’s leading engineering and construction firms. When he retired as CEO in 1990, the company had 32,500 employees working on 1,700 projects in 77 countries.

Among his many accomplishments, Bechtel built the Channel Tunnel, the largest U.S. nuclear power plant, and a 360-square-mile industrial city in Saudi Arabia. In Scouting circles, however, he is known for another project, The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in West Virginia, which serves as a high adventure base and the permanent site of the national Scout jamboree. In 2009, Bechtel’s family foundation donated $50 million to help purchase the 10,600-acre property.

Bechtel’s civic involvement has ranged far beyond Scouting. He served on presidential committees and national commissions for three presidents—Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford—and he led the National Academy of Engineering as its first chairman from 1982 to 1986. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush awarded him the National Medal of Technology, America’s highest honor for technical achievement.

He became an Eagle Scout in 1940 as a member of Troop 4 in the Piedmont Council and served as a camp staff member at Camp Wallace Alexander.

Photo source Summit Betchel Reserve

As a paleoanthropologist, Dr. Lee Berger has made groundbreaking discoveries in South Africa, where he has lived since 1989. In 1991, he and his team discovered early hominid remains at a site called Gladysvale, the first such discovery in southern Africa since 1948.

Berger received the first National Geographic Society Prize for Research and Exploration in 1997 and the first Friedel Sellschop Award for Young Researchers two years later. He frequently appears on the National Geographic Channel, and his research has twice been cited by Discover magazine for being among the top 100 science stories of the year. His discovery of Homo naledi landed him on the cover of National Geographic in 2015.

Berger grew up in Georgia, where he became an Eagle Scout in 1983. He graduated from Georgia Southern University and attended Harvard University before moving to South Africa to pursue doctoral studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He has been active with numerous organizations, including the Paleoanthropological Scientific Trust, the Jane Goodall Trust South Africa, and the Royal Society of South Africa.

In addition to receiving the Eagle Scout Award, Berger has received the BSA’s Honor Medal for saving a life while working as a news photographer in Savannah, Georgia, in 1987, he tossed aside his camera and jumped into a river to save a drowning woman.

Photo source Wikipedia

Guion Stewart Bluford Jr. was born on November 22, 1942, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The son of a mechanical engineer and a special education teacher, Bluford grew up in a household where academic success was encouraged. He enrolled at Pennsylvania State University as a member of the U.S. Air Force ROTC program and graduated in 1964 with a degree in aerospace engineering.

Following his pilot training at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, Bluford flew 144 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He won several medals for his service, including the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

After the war, Bluford enrolled at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he received both a master's degree and a PhD in aerospace engineering. During this time, he also became a staff development engineer and branch chief of the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Of some 10,000 applicants to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space program, Bluford was one of 35 chosen to join the new space shuttle team in January 1978. He officially became a NASA astronaut in August 1979.

Bluford made history on August 30, 1983, when he became the first African American to experience space travel. Bluford was a specialist for mission STS-8 aboard the space shuttle Challenger, which took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its first night launch. Over the course of 98 Earth orbits in 145 hours, Bluford and the crew operated a Canadian-built robot arm and conducted several biophysiological experiments. The mission ended on September 5, 1983, when the spacecraft touched down at Edwards Air Force Base in California in a night landing, another first for Challenger.

Photo source Wikipedia

Stephen Breyer was named to the United States Supreme Court President Bill Clinton. Breyer is more interested in serving the people than any political party. As he wrote in his book Active Liberty, the U.S. Constitution outlines a form of government that lets citizens “make up their own minds about how they want to live together in their communities.”

Breyer made up his own mind about community in San Francisco’s Troop 14. As a Scout, simple acts like cleaning up campsites or doing service projects became life lessons for Breyer and his brother Charles, himself an Eagle Scout and a federal judge.

After earning degrees from Stanford and Oxford universities, Breyer entered Harvard Law School, where he edited the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He later taught at Harvard for many years.

Breyer’s government service began in 1964, when he clerked for Associate Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg. After stints at the Justice Department and as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Breyer was named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in 1980. He served as chief judge of that court from 1990 until his elevation to the Supreme Court in 1994.

Photo source Oyez

James Joseph Carey (born 9 April 1939) is a retired American Rear Admiral, United States Navy, born and raised in Berlin, Green Lake County, Wisconsin.

Carey attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he majored in Marketing and Business Administration. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and later went on to study for an M.B.A. at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, regularly ranked as the top MBA Business Program in the United States.

Carey served aboard USS Topeka in the South China Sea and Vietnam. He finished his active-duty obligation in 1966. He began a successful career working with the Saudi Arabia Navy Expansion Program and the Saudi Petrochemical Industry.

President Ronald Reagan in 1981 nominated Carey as a Commissioner of the U. S. Federal Maritime Commission. He was elected Vice Chairman of the Commission in 1983, reappointed by President Reagan in 1985, and then appointed Chairman of the Commission in 1989 by President George H. W. Bush, where he served until 1991.

He is national public policy leader and International Grand Master of The Knights Templar International, recognized in "special consultative status" by the United Nations, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission, and Eagle Scout.

In 2007, he endowed the Admiral James J. Carey Foundation for the support of "carefully chosen organizations, institutions, and associations that share the Admiral’s views on service to our nation and 'giving back' to society ..." He was the chairman of the Future Leaders for America Foundation, National Co-Chairman of the 1700+ Member Organization for military admirals and generals, founder and chairman of the National Defense Committee, and Chairman of the Good Samaritans of the Knights Templar Foundation.

He has been recognized as an Outstanding Eagle Scout.

Photo source Wikipedia

Lieutenant Colonel Aquilla James "Jimmie" Dyess (January 11, 1909 – February 2, 1944) was a United States Marine Corps officer who was posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life" at the head of his troops during World War II, in the Battle of Kwajalein, on Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands on February 2, 1944.

Aquilla James Dyess was born on January 11, 1909, in Andersonville, Georgia. As a youth, he attained the rank of Eagle Scout, highest in the Boy Scouts.

Dyess graduated from Clemson College, Clemson, South Carolina, in 1932 with a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture. At Clemson, he served as a cadet major in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and was appointed a second lieutenant in the Army Infantry Reserve in 1931.

In civilian life, he was a general contractor. He also served as assistant director of a summer camp for boys.

Dyess was appointed a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps Reserve in November 1936 and was assigned to 19th Battalion, a reserve unit in Augusta Georgia. In 1937, 1st Lt. Dyess was awarded the bronze star as a shooting member of the Marine Corps Rifle Team, which won the Hilton trophy in the National matches, and was given the same award in 1938 as an alternate member of the team that captured the Rattlesnake trophy in the matches. On February 1, 1944, the day preceding Dyess's death, six U.S. Marine snipers were on patrol on Namur Island where Japanese forces had taken up protected positions following the Battle of Kwajalein. The Marine patrol had inadvertently moved behind enemy lines, surrounded on three sides by Japanese forces, where they came under small arms fire from a concealed position. One of the Marines was killed instantly, and four of the remaining five Marines sustained injuries from the attack. One of the injured Marines, Cpl. Frank Pokrop, later recalled, “with no protection and heavy fire coming at us from a few feet away and dusk approaching, we were certain to be killed. All of a sudden Col. Dyess broke through on the right, braving the very heavy fire, and got all of us out of there."[2] Lieutenant Colonel Dyess was killed on February 2, 1944, by a burst of enemy machine gun fire while standing on the parapet of an anti-tank trench directing a group of infantry in a flanking attack against the last Japanese position in the northern part of Namur Island. In this final assault, Dyess posted himself between the opposing lines and, exposed to fire from heavy automatic weapons, led his troops in the advance. Wherever the attack was slowed by heavier enemy fire, he quickly appeared and placed himself at the head of his men and inspired them to push forward. Dyess was initially buried in the 4th Marine Division cemetery on Roi-Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. In 1948, he was re-interred in Westover Memorial Park Cemetery, Augusta, Georgia.

Dyess was awarded a Medal of Honor for his actions. He is one of only nine known Eagle Scouts who also received the Medal of Honor. He is the only American to receive both the Carnegie Medal for civilian heroism and the Medal of Honor. In 1929, he had been awarded the Carnegie Medal for saving two swimmers off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1928.

Photo source Congressional Medal of Honor Society

In August 1912, Arthur Eldred went before the most intimidating Eagle Scout board of review in history, a board that included Chief Scout Executive James E. West, American Scouting founders Ernest Thompson Seton and Daniel Carter Beard, and Wilbert E. Longfellow, who had written material on first aid and lifesaving for the BSA’s first Scout handbook. Intimidation notwithstanding, Eldred passed his board of review and soon became the first Eagle Scout in history.

And that was just one of the highlights of his 16th year. In January, he and his troop, Troop 1 from Rockville Centre, New York, had greeted Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell’s ship when it arrived in New York. That summer, he had rescued two fellow Scouts from drowning, earning himself one of the BSA’s first Honor Medals.

Eldred went on to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War I. After the war, he worked as an agricultural agent and later as a transportation manager. He served as troop committee chairman for the troop where his son Bill became an Eagle Scout and was active on two school boards and the Camden County Council.

Although Eldred died in 1951, his legacy lives on. Four generations of his family have become Eagle Scouts.

Photo credit Wikipedia

The first Eagle Scout to serve as president of the United States, Gerald R. Ford restored dignity to an office mired in scandal.

Born in 1913, Ford joined a Grand Rapids, Michigan, Boy Scout troop in 1924 and became an Eagle Scout three years later. But Scouting wasn’t the only arena in which Ford excelled. An accomplished athlete, he played football at the University of Michigan and considered a professional football career. Instead, he chose law school, graduating from Yale in 1941.

The start of World War II interrupted Ford’s brief legal career. He quickly joined the Navy, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander before leaving the service in 1946.

Two years later, Ford was elected to Congress, where he would represent Michigan’s Fifth Congressional District for the next 25 years. When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace in 1973, Richard Nixon appointed Ford to the post. Ten months later, Nixon himself resigned, making Ford president.

During his long life (he died at age 93) Ford remained connected to Scouting, even donning a Scout uniform for a 1978 BSA ad campaign. In 1997, the Western Michigan Shores Council was renamed the Gerald R. Ford Council in his honor.

Photo source Wikipedia

In 1963 Former FBI director Louis Freeh received his Eagle Scout at 13 years old. He was born in New Jersey. He was honored with the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1995.

Freeh’s resume includes FBI agent, Deputy US Attorney, Army reservist, and US District Court judge.

But his years as the FBI director from 1993-2001 were marked with plenty of high-profile cases. He took over just after the Branch Dravidian compound fire in Waco, Texas and dealt with allegations of cover-ups. He handled an 81-day standoff with the Montana Freeman, which ended peacefully.

He was the head of the agency when the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, was apprehended in Montana in 1996. He also orchestrated the capture and prosecution of Timothy McVeigh the OKC bomber in 1995-1996.

Louis Freeh resigned in 2001 and became the principal lawyer for a major US bank, published a book, and founded his own law firm, The Freeh Group International.

Photo source Wikipedia

Zachary Knight Galifianakis is an American actor, comedian, musician and writer who came to prominence with his Comedy Central Presents special in 2001 and presented his own show called Late World with Zach on VH1 the following year. He has also starred in films, such as The Hangover trilogy (2009–2013), Due Date (2010), The Campaign (2012), Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and Masterminds (2016). He has also had starring voice roles in Puss in Boots (2011), The Lego Batman Movie (2017) and Missing Link (2019).

Galifianakis was born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. His mother, Mary Frances (née Cashion), was a community arts center owner, and his father, Harry, a heating oil vendor. His mother is of Scottish ancestry, and his paternal grandparents, Mike Galifianakis and Sophia Kastrinakis, were emigrants from Crete, Greece. Galifianakis was baptized in his father's Greek Orthodox church. He has a younger sister, Merritt, and an older brother, Greg. His cousin is Washington Post cartoonist Nick Galifianakis. His uncle, a politician, is also named Nick Galifianakis. Galifianakis attended Wilkes Central High School, and subsequently attended North Carolina State University, where he majored in communications. While in college, he worked at a public access station. He taught a waltz class in 1991 where he crossed paths with Mary J. Blige. He became an Eagle Scout in 1986.

Photo source The Modest Man

William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, voice actor, cartoonist, and musician.

Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930 and steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as Captain and the Kids. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, creating or producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.

Tom and Jerry won seven Academy Awards, while Hanna and Barbera were nominated for two others and won eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoons have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media such as films, books, and toys. Hanna-Barbera's shows had a worldwide audience of over 300 million people in their 1960s heyday and have been translated into more than 28 languages.

Photo source Wikipedia

Jonathan Joseph Heder is an American actor, best known for his role as the title character of the 2004 comedy film Napoleon Dynamite. He has also appeared in the films Just Like Heaven, The Benchwarmers, School for Scoundrels, Blades of Glory, Mama's Boy, When in Rome, and as Roy Disney in Walt Before Mickey. He also provided voice work for the animated films Monster House, Surf's Up, and Pinocchio, as well as the Napoleon Dynamite animated series.

He is an Eagle Scout and served as a Scoutmaster in 2010.

Photo source Wikipedia

Ewing Marion Kauffman (September 21, 1916 – August 1, 1993) was an American pharmaceutical entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Major League Baseball owner.

Ewing Kauffmann was born on September 21, 1916, on a farm near Garden City, Missouri. He was the son of John S. Kauffman and Effie May Winders, who were German-Americans. When Kauffman was a child, his father was in a farming accident which left him blind in his right eye. Following the accident, his father relocated the family to Kansas City, where he worked as a life insurance salesman.

As a child, Kauffman loved reading. When he was 11, he had to leave school for a year, due to a heart valve that would not close completely. During this year, Kauffman taught himself how to speed read. It was not uncommon for him to read one to two books a day. In later years, Kauffman believes his success in the pharmaceutical business stemmed from his ability to read quickly. In 1928, when Kauffman was 12, his parents divorced. He lived with his mother, and his father remained active in his life. On days spent with his father, it was not uncommon for the two to compete in arithmetic competitions, the most common game being adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing the numbers on license plates.

Kauffman was an active youth who participated in various sports and performed very well in school. He was also an Eagle Scout and later, in adulthood, was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. Kauffman graduated from Kansas City's Westport High School in 1934 and later attended Kansas City Junior College, He received his associate degree in Business Management.

Photo source Wikipedia

James Arthur Lovell Jr. is a retired American astronaut, naval aviator, and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission which, after a critical failure en route, circled around the Moon and returned safely to Earth through the efforts of the crew and mission control.

James Arthur Lovell Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio on March 25, 1928, the only child James Lovell Sr., an Ontario, Canada-born coal furnace salesman who died in a car accident in 1933 and Blanche née Masek, who was of Czech descent. For about two years, Lovell and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana. After relocating with his mother to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he graduated from Juneau High School. He was member of the Boy Scouts during his childhood and eventually achieved Eagle Scout in 1943, the organization's highest level. He became interested in rocketry and built flying models as a teenager.

Photo source Wikipedia

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Lynch entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Pennsylvania and served in the Headquarters Squadron of the Fifth Fighter Command. On March 8, 1944, he departed Nadzab, New Guinea, in a P-38 Lightning (Serial Number 42-103987) for a fighter sweep over Tadji, New Guinea. No enemy aircraft were seen over the target, and LTC Lynch dove to attack enemy ships in the area. After making a strafing run, his wing man reported that the right propeller of LTC Lynch's plane fell off. The damaged plane then turned toward land and the right engine caught fire. Now flying 100 feet over the trees, LTC Lynch bailed out, but his parachute did not open. His airplane crashed and exploded one mile southwest of the village of Aitape. LTC Lynch was not seen again following the incident. He has not been associated with any remains recovered from the area after the war, and he is still unaccounted-for. Today, Lieutenant Colonel Lynch is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Photo source Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency

Brigadier General Charles Edward McGee was an American fighter pilot who was one of the first African American aviators in the United States military and one of the last living members of the Tuskegee Airmen. McGee first began his career in World War II flying with the Tuskegee Airmen, an all African American military pilot group at a time of segregation in the armed forces. His military aviation career lasted 30 years in which McGee flew 409 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War.

For his service, McGee received the Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters and the Bronze Star Medal, along with many other military honors. In 2007, as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, McGee received the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2011, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame and in February 2020, was promoted from Colonel to Brigadier General.

McGee died in his sleep on January 16, 2022, at the age of 102. He was one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.

Photo source National Air and Space Museum

Matt Paradis is an American football center who is a free agent. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the sixth round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He played college football at Boise State.

Paradis was one of 51 collegiate offensive linemen to attend the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, Indiana. He completed all of the combine drills and had a mediocre performance overall, finishing 11th in the three-cone drill and 20th among offensive linemen in the bench press. On March 14, 2014, he attended Boise State's pro day, but opted to stand on his combine numbers and only ran positional drills. At the conclusion of the pre-draft process, Paradis was projected to be a seventh-round pick or priority undrafted free agent by NFL draft experts and scouts. He was ranked the 15th best center prospect in the draft by NFLDraftScout.com. Matt is part of the Super Bowl 50 Champion Denver Broncos.

Photo source Wikipedia

Daniel Coulter Reynolds is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is the lead vocalist of the pop rock band Imagine Dragons. Reynolds also released an EP in 2011, titled Egyptian – EP, as a duo with his wife Aja Volkman under the moniker Egyptian. He is a recipient of the Songwriters Hall of Fame Hal David Starlight Award.

Reynolds was born on July 14, 1987, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the seventh of nine children (eight boys and one girl) of Christene M. (née Callister) and Ronald Reynolds, a lawyer and author. Both are natives of Nevada, and Reynolds is a 4th generation Nevadan. As a Boy Scout, he earned the rank of Eagle Scout in 2005. Reynolds is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). When he was 19 years old, he volunteered full-time as a missionary in Nebraska for two years.

Photo source last.fm

Although he’s a college graduate and former opera singer, Mike Rowe has built his reputation by promoting the skilled trades. As host and executive producer of “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel, Rowe tried out more than 200 jobs, from driving a sewage truck to demolishing houses in post-Katrina New Orleans. As CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, he is trying to change how America views hard work.

Rowe grew up in Baltimore and became an Eagle Scout in 1979. His Eagle Scout leadership service project, which involved reading to students at the Maryland School for the Blind, helped spark his interest in being a narrator.

Rowe got his start in television as an onscreen pitchman for QVC. He later hosted shows on PBS, TBS, and The History Channel, as well as local stations WJZ in Baltimore and KPIX in San Francisco. A segment he created for KPIX’s “Evening Magazine” eventually grew into “Dirty Jobs.”

With the support of industrial supply giant W.W. Grainger, Rowe launched mikeroweWORKS.com – now profoundlydisconnected.com – on Labor Day 2008. The site focuses on the decline in skilled trades and the crumbling of America’s infrastructure. Features include discussion forums; information about specific trades; and links to schools, jobs, and apprenticeship programs.

Photo source mikerowe.com

Glen Schofield is an American video game artist, designer, director, and producer, he is currently the CEO of the Striking Distance Studios. He is a co-creator of the Call of Duty video game franchise. He was formerly the vice president and general manager at Visceral Games, and the creator and executive producer of the third-person survival horror video game Dead Space. Trained as an artist, Schofield has developed some 50 games, from children's titles to action, that have grossed more than $3 billion in revenues.

Schofield trained in both fine arts and business, earning a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MBA from Golden Gate University. His career began as an artist and art director with the New Jersey video game company Absolute Entertainment. He then relocated to Seattle to join the West Coast's burgeoning video games industry. His professional influences included Asteroids, Moon Patrol, Gunstar Heroes, Disruptor and the Contra series, followed later by Resident Evil, Gears of War, and the franchise he would eventually contribute to, Modern Warfare.

As a vice president at Crystal Dynamics, Schofield headed development on two of the studio's franchises: Gex and Legacy of Kain. Moving to EA Redwood Studios as general manager of the company's Visceral Games, he collaborated with Bret Robbins, including the popular Lord of the Rings video series and 007: From Russia with Love.

Photo source IMBd

Isaac Newton Skelton IV (December 20, 1931 – October 28, 2013) was an American politician who was the U.S. Representative for Missouri's 4th congressional district from 1977 to 2011. During his tenure, he served as the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He was a member of the Democratic Party. On November 2, 2010, he unexpectedly lost his seat to Republican Vicky Hartzler amid a Republican landslide. Notably, he was one of three Democratic committee chairmen to lose reelection in the 2010 midterm cycle, alongside House Budget Committee chairman John Spratt of South Carolina and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Jim Oberstar of Minnesota.

Skelton was born in Lexington, Missouri, a rural town with extensive Civil War history. He was the son of Carolyn Marie (Boone) and Isaac Newton Skelton III.

In 1928, Skelton's father met Harry S. Truman, then a Jackson County judge, and the men became good friends. When he was 17, Skelton attended Truman's 1949 inauguration.

Skelton became an Eagle Scout on March 19, 1948, in Troop 318. He earned an associate of arts degree from Wentworth Military Academy and College in 1951, an A.B. in 1953 and an LL.B. in 1956 from the University of Missouri. He is a brother of Sigma Chi and Alpha Phi Omega at the University of Missouri. He also attended the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1953. Skelton then became a lawyer and entered private practice in Lafayette County, Missouri.

He was a prosecuting attorney from 1957 until 1960 and a special assistant attorney general.

Photo source Wikipedia

Steven Allan Spielberg is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He began his career in the New Hollywood era and is currently the most commercially successful director. Spielberg is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards for Best Director, a Kennedy Center honor, and a Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He later moved to California and studied film in college. After directing television episodes and several minor films for Universal Studios, he became a household name for directing 1975's summer blockbuster Jaws. He then directed box office hits Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and the adventure films in the Indiana Jones series. Spielberg later explored drama in The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).

After a brief hiatus, he directed back-to-back box office hits with the acclaimed science fiction action film Jurassic Park (1993) and the holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993). In 1998, he directed the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, which was both a critical and commercial success. Spielberg continued in the 2000s with science fiction, including A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005). He has since directed several fantasy films including The Adventures of Tintin (2011), Ready Player One (2018), and the historical dramas War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Post (2017).

In addition to filmmaking, he co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and has served as a producer for many television series and films. Spielberg is also known for his long-time collaboration with composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films. Several of Spielberg's works are among the highest-grossing films of all time and have received acclaim; 11 of his films have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and seven have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In early 1957, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg had a bar mitzvah ceremony when he was thirteen. His family was involved in the synagogue and had many Jewish friends. Of the Holocaust, he said that his parents "talked about it all the time, and so it was always on my mind." His father had lost between sixteen and twenty relatives in the Holocaust. Spielberg found it difficult accepting his heritage; he said: "It isn't something I enjoy admitting [...] but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me, I was embarrassed because we were Orthodox Jews. I was embarrassed by the outward perception of my parents' Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times." Spielberg also suffered from anti-Semitism: "In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible." He grew away from Judaism during adolescence, after his family had moved to various neighborhoods and found themselves to be the only Jews.

At age 12, he made his first home movie: a train wreck involving his toy Lionel trains. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the photography merit badge by making a nine-minute, 8 mm film titled The Last Gunfight. He eventually attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 1961. Spielberg used his father's movie camera to make amateur features and began taking the camera along on every Scout trip. At age 13, Spielberg made a 40-minute war film, titled Escape to Nowhere, with a cast of school classmates. The film won first prize in a statewide competition. Throughout his early teens, and after entering high school, Spielberg made about fifteen to twenty 8 mm "adventure" films.

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For most Scouts, the Wilderness Survival merit badge offers the chance to learn valuable skills in an outdoor setting. For Creek Stewart, it was the first step toward a career as a survival instructor, author, and host of The Weather Channel’s hit show Fat Guys in the Woods, which aired in 2014 and 2015. It’s no wonder he still carries the badge in his wallet.

On each episode of his show, Stewart took several stuck-in-a-rut men into the wilderness. Their objective was to survive the experience but more importantly to grow as individuals and overcome the challenges they face when they’re not in the woods.

Stewart launched his survival business while attending Butler University in Indianapolis. He began by writing a 90-page survival handbook that, in true Boy Scout fashion, he advertised in the pages of Boys’ Life magazine.

Today, Stewart runs Willow Haven Outdoor Survival School in Indiana and frequently appears as a survival expert on local and national television shows, often teaching novel survival uses for everyday items like soda cans and cell phones. He has also written several survival books, including Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag: Your 72-Hour Disaster Survival Kit and The Unofficial Hunger Games Wilderness Survival Guide.

He earned Eagle Scout at the age of 14.

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James Valentine is an American musician and songwriter. He is the lead guitarist and backing vocalist for the pop rock band Maroon 5.

Valentine was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and has three sisters and one brother. His mother is a former beauty queen, who was a schoolteacher before becoming a stay-at-home mom to raise her five children. His younger sister, Amanda Valentine has been a contestant on Project Runway two times starring in Season 11 and Season 13, as well as Project Runway All Stars once in Season 6. James became an Eagle Scout in 1996. He was the president of his high school Lincoln Southeast High School's student council in Lincoln, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and attended Berklee College of Music.

In addition to guitar, James is also a percussionist, playing in orchestra and jazz band in his youth.

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In 1945, shortly after leaving the U.S. Army, 26-year-old Sam Walton took over a Ben Franklin store in Newport, Arkansas. By 1962, he and his brother Bud owned a chain of 16 variety stores in three states and had pioneered techniques in logistics, volume purchasing, and merchandising. That year, the brothers opened their first Wal-Mart store in Rogers, Arkansas, launching an empire that would eventually become the world’s largest retailer and private employer.

Walton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 in recognition of his pioneering work in retailing. In 1998, Time magazine named him to its list of the 20th century’s 100 most influential people.

But Walton’s first accolades came much earlier in life. In 1932, he saved a boy named Donald Peterson from drowning in Missouri’s Salt River, and two years later he became his home state’s youngest Eagle Scout.

Today, Walton’s influence lives on through the Walton Family Foundation, which donated more than $325 million to charity in 2013. And thousands of students on the University of Arkansas campus study at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, ranked among the nation’s top 25 undergraduate and top 50 graduate business schools by the Wall Street Journal.

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