Girl Scouts honored at Community Service Awards ceremony

By Connor Linskey
Posted 1/22/20

Girl Scout Troop 285 and Kelly O’Connor received the Youth Community Service award on Monday in Walden. This award ceremony was sponsored by the Walden Woman’s Club.

The award program …

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Girl Scouts honored at Community Service Awards ceremony

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Girl Scout Troop 285 and Kelly O’Connor received the Youth Community Service award on Monday in Walden. This award ceremony was sponsored by the Walden Woman’s Club.

The award program is designed to recognize the volunteer activities of middle and high school youth in the Town of Montgomery. Emphasis is placed on projects that address the needs of a particular local organization or a community need. Each year individuals receive recognition for their outstanding projects and donations are made to the organization which benefited from the project.

The scouts of Troop 285, Elizabeth Zefi, Kelly O'Connor, Adriana Almodovar, Madisyn Rivera, Alesia Galvao and Cameron Almodovar received the silver award, the second highest award in Girls Scouts, on Nov. 16 for the beautification and restoration of two monuments and 632 soldiers’ plots in the Wallkill Valley Cemetery in Walden. They cleaned soldiers’ graves and raised up headstones of soldiers’ graves that had sunk in the ground. In addition, they helped pull up plaques, lay new dirt and stone and laid plaques down in addition to cleaning other graves.

Kelly O’Connor was honored at the ceremony for creating a database of all veterans in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Montgomery. Her database included names, dates of birth and death, branch of service, rank, war time served, honors and awards received as well as GPS coordinates. For creating the database, O’Connor received the Girl Scout gold award, the highest award a girl scout can earn.

“No one did anything quite like this before in that cemetery,” O’Connor said. “[I wanted] to make it easier for anyone who wanted to find veterans in that cemetery.”

In addition to receiving the youth community service award, the scouts were presented with certificates from New York State Senator James Skoufis, Orange County Legislator Mike Anagnostakis and Montgomery Town Supervisor Brian Maher. Each was very proud of the scouts for giving back to the community. Since the event was held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Skoufis shared one of King’s quotes that was applicable to the ceremony.

“One of life’s most persistent and urging questions is what are you doing for others,” he said quoting King. “I think it’s appropriate today of all days that you have the girl scouts here that have given back quite a bit to the community through their service projects.”

The veterans who attended the event were especially grateful for O’Connor’s database. Her spreadsheet will help people easily locate their loved ones. In addition, the database will help keep the memory alive of those who died fighting four our country. The database was given to the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the caretaker of St. Mary’s Cemetery.

“This is terrific, it can be used as a reference for years to come,” said Tim Dempsey, a veteran who was on duty during the Vietnam Era. “It’s the kinda thing we are mighty grateful for, veterans family members, everyone.”