Before his tragic death by suicide last year, local teenager Brandon Zigrang was on track to earn the elusive and coveted rank of Eagle Scout. An avid fisherman from a very young age, he had planned out his Eagle Scout community service project — the addition of two fish cleaning stations near his favorite fishing spot on the shore of Lake Cornelia — and was working on the final arrangements to install them at the time of his passing. Now, led by his parents Jean and Becky Zigrang, and his fellow scouts from Clarion Troop 1047, his Eagle Scout project has been completed.
As soon as Brandon had gotten his moped license, he started going to the lake to fish, nearly every day in the summer. "If you were looking for him," his father Jean Zigrang related, pointing to a nearby bridge, "he was under that bridge fishing." It was, the elder Zigrang noted, his son's happy place. "He was out here ALL the time, fishing," said Zigrang, adding, "he loved it out here." It was also where Brandon learned to fish, often texting photos of the fish he caught to his Dad. Soon enough, Zigrang said, "he knew where to go, and what bait to use."
And now, Brandon's vision for making his happy place even better has come to fruition. And all the work done by the community to bring into reality shows a tremendous outpouring of love, Zigrang expressed. "We wouldn't have been able to do this without the community helping out," he said, "and Whitetails — it was a dream come true that they paid for both (cleaning stations), I can't thank them enough. And we've got Hennigar's doing the food and they made the placards on the stations as well, which is awesome." Jean said that the help from the community has been entirely selfless, "they just asked what can we do, and I told them," he related, "and they said, 'boom, done!'"
Dan and Danielle Hennigar, of Hennigar's Construction and Excavating, had been Brandon's employers for one summer. "He was a very good worker," Dan noted, and "a fast learner." "We were excited to have him on our crew," Danielle added, noting she wished he was still working with them. What they could do to honor him, they were happy to do, both agreed.
Brandon had shared his plans for his Eagle Scout project to upgrade the lake area with his troop and his scoutmaster prior to his passing. "After he passed away," his dad said, "this was something I had to do for him."
"Brandon was an avid outdoorsman and just loved being outside," said Scoutmaster Andrew "Buck" Tew of Clarion's Troop 1047. "He kind of went all over with his Dad fishing various lakes, and one thing that they didn't have out here at Lake Cornelia was the fish cleaning stations; and so he saw that need." Brandon had it all set up to go, Tew noted, when he passed away. And for the troop, when it came to finishing what their fallen brother scout had started, it was a mission. "It's a family," Tew said, and so everybody just showed up. "It was just an unspoken understanding that this was going to get done. So we just carried on what he had already planned out."
And, Tew added, "now it works really great with the rehabilitation of the lake to offer the place for everybody to clean the fish that they catch." Which, he said, would have made Brandon happy. As for how he feels, "obviously there's mixed feelings," Tew said, "I'm ecstatic that it got done and we were all able to do it for him, and carry out his vision," Tew said. And yet, he added, there was "no question" that he wished Brandon could have been there to see it.
The project ended up going well beyond what Brandon had planned, his father explained, thanks to the clinics of Iowa Specialty Hospitals in Clarion and Belmond, who had a bench made in Brandon's memory. Situated facing the port pond near the Lake Cornelia RV camp, one can sit on the bench in Brandon's memory, and watch people using the fish cleaning stations he envisioned, and planned. "So that's a nice addition to the lake, also," Zigrang said. And, explained Tim Brooks , President of the Greenbelt chapter of Whitetails Unlimited out of Eagle Grove, they'd decided also to include an additional $5,000 to pay for handicapped accessible docks, where one of the cleaning stations now sits.
"My daughter knows (the Zigrangs) very well, and she came to me," Brooks explained, "and I thought it was an excellent idea. And so I ran it by all my guys, who are out here today, and they were 100% for it."
A second fish cleaning station, which Whitetails decided to fund as well, will soon be installed near the boat ramp as well, Brooks said. Asked if the guys from the Greenbelt Chapter plan to come out and put Brandon's fish cleaning stations to good use, Brooks replied "you bet!"
Seeing Brandon awarded the Eagle Scout rank posthumously "is our ultimate hope, " said Troop 1047 Commite Chairman Tim Hamilton. However that "may be a bit of a battle", he added, as BSA at the national level, typically doesn't award Eagle Scout ranks posthumously. However, Hamilton also noted, even if Brandon is not awarded the rank of Eagle Scout posthumously, he almost certainly would qualify for the "Spirit of the Eagle," which is awarded to scouts posthumously.
The project wasn't really that far off from a typical Eagle Scout project, said Hamilton, who is also the local Cub Scouts Cubmaster, and sits on the Lakeland District commite, who "An Eagle Scout Project is not really just for the scout to do the project," Hamilton explained, "it's more of the leadership part of it. They do the planning, and the troop comes together, the community comes together, and they finish the project."
"And that's truly what happened here. There are some steps here which Brandon obviously didn't do, but the troop ultimately finished the project, just like it would have been done if he was there. And he WAS there," Hamilton added emphatically, "he was in everybody's hearts when they were doing it."
