Eagle Scout works to honor Cheyenne's forgotten veterans

Mar. 7—CHEYENNE — At least 844 veterans are buried at Lakeview Cemetery on Seymour Avenue, but the work of a newly minted Eagle Scout illuminated that information.

"This was not my project, this was the community's," said Lizabeth Kidd, 18, who was honored Saturday morning at the cemetery as the second young woman in Wyoming to earn Eagle Scout status from Scouts BSA. "The community should know veterans will not be forgotten when they pass on. ... This badge can go away, but this project won't."

Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.

Sign Up

Log In

Purchase a Subscription

Only about 8% of Boy Scouts will ever achieve Eagle Scout status, according to the organization. In 2019, Scouts BSA, formerly known as the Boys Scouts of America, started allowing women to apply to become Eagle Scout, the highest rank a Boy Scout can achieve. Taylor Merriman-Fish, who is a member of the same troop — 221 — as Kidd, was the first woman in the state to reach that milestone, and she was honored at a ceremony last fall.

Kidd, who graduated from East High School last year, was 16 when the Boy Scouts opened its ranks to women. To become an Eagle Scout, applicants must complete a long-term community service project. Those projects can sometimes take several years to complete, and because of the transition to let women participate, Kidd received an extension and has worked on it during her freshman year at the University of Wyoming.

"This shows that the girls are very determined. When they put their minds to something, they see it through to the end, even through the struggles," said Valerie Fish, Kidd's troop leader. Their troop consists of all females, but they participate in meetings and some events with a companion all-male troop. "Although we've been well-received, we haven't been well-received at the same time. But the girls have still pushed through."

Allowing male and female Scouts to work together, she said, "opens up an avenue to show that we can work on common goals."

For Kidd, the overarching goal of the past several months has been to complete her project and honor the country's veterans. Several members of Kidd's family served in the military, including her father, Andrew Kidd, who introduced his daughter at Saturday's ceremony.

"Being a third-generation sailor, I've come across a lot of people in my 20 years of active service, and some of them are not with us today," said Andrew Kidd, who is a retired chief petty officer for the United States Navy. "The dedication she's put into this project for our community hits home with me."

Lizabeth Kidd said she got the idea to identify unmarked veteran graves for her Eagle Scout project through her participation in ROTC.

"In ROTC, we'd be provided 700 flags to put on veterans' headstones, but I knew there were more," said Kidd, who has purchased her own little American flags on Memorial Day to put near the military graves she knew were missed by her peers. But she wanted to find out just how many people in the cemetery held veteran status, so that they, too, could be recognized for their service.

Kidd, who aspired to join the military before a medical condition disqualified her, spent around 1,500 hours over the past several months leading a team of nine people in a quest to identify unmarked veterans' graves. They cross-referenced every name of every gravestone with newspaper obituaries and other records, and compiled all of the information into a spreadsheet.

The biggest challenge, she said, was bringing it all together.

"Not many people want to come and walk a cemetery," said Kidd, who spent hours hunched over headstones to research her project. "Even if you want to give up, don't."

And on Saturday, she was rewarded with the community's positive response to her project. Kidd presented several flash drives of her project to various community members, including members of local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapters.

"To see young people with a concept of serving their fellow man is an amazing thing in these trying times," said Jerry Pellock, chief of staff for VFW Post 4343 in Cheyenne, which sponsored Kidd's project. They were so impressed with her work that Pellock said they want to nominate it for national recognition. "This is a way to show how much we care about our community at large."

Although Kidd identified hundreds of unmarked military veterans' graves, she knows there are others out there and hopes other Scouts can keep the momentum alive.

"My hope is that this will be a never-ending project that will continue to grow and flourish for the benefit of our community."

Kathryn Palmer is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's education reporter. She can be reached at kpalmer@wyomingnews.com or 307-633-3167. Follow her on Twitter at @kathrynbpalmer.