THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604100028
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
WHILE OTHER BOYS built treehouses, Jay Lindsey erected a ceremonial hut outside his synagogue, studied metals and learned to lay bricks.
While his fellow middle-schoolers sacked out on weekends, hypnotized by TV, Jay hacked his way through the Dismal Swamp, backpacked the Blue Ridge, raised rabbits and shot rifles.
He learned how to fingerprint, tinkered with rocketry, grew handy with a camera. He tracked down his ancestry. He sailed, cooked, fished, rowed. He kept bees.
By last fall, when most of his classmates remained years away from worries about careers and college costs, the eighth-grader was competing for a national scholarship and had packed his resume with achievements.
Chief among them: At 12, an age at which most boys are just beginning their stints as Boy Scouts, Jay Lindsey reached the most exalted of scouting's ranks: He became one of the region's youngest-ever Eagles.
``About 2 percent of Scouts make Eagle,'' says Rick Fessenbecker, an assistant scout executive with the Boy Scouts of America's Tidewater Council. ``Typically, 14 is kind of the earliest that you think of people making it. We'll have a lot of kids making it when they're 16, 17, 18.
``But to do it at that age is pretty unheard-of.
``Twelve is unusual.''
Light brown hair parted down the center, jeans, skateboarding shoes, braces: Jay Lindsey could be any skinny suburban kid.
Until he slips on the uniform. A sash he wears over his shoulder is heavy with stitched-on merit badges - 75 of them, from archery to agribusiness to three brands of citizenship, each evidence of his effort to master the subject.
On his shirt, a quiltwork of patches. The Order of the Arrow, scouting's most-honored fraternity, its ranks restricted to those who have triumphed in a carefully scripted ``ordeal.'' A Venture patch, signifying high-adventure experience. A recruiter's badge.
And over his heart, several medals, including the Eagle - for most of the few Scouts who achieve it, the culmination of four, five, maybe six years of work.
Jay's came on the tail of a comet. He reached Tenderfoot, scouting's first rank, four months after signing up in 1993. Made Second Class, the next rank, in two weeks. First Class in a month.
The rules required him to stay a First Class Scout for four months before moving up to Star. His promotion came in four months and a day.
He had to remain a Star for six months before moving up to Life. He made the leap in six months and a week.
By the time he reached Eagle he'd snared three times the required number of merit badges, and, as stipulated in the rules, he'd devoted himself to a project: Jay built a sukkah, a temporary shelter used during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot.
Two years later, it is still used by his congregation.
I was 6, a Tiger Cub, when I got started.'' Jay sits on the deck behind his family's Kempsville home, leaves rustling overhead, his patches and medals an armor against the afternoon chill. ``I didn't enjoy it very much.
``I saw the older kids doing all the Scout stuff, and as Tiger Cubs we just got to go on a lot of field trips,'' he says. ``But he convinced me to stay with it, and I did.''
``He'' is Jay's father, now sitting a few yards away in the living room. David Lindsey, an accountant and real estate broker, made Eagle himself at age 14, in 1961.
``He said he had a lot of fun with it,'' Jay says. ``I tried it and liked it, too.''
Eagles are often the sons of Eagles. David remains active in scouting, and though he helps lead a troop that does not include Jay, he took a strong interest in his son's rise through the ranks, encouraging him to stay focused.
``I guess it's like anything else out there,'' David says, sitting beneath a wall of certificates he snared in another rank-based society, Freemasonry. ``If you stay behind the kid, the way some parents do with soccer, they'll do all right.
``It's better than spending time in juvenile hall.''
DeAnne Lindsey, Jay's mother, has been active, too: She planted the idea of building the sukkah, and puts in a lot of time behind the wheel. ``When we were growing up, you could walk anywhere you needed to go, and the Scout troop was right in the neighborhood,'' she says. ``Today, if you're not willing to schlep your kid around, it doesn't get done.''
Of course, it was Jay who had to do the real work, had to actually design and build the sukkah, had to skip hanging out with friends after school to chip away at merit badge requirements.
All of which he did, he says, not because his dad did it, but because he saw the chance to snare some money for college along the way: The Sons of the American Revolution offer a scholarship to the nation's most impressive Eagle each year.
``If you have a scholarship, people respect you more. They know that you're competent,'' he says. ``When I found out that you could get one, I decided that it would be better than having my parents pay for everything.''
That may sound awfully adult for someone who hasn't entered high school. It's in character, however.
``One of the things I like about having gotten Eagle out of the way now is that I have the rest of the time to do whatever I want,'' he says. ``I see older kids scrambling around, trying to get everything done in time.''
Jay won the competition locally, then won $300 as the SAR's Virginia entry for the national scholarship before seeing the big-money prize go elsewhere.
The money he did win won't pay for much college. Jay plans to spend it, instead, on having some fun. He'll buy an electric bass, start a band, apply himself to emulating Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails.
``He's turning into a rebel,'' his father says. ``Believe me.''
``He's 13 1/2,'' his mother explains. ``That's what he's supposed to do. It's his job.'' She pauses. ``Not that I'll allow it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
13-year-old Eagle Scout Jay Lindsey
by CNB