VIDEO: A Tarboro 16-year-old raised more than $22,000 for his local volunteer fire department as part of a project to become an Eagle Scout.
If it wasn’t for Will Wooten’s hard work, leaders of the Heartsease Volunteer Fire Department said they wouldn’t be able to fight fires safely.
“I was not expecting this at all,” Wooten said. “It’s just a really great thing.”
This spring, a service project was all that stood between Wooten and the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest level in the Boy Scouts of America organization.
The project would need to make an impact in Wooten’s community, and his father came to him with an idea.
“We were kind of thinking about ideas on what to do for the project, and he said Heartsease is really struggling right now,” Wooten said.
Wooten found out that the nearby Heartsease Volunteer Fire Department was in desperate need of new turnout gear, the protective suits firefighters wear in the field.