This year marks the centennial celebration of the founding of the Boy Scouts of America, and across the United States, troops of scouts, including those right here in Huntsville, are commemorating the occasion with festivities.

But for one young scout, being part of the party wasn’t enough. He wanted to leave a more permanent mark.

Michael Frazier, 13, of Troop 97 in Huntsville, recently donated two cedar benches, hand-crafted by himself and a group of fellow scouts, to be placed in Founders Park at the corner of 10th Street and University Avenue in Huntsville. Each bench bears a plaque commemorating the completion and installation of the benches, and marking the centennial of the Boy Scouts of America.

Frazier, who has been a scout for nearly three years, conceived the benches as his Eagle Scout project, a requirement for every prospective Eagle.

“I like building different things, and it sounded like a fun thing to do,” Frazier said.

The idea to place the benches in Founders Park came in September, on the advice of then Huntsville Main Street Coordinator Harold Hutcheson. After perfecting the design, Frazier set out to find materials.

With the help of downtown businesses, he purchased cedar wood from a company in Willis. After Walker County Ace Hardware agreed to donate the rest of the building materials, he was off and running.

“The Downtown Business Alliance wanted to donate the money for the cedar that we built the benches with,” Frazier said. “The rest of it, the screws and the glue and all the other materials were donated by Walker County Ace Hardware.”

Frazier said he used cedar not only for its rustic beauty, but for its lasting power.

“The cedar lasts long,” Frazier said. “You can get untreated cedar and put a stain on it, and it’ll pretty much last forever.”

After a day measuring and cutting the lumber, the benches were constructed during the course of a single weekend. With the help of his 17-year-old brother, James, already an Eagle Scout in his own right, and a group of nine fellow scouts, Frazier assembled and stained the benches.

“We did a whole day of work with two shifts of scouts,” Frazier said. “We built the first one in the morning, and we built the second one in the afternoon.”

After the benches were installed, Frazier began the final paper work to apply for Eagle Scout. Just days ago he appeared before a board of scout officials to finalize his promotion to Eagle, and according to his scout master Gary Cooper, the final paperwork approval is only a formality now.

“He’s a go-getter,” Cooper said of Frazier. “He spent one year in Huntsville, and then he moved to Idaho, and they have a lot of things up there that they can’t do here, so he earned a lot of badges while he was up there. H’s a very smart boy and he accomplishes a lot. He’s an Eagle; it’s just a formality of paperwork.”

The benches were installed in the park earlier this month, and the donations were accepted by current Main Street Coordinator Chelsea Faye Blumrick.

“Main Street really enjoyed partnering with the scout program on this Eagle Scout project,” Blumrick said. “It’s important to have young people actively involved in the downtown community. We are very grateful that these hand-crafted cedar benches were donated to downtown’s Founders Park because they truly enhance the historical value and beauty of the area.”

For Frazier, the benches represent not just his own efforts to reach Eagle Scout, but a point of inspiration for other prospective and current scouts.

“I’m happy that it’ll give others a place to relax and sit down, and I’m happy that it will promote the Boy Scouts,” Frazier said. “And I hope that other scouts will see it and get an idea of what they can do.”