Boy Scouts serving Utah, nation

"Do a good turn daily." Millions of Boy Scouts have learned that slogan, which most often conjures the image of a uniformed boy leading a little old lady across a busy street.

It was a good turn that brought the Scouting program to the United States after a Scout helped newspaper publisher William D. Boyce navigate a foggy London neighborhood and refused pay. Boyce picked up some literature about Scouting in England and founded the Boy Scouts of America, which will celebrate 100 years of good turns in February 2010.

And even though Scouting numbers are declining nationwide, good turns abound this summer, with service projects designed to benefit not only Utah, but also the rest of the nation.

Mitch Park, a Scout from Sandy, is organizing a bone marrow drive in August to help people join the national bone marrow registry.

Park's father died of leukemia in 2004 while trying to get healthy enough for a bone marrow transplant. A suitable donor couldn't be found within Park's family, so doctors began to look at the national registry and found a donor from Minnesota. But that's as far as the process got.

Park said the heartbreaking experience led him to pursue signing up more donors for the marrow registry.

On Aug. 9, people who wish to join the registry can go to the Albertsons at 11400 S. State in Draper to have a cheek swab performed.

"Some people are worried that it will hurt or that they have to give blood," Park said. But once he explains that a marrow donation isn't being performed, people are willing to sign up.

According to the national registry's Web site, marrow.org, a marrow transplant is painless and performed under anesthesia.

Park will be asking for donations to cover the cost of typing donor cheek samples. He and the registry also are seeking minorities, because there is a shortage of minority donors.

Park's project is an example of what teenage Scouts can accomplish for service projects, a requirement to attain the rank of Eagle.

Then there are the hundreds of Scouts and volunteers who spent a week in the Manti-La Sal National Forest in June. They have long since packed their bags for home, but in their wake, they left miles of pristine streams.

The streams once had been home to an invasive species of ornamental shrub, called tamarisk, which had been introduced into Utah's wilds. Tamarisk consumes about 300 gallons of water a day, said Jake Wellman, 17, chief Scout of Scouting's national honor society, Order of the Arrow.

"We're turning water usage back to the environment that's been taken away," Wellman said recently.