HEBER CITY — Nineteen months ago, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would cut its ties with the Boy Scouts of America at the end of 2019, it placed an arbitrary deadline for boys in its church-sponsored troops working on their Eagles.
For teenagers, for whom procrastination is a rite of passage, this did not seem to bode well.
But never underestimate the motivation of a drop-dead deadline, especially when coupled with a force of nature known as a mother.
Take Troop 273 in Heber City, for example. When the separation date was announced in May 2018, Scoutmaster John Ackerson looked around at 16 boys in his troop he knew were interested in getting their Eagles; but none of them were very close.
Something else Ackerson knew was that two of the boys who wanted to become Eagle Scouts, 13-year-olds Carter and Dillon Clark, had a mom who had designed a spreadsheet to chart their progress.
And not just any spreadsheet, but a spreadsheet that would make NASA proud. Pam Clark was the kind of person who could organize gypsies.
Recognizing a gift horse when it was right in front of him, Ackerson asked Pam, “Will you be my advancement coordinator?”
When she said yes, the race was seriously on.
Pam put every boy on her spreadsheet; she kept track of where they were, where they’d been and where they were going. She knew their lives better than they did.
“Sometimes you just run into people that have the skill set to make things happen,” says Ackerson. “That’s Pam. She was massively overqualified and underpaid for sure.”
And relentless. Dog-with-a-bone relentless. She became notorious for keeping track of blue cards — the little 3-by-5 pieces of paper that chart a merit badge’s progress.
One time, after the boys attended a merit badge powwow at BYU, Carter and Dillon came to meet their mom in the car after the daylong event.
First thing she asked: “Where are your blue cards?”
The boys (with a straight face): “They wouldn’t give them back to us.”
Pam: “You get in there and get them or I’m going to drive my car through that building.”
At which point, Carter and Dillon pulled their blue cards out of their pockets.
“They’d planned it all day,” says Pam. “They wanted to play a trick on their mom and they knew just how to do it.”
She laughed right along with them — as long as they had their blue cards.
Troop 273’s Eagle quest took a sad detour in October 2018 when one of the boys in the troop, Stephan “Bindy” Clark, died. Bindy was Carter and Dillon’s brother. Along with their sister Abigail, the quadruplets all came to Earth on the same day, Dec. 21, 2014. Suddenly, Pam and her husband Stephan went from being a family of two to a family of six.
Because the kids arrived 13 weeks early, there were complications. Bindy had cerebral palsy, limiting what he could do physically. In Scouting, where accommodations are made for special needs kids, he was able to do some of what his brothers did, but not much.
As heartbreaking as Bindy’s passing was, it proved to be another motivator.
“They knew their brother was watching over them and they wanted to finish it for him,” says Pam.
When it came time to choose their service-providing Eagle projects, both Carter and Dillon chose to do things to benefit Primary Children’s Hospital, a place that gave their brother considerable care. Carter made craft kits for kids facing long-term hospital stays, while Dillon served two meals, lunch and dinner, at the Ronald McDonald House.
When Carter and Dillon were awarded their Eagles in July 2019, an honorary Eagle was presented to “a fallen Eagle,” their brother Bindy.
No one was surprised that the Blue Card Lady’s kids were the first to reach the finish line, but there were others now in the home stretch. The spreadsheet kept tracking, the scoutmaster kept leading, and by Dec. 11 another 11 Troop 273ers got their Eagles. Finally, on Dec. 28, two more joined the ranks, beating the deadline by 72 hours.
That’s 15 Eagle Scouts from one troop in one year — 16 counting Bindy.
“I don’t know if that’s a record,” says Ackerson, grinning. “But it could be.”
“I am so proud of all those boys, just so proud. I feel like it’s going to set them up for success the rest of their lives,” says Pam. “They’ve learned to meet deadlines, do hard things, be finishers.”
She also acknowledges it might be a few years before they appreciate all of that.
“The main feedback from the boys?” she says, repeating a question. “They’re glad it’s over. I think it really stressed a lot of them out.”