By MADDY VITALE
Chase Palermo has achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest honor awarded to the elite Boy Scouts who have proven through determination and perseverance that they are up to the most arduous tasks.
Chase has been in scouting since he was five. His grandfather, Lawrence Silver, was an Eagle Scout. His great-grandfather, Sidney Silver, was also an Eagle Scout.
The 16-year-old from the Merion Park section of Ocean City was honored by Mayor Jay Gillian and City Council at an Oct. 6 meeting, while accompanied by his mother and father, Andrea and Chuck Palermo, and friends and fellow scouts from Ocean City Troop 32.
City Council President Pete Madden read a proclamation honoring Chase, who officially became an Eagle Scout in September.
In recognizing Chase, the proclamation states that the rank shows his “outstanding personal qualities, integrity, courage, perseverance, sacrifice and service to others.”
“The Mayor and City Council extend their best wishes to Chase, his family and Ocean City’s Troop 32 for this special honor and continued success in life,” Madden said.
Chase knew that he wanted to give back to his community and he especially wanted to do something special in his Merion Park neighborhood.
And so he did.
He built a friendship garden – a rock garden with colorfully painted stones and grasses. He also designed a “Welcome to Merion Park” sign, complete with the image of a terrapin. A member of the community donated the sign.
“I made a rock garden, and I made a welcome to Merion Park sign and everyone came and helped paint the rocks with me,” Chase said in remarks to Council. “We dug up where the sign was supposed to be. We put up the sign and everyone helped with the project. It was a lot of fun.”
The garden, which was completed May 1, was no easy task, Andrea Palermo explained.
Chase, who attends ODOSY School in Rio Grande, had to determine the best type of garden and the suitable materials to sustain it in a flood-prone area.
“The place he chose is a lot that has always been empty. It is on 34th Street behind the Acme,” Andrea Palermo explained. “But there wasn’t a lot you could do there. But he wanted to do something for Merion Park. His first thought was planting a garden. He started researching what to do in areas of flood and came up with a rock garden.”
But that wasn’t all that Chase did.
He got in touch with people from a social media group known for creating beautifully painted rocks that they leave about town to spread a bit of joy.
“He reached out to OCNJ Rocks on Facebook. The woman who runs it, helped out and painted rocks and the neighborhood kids helped out, too,” Andrea Palermo said. “It was wonderful.”
“The whole experience was awesome. It was just wonderful walking in the Council Chambers. People kept congratulating him,” his mother said in an interview Sunday. “For a kid to be recognized by adults for doing a great thing was really nice.”
Chase and his family are still working out the details of when he will have his official Eagle Scout ceremony.
For now, he is just happy to have achieved the honor and is looking forward to his next adventure, only this time as an Eagle.
Andrea Palermo said watching her son achieve such a prestigious honor was one of her “proudest moments.”
Chase’s father was equally proud and Andrea Palermo noted that his father has served “as a guiding light.”
“It was one of the best experiences as a mother to see that he could put things together and succeed in doing something that so few people can do,” she said. “Finishing this gave him so much confidence.”
