WILLIAMSBURG — Clark Gasbarre, a rising junior at Lafayette High School, tackled helping to fix up his local community pool for his Eagle Project as part of Scouting America.
For the project, Gasbarre reached out to Indigo Park Pool, which directed him to the deck in the back of the pool house, and described as run-down, with boards falling off the railing and shaky floorboards.
Gasbarre installed new deck boards, railings and a gate. Taking on those repairs led to the second part of his project — helping to redo a nearby trail that runs between the pool and another neighborhood. Gasbarre set up a few natural erosion controllers and received several tons of donated gravel from Luck Stone. Work was limited to the pool side of the trail due to permitting issues.
The complete project wrapped Aug. 20 with help from Gasbarre’s troop. Gasbarre added Indigo Park Pool was helpful to the entire process, communicating clearly and quickly about its needs.
“I’ve lived in this neighborhood for about 10 to 12 years, and I go to the pool all the time. My family, we’re all members of it. Especially when I was younger, I went to it a lot. And it was a lot of fun, and I remember I’d seen that deck for so long and I’d seen just how it looked, and I was like, man, somebody should replace this. Once I had an Eagle project, and they said go find something that’ll help your community, I thought back to the pool,” Gasbarre explained.
“I went up and I asked them what they needed, and they said, ‘well, we need all this, but specifically, we can use help with the deck and the trail.’ That trail, I remember biking on that trail with my friend, multiple summers in a row, when I was a lot younger. And it really hasn’t looked this good since I’ve been here. It looks very good right now,” he added.
Gassbarre is part of Troop 103 in Williamsburg, which celebrated its 100th year as a continuously chartered Boy Scout Troop in March 2024. He has been in the scouts for six years and was in Cub Scouts prior to that. He has served as a patrol leader and senior patrol leader.
“Scouts is very nice because it’s youth-led, so it’s like the adults are there in sort of an enabling and mentor role. It’s really the scouts, the kids that are making all the big decisions, like we decide what the trips we’re gonna go on every month, we have camping trips every month. We decide what all the meeting plans are going to be and the adults just sort of sit back and they help make sure all that happens,” he said.
In addition to the support of his troop, Gassbarre had the support of his family. Particularly, he noted his grandfather, who passed away just before the project started, as a big motivator, because he was always a person who supported his Eagle Scout journey.
To learn more about Troop 103 in Williamsburg, visit the official website.
