Ocoee brothers named Eagle Scouts, scouting's highest honor

For brothers Alex and Chris Cotter of Ocoee, the Eagle Promise of “Once an eagle, always an Eagle” truly will apply for life.

These two made this promise and accepted the Eagle Charge and Eagle Patch at an Eagle Court of Honor ceremony Aug. 10. After this ceremony, the two became Eagle Scouts, the highest rank scouts can achieve, which only 4% of Boy Scouts do.

Alex, 16, and Chris, 15, began as Boy Scouts at age 11. They have journeyed around the nation and across the Atlantic Ocean in their hundreds of scouting ventures.

Along the way, they have earned merit badges in cooking, golf, motor boating, water sports, chess and sculpting, among 108 badges for Alex and 107 for Chris. They have considered pursuing the full set of 138 badges.

“The one of the 138 that might be most difficult to obtain is snowsports,” said Dianna Cotter, their mother, alluding to the rarity of snow in Florida.

That has not stopped the brothers on their adventures before, though.

“At the International Scouting Centre (sq) in Switzerland, we did an overnight hike to a cabin,” Alex said. “Snow was blocking a mountain pass, so we had to go back down, but the views were beautiful.”

Instead of letting the snow spoil the hike, the Cotters embraced it by building a fort and having a snowball fight.

They also embraced the opportunity to meet scouts from myriad countries: Norway, Denmark, Turkey and Japan among them. The Cotters were able to trade patches and neckerchiefs with these scouts, resulting in a unique collection.

Oh, and they swam in an icy lake.

“We swam in the glacier-fed lake there for a polar bear swim patch,” Alex said. “It numbed you—you can’t feel anymore, it’s so cold.”

Other journeys have included a farm mechanics class in Tennessee, the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, sailing with scouts in a Bahamian village, canoeing in the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Canada and camping in Georgia and New Mexico.

Alex has camped for 231 nights, breaking a longstanding Troop 225 record of 197 nights, and Chris has camped for 170. Chris said most scouts did not reach 100 nights of camping.

“The one that stands out for me is a geocaching trip that turned into a campout,” Alex said. “We decided to camp through a tropical storm at Sebastian Inlet. I don’t know what we were thinking.”

The boys believed they were fueled by passion, which they inherited primarily from their father, Jim Cotter, another Eagle Scout and the assistant scoutmaster of Troop 225. Dianna has been part of the troop committee, as well.

Troop 225 meets at First Baptist Church Windermere, where Alex led his Eagle Project, a replacement of 119 feet of railing at the chapel that required more than 600 hours of work.

Chris built three benches and planted 4,000 donated caladium bulbs with his troop for Nehrling Gardens in Gotha for his Eagle Project.

As a reward for completing these projects and becoming Eagle Scouts, the boys received eagle rings as a surprise gift, in lieu of high-school class rings, Dianna said.

Another reward Alex and Chris found was a potential calling for each of them. While they earned their chemistry, engineering and computer programming badges, the brothers felt passionate enough about these interests to pursue them as careers.

They selected different badges as their favorite moments, though.

“The one I remember most is the law badge,” Alex said. “We held a mock trial of about 30 of us in the troop. We put one member on trial for murdering another. It was interesting to see the arguments, counterarguments and all the legal stuff.”

Chris’s favorite was welding, which Dianna said they had taken an interest in because her father had been a lifelong welder.

“I got to use a plasma cutter to make my initials,” Chris said. “We made a metal fish out of parts, cutting; bending and welding it ourselves, and made our own cups.”

Chris said he and Alex tried to earn the same badges together in the interest of time and convenience. Once they finish earning badges, both plan to remain involved with troops as a means of giving back to the program and continuing the tradition, and Alex said he would consider becoming a scoutmaster.

“Boy Scouts offered us a lot of opportunities,” Chris said. “Each merit badge is a little window or insight into each of those things.”