Scouts honor Hillenbrand helps with Ford 146 s funeral
ALTAMONT Frederick Hillenbrand got a call on Thursday afternoon asking that he put together an Eagle Scout honor guard for President Gerald Fords funeral.
Hillenbrand has been involved with the Scouts since "day one," said his father, also Frederick Hillenbrand. Ford, himself, was an Eagle Scout and the only United States president who attained the highest rank in the Boy Scouts Eagle.
The younger Hillenbrand, a Guilderland High School graduate, who now lives in the Washington, D.C. area, was a member of Troop 264 and became an Eagle Scout in 1973. His Leadership Service Project, which qualifies a young man to be an Eagle Scout, was in Tawasentha Park, he remembered. He put in a campsite that had a permanent fire pit.
"It affects an awful lot," Hillenbrand said of his scouting experience on his life. "It gives you a code, a set of core values."
As president, Ford exhibited some of those values, Hillenbrand said. "He did the right thing; doing the right thing isn’t always the popular thing," he said. "It takes courage." He added, "Those are some of the things that are very consistent with the Scouts."
The group of 12 Eagle Scouts that Hillenbrand gathered stood by the World War II memorial for the funeral procession on Saturday, said Hillenbrand. He wanted to get an ethnically and religiously diverse group. "Then it became a matter of logistics, who’s around," he said.
His father, watching coverage of the Ford funeral in his Brandle Road home, caught a glimpse on television of the scouts his son had organized.
Hillenbrand is a volunteer, serving as an assistant council commissioner, in the National Capitol Area Council. A few years ago, Hillenbrand was honored with the Silver Beaver award, which is one of the highest volunteer awards available, his father said. The highest honor given by the Boy Scouts is the Silver Buffalo award, which was given to Ford in 1970.
Of his son’s Silver Beaver, Hillenbrand said, "It’s like getting to wear the Congressional Medal of Honor around your neck. He gets to wear the Silver Beaver award around his neck."
