CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou Scoutmaster Vaughn Keaton is the first in the Boy Scouts of America Katahdin Area Council region, which covers the northern six counties of Maine (roughly 17,000 square miles), to receive the National Eagle Scout Association’s Outstanding Eagle Scout Award.
The national association created the award in 2010 to celebrate the Scout organization’s centennial, and Keaton said each council is allowed to issue two a year. However, the scoutmaster said this is the first time the Katahdin Area Council has given the award, which requires several nominations and qualifications.
Keaton said the first requirement for the NOESA is that the recipient needs to have 25 years as an Eagle Scout under his belt. He easily met this criteria as he received the Eagle Scout distinction in 1965 and has been Caribou Boy Scout Troop 184’s scoutmaster for 35 years.
The second requirement, however, is to have obtained a similarly high honor outside of scouting. Luckily for Keaton, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Maine State Locksmith Association in late 2017 for over 45 years in that field.
Keaton had made inquiries about the NOESA in the past, but said the Katahdin Area Council was reluctant to give out the award because of the long list of requirements.
“I said OK, and let it go,” Keaton said of these inquiries, “but I kept watching every year to see if they were going to issue any of these types of awards here. I eventually figured ‘Well, so be it.’ and I wrote it off.”
Once word began to spread about his lifetime achievement award, however, Keaton said a number of local Scouting officials, including Caribou Cubmaster Troy LaPlante, began putting his name in the hat and eventually had to contact Keaton in order to write the application.
“Troy had no way to make the application without coming to me,” Keaton said, “but it does say on the application that I can know about it.”
Even though he had prior knowledge, regional Scouting officials still manage to surprise Keaton by presenting him with the award a couple of months early.
“I knew that the council gives out those awards down at the regional supper [held at the Katahdin Scout Reservation in Eddington on June 16],” Keaton said. “But it came to me during our district supper up here [on April 21 in Presque Isle].”
LaPlante managed to bring some Katahdin Area Council officials to the Presque Isle supper, and they all surprised Keaton by giving him the award then.
“That kinda threw me off,” Keaton said with a laugh. “This award is prestigious. I [didn’t think] it wouldn’t be given out up here, so they threw me for a loop on that.”
Keaton was approached by council executive Scott Harvey after the April meeting, who asked if he could take the award back so it could be presented again during the council’s annual June 16 meeting in front of all regional scouting officials.
“I didn’t mind,” Keaton said, “after waiting all these years, I knew I was going to get it anyway at that point.”
Keaton said that, in order to assemble the application, his colleagues pulled several articles from the Aroostook Republican newspaper, going as far back as 1965 when he first received the Eagle Scout distinction, through to recent years, including a County Faces profile on Keaton, coverage of the annual Boy Scout Winterama held in Caribou, and an article about Keaton receiving the lifetime achievement from the state locksmith association.
In addition to a certificate, Keaton received a pin, a ribbon that can be worn during future award ceremonies, and a special neckerchief and neckerchief slide only available to special members of Scouts, which he plans on wearing in all future Scouting activities.
The Pine Tree Council, which represents the rest of Maine, presented its first Outstanding Eagle Scout Award to Eagle Scout, Sgt Timothy Gilboe of Jackman in 2014.
Looking ahead, Keaton said he’s thinking about nominating a couple of his peers for the NOESA next year.
