May 9th, 2024
At age 4, I was diagnosed as cognitively delayed with a hearing impairment. However, my parents, family and friends focus more on my abilities than my disabilities. I am always happy no matter what is going on with my life. That wasn’t always the case though.
We had to go through many years of doctor and hospital visits to fully understand what was actually happening with me. We spent a lot of time at Children’s Wisconsin. There I was seen by many top notch specialists that worked with my parents to ensure I received the best care possible. I am now 19 years old and am working on achieving my Eagle Scout. My older brother got into scouting and achieved his Eagle Scout. As someone I’ve always looked up to, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. It’s been a long, tough road to get to this point, but as my Scout Leader has told me, “It’s all about doing your best!”
I started collecting pop tabs at the campground that my parents and I go to on the weekends during the summer, and decided that I would do an Eagle Scout project benefiting the Ronald McDonald House. While my family and I have never stayed there, I wanted to help families that do need that kind of assistance so that they can just focus on family.
My project consisted of three parts. The first was an educational piece where I presented the benefits of the Ronald McDonald House and why it’s a good cause to my scout troop and the campground that donated towards the project. The second part was a pop tab donation drive with the goal of collecting 100 pounds of tabs. While I thought, (along with my Dad), that the goal was crazy, and while we haven’t weighed them yet, we believe that we have over 200 pounds of tabs in our garage! The third and final part of the project was to build pop tab collection boxes, which will be given to a school so that we can continue to drive the importance of donating to such a good cause.
I led the assembly of the collection boxes with support from my troop and my family. As you can see, we were able to complete seven boxes for the school. Dad said we should build one more for the campground so we can continue to collect there as well. I think they turned out great! I struggled at times during this project because it was out of my comfort zone, but I had the support of a lot of people to help.
Lucas Manke
Lucas delivered the collection boxes to St Mary’s Catholic Church in Neenah in April, and his final collection total was 115 pounds!