Built to last: Hampton Scout creates ‘wonderful’ figurines for Eagle project

When Sarah White was contemplating her Eagle project for Boy Scouts, she knew she wanted to build something that lasts.

Through combining her two interests, art and carpentry, she constructed a set representing the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids. The display is in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Atrium, a room that has space for preschool children to work, at Aquinas Academy of Pittsburgh.

White, a senior at the Catholic school in Hampton, carved 11 wooden figurines to represent the story, as told in Matthew 25:1-13. Five of the bridesmaids are wise and five are foolish. The wise ones bring oil for their lamps, while the foolish ones don’t bring any. The groom is able to see the shining lamps.

In her figurines, White depicts the brides wearing purple dresses and carrying candles, and the groom wearing blue.

The process required hours of tracing, cutting out the figurines, sanding, designing and more. She started the project in November 2021 and didn’t finish until April 2022. She also made two large bookcases as part of her project.

White joined Boy Scouts when she was 13 or 14 because her brother was in the organization and she wanted to participate in activities that Girl Scouts didn’t offer.

Girls could officially join Boy Scouts starting in 2019, and the first class of female Eagle Scouts was recognized in 2020. White is part of an all-female Boy Scout troop, which she called “more fun.”

“In Girl Scouts, we would be pressing flowers and the guys would be out in the wilderness fighting for their lives,” White said. “I’m like, that looks like so much fun.”

‘A whole other world’

One her fondest memories of Boy Scouts is becoming her troop’s first senior patrol leader when she was 16. The senior patrol leader is responsible for overseeing the troop and making sure activities are successful. Since she’s in a new troop, White said she didn’t have anyone to look up to; rather, she had “a handbook and a lot of learning to do.”

While she’s received 72 merit badges, White said one of the most fun was a waters ports badge. At Boy Scouts camp, she learned to water ski and navigate a sailboat, which White joked quickly turned into “piracy” through people trying to turn their friends’ boats over. She also found a first aid badge and a personal management badge to be useful.

White, who was diagnosed last year with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, said Boy Scouts is a great outlet for neurodivergent kids who often feel “dumb” or “useless” at school. But finding out they’re great at building fires or cooking, she said, “opens up a whole other world.”

“I feel like today adults don’t let kids have as much freedom to prove what they can do, while Boy Scouts gives you all the freedom to show the best of yourself,” White said.

Julie White, Sarah’s mom, said earning merit badges not only teaches life skills, but encourages Scouts to try new activities, like water skiing. She said Sarah was a natural once she was on the skis and joked that she spent the rest of summer camp “scheming to find time to get back to the waterfront.”

‘She has that innate ability’

Sharon Navari, the preschool coordinator at Aquinas Academy and the benefactor of White’s Eagle Scout project, said she was “thrilled” when White approached her about working on the atrium, which she described the atrium as a “retreat-like, softly lit room.”

Navari suggested the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, and White ran with it. She said it was especially “incredible” because White offered to fix a cabinet and build the bookcases, which she estimates has touched about 150 students from preschool to second grade. Navari added that White knows her way around a jigsaw.

“The fact that she was just so open to doing so many more things really brings a tear to my eye, to tell you the truth, because someone else may have come in and just listened to what I had to say, but she was so enthusiastic,” Navari said. “I mean, I feel like she could run the atrium. She could have that place looking amazing because she has that innate ability to take the project and go with it.”

White was Navari’s preschool student — where she was the “sweetest little girl” — but she lost touch when White went to Hampton High School, from which she transferred prior to her junior year. Navari said it’s been great connecting with her again.

“Her enthusiasm, her desire to help me, her kindness in choosing me, I just feel so really blessed that she thought of me,” Navari said. “It was just a wonderful thing to happen for myself and for the young students at Aquinas.”

Outside of Boy Scouts, White also plays soccer, volleyball and runs cross country at Aquinas Academy. She produces the school newspaper, “The Dumb Ox,” and the yearbook, where she gets to flex her passion for graphic design.

White also started a cosmetology club and co-led the makeup department for Aquinas’s school play, “Our Town.” She joked that it feels like a life skill to put eyeliner on middle school boys. White transferred from Hampton High School to Aquinas Academy before her junior year.

“All these things I’ve been involved in, more than for myself, they’ve really just helped me to meet so many different kinds of people,” she said. “The more people you meet, the more well rounded you become.”

After graduation, White will attend Liberty University in Virginia to study strategic communications and graphic arts. She isn’t totally sure yet what career she wants to pursue, but she aspires to “live as God intended.”

“I might not know a lot of things in life, but I know there’s a God, and I know if I do what He tells me to do, everything else will be OK,” she said.