PARIS — A senior at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School has earned his wings as Troop 130’s newest Eagle Scout after spearheading the repair of a suspension bridge that provides access to the First Congregational Church’s rustic lodge in South Paris.

Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School senior Pendarrin Cayer stands in front of the suspension bridge in South Paris he helped repair as part of his project to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. Evan Houk/Advertiser Democrat

The repairs served as Oxford resident Pendarrin Cayer’s Eagle Scout project, the final requirement he had to fulfill to earn the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America organization, set to be renamed Scouting America early next year.

Cayer said he talked to some people from the church who remember the wooden suspension bridge that spans Stony Brook being there since the 1920s. He said it was re-decked around 2010, but was in desperate need of work before he and other Scouts recently replaced its wooden planks.

“Before we re-decked it, there were holes in it,” Cayer said. “What happens with that bridge is the snow will pile up all the way to the top, and it’ll sit there and rot it out.”

The bridge provides access to the lodge owned by the First Congregational Church of South Paris that local Boy Scout troops use for meetings, camping, and merit badge training.

Cayer said the project was a continuation of his older brother’s senior project at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School that was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Scouts use the lodge and the area around it frequently, he thought repairing the suspension bridge as well as two other land bridges on the property that would always flood would be a nice way to give back and say “thank you” to the church.

“We wanted to make sure the people from the church who use the trail to walk back to the lodge are safe,” Cayer said. “We had extra left over from donations, so we took the extra wood and connected the two bridges.”

Cayer said he utilized many of his woodworking skills, for which he has earned numerous merit badges, and leadership skills in order to direct his fellow Scouts in completing the project.

He noted he has some experience in projects of this type, as he helped his friend and fellow Eagle Scout Matthew Hatch build trail bridges at Western Maine Foothills Land Trusts’ Twin Bridges Preserve in Harrison in 2021 as part of Hatch’s Eagle Scout project.

In Boy Scouts, Cayer learned many survival skills, especially pertaining to camping and building. 

Cayer said he enjoys camping but he is more of a “city person” who doesn’t want to live in the woods but enjoys visiting.

Cayer originally joined as a Cub Scout when he was 11 years old and has worked his way up through the seven ranks, with all the different requirements and merit badges associated with them.

One of the most difficult portions of the Eagle Scout requirements was the paperwork, which Cayer said totaled almost 200 pages he had to fill out about himself, and the final interview with Maine’s Boy Scout Pine Tree Council, which was quite extensive.

“They want to see what you’ve been through,” he said. “They want to know your whole life story.”

Cayer plans to join the U.S. Army Reserves immediately following his 18th birthday to pursue training as a heavy equipment operator, a decision he says “came out of nowhere.”

“I was just going to let life take me wherever it wanted to take me,” Cayer said.

Then, one day, he met with a U.S. Army recruiter at school, was commended for the number of pull-ups he did, and decided joining the service would be a good career move.

Cayer said his dad is ex-military and he always dreamed of joining the Army when he was a kid, before he really understood exactly what that would involve.

As part of the training as a motor transport operator, Cayer will earn his commercial driver’s license (CDL) and gain valuable truck-driving experience. The U.S. Army Reserves will provide him a jumpstart on entering the truck-driving field, which has always been of interest to him. However, Cayer has found that many job openings as a truck driver have initial barriers to entry such as age or prior experience, which the Army will provide him with.

“How do you get experience if you can’t get a job?” Cayer said, referencing the Catch-22 conundrum of the situation.

Cayer has always been interested in cars since he was a young kid, spotting vehicles he liked on the road while riding in the car with his parents and attending car shows with them. He is enrolled in the automotive technology program at Oxford Hills Technical School and has worked for the past year as a service technician at Goodwin Chevrolet in Oxford.

Another important component of Boy Scouts was the leadership skills the program taught Cayer when he served as senior patrol leader. He said this experience showed him how to teach people how to do things on their own “so they don’t have to rely on other people” and how they can be leaders in their own right.

“The senior patrol leader has more control than any of the adults do,” Cayer said. “The adults are there to supervise and make sure everything’s running correctly, but the senior patrol leader does all the work.”

Joining the U.S. Army Reserves will afford Cayer the opportunity to continue exercising those valuable leadership skills, while also maintaining a typical civilian life with a full-time job.

“I’m just dipping my feet in the water. I’m doing Army Reserves, that way the first weekend of the month is the only time I work,” Cayer said. “Then at six years when my contract is up, if I want to go full-time, I’ll go full-time.”