Here’s an early Veterans Day story with a local angle: 15-year-old Wellesley resident Max Morelli is being honored this month as a new Eagle Scout, a recognition earned in part through a service project that involved interviewing 10 military veterans.
The veterans’ stories were captured on video and have been archived as part of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress, where they are now available for future generations.
Morelli, whose achievement of Boy Scouts of America’s highest rank, will be celebrated on Oct. 25 at a ceremony at the Italo-American Club in Wellesley. He received his official Eagle Board of Review recognition as an Eagle Scout in May.
For his Eagle project, the Troop 185 member conducted and recorded interviews of veterans who served in conflicts ranging from World War II to the most recent deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interview subjects included veterans George Ecker and Ronald (Chuck) Tiberio, both residents of Wellesley, as well as Bill Mills-Curran, who resides in Westborough but is actively involved with scouting leadership in Wellesley. The remainder of the interviews took place in St. Simons Island, Ga., where Morelli’s Eagle Scout grandfather helped arrange things during school holidays.
In his Eagle Scout application, the Beaver Country Day School 9th grader stated:
My project was inspired by important veterans in my family: my grandfather, Donald Morelli, a 2-star Army general; my great-uncle, George Kane, a World War II POW; and Buck Good, my grandfather and a Navy veteran injured in a blimp crash in 1956. My grandfather Good and my great-uncle Kane were both Eagle Scouts. George Kane attributed his survival of the Bataan Death March and four years as a prisoner of war during World War II to the training he received in Boy Scouts.