Student's Eagle Scout Project Benefits CDH

August 27, 2018

Charlie Groebner ’19 is working toward a rank of Eagle Scout – a rank that is achieved by only four percent of Scouts across the country.

One of the requirements to be an Eagle Scout is to conceptualize and complete a large project that benefits a community. Groebner’s brother, who has already achieved his Eagle Scout rank, did a project for his school, so Charlie figured he would do the same.

LTC James Fischer, head of the CDH JROTC program, recommended that Groebner talk to Dr. Janet Watson, CDH religion teacher. Watson needed to retire some older bibles at the school because the department recently received a number of new ones. Before visiting with Dr. Watson, Groebner researched the process of retiring old bibles.

“The process (to dispose of a bible) is like when a flag is taken out of service,"  Groebner explained. "To dispose of it respectfully, you need to burn it, then dispense of the ashes."   

With Dr. Watson's approval, Groebner planned to burn the bibles at his home. One of his friends helped to load every bible from CDH storage into his car. Once he had the bibles in his possession, he had to fill out paperwork, get the supplies needed, and contact the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and his Fire Department just to make sure it was allowed. When the day finally came to burn the bibles, several of his friends and Scouts came to help with the process.

"I reminded everyone that this is a holy ritual and to not be disrespectful," said Groebner. "So, for over seven hours, we tore pages out of the bindings and burned them in trash cans. In total, we burned 117 bibles, a total of more than 140,400 pages. Most of the ashes were dispersed, however, I buried one can of ashes at the CDH Lourdes Grotto by the Brother’s Residence."

“Overall, this was a unique project because this process is very uncommon these days.”