Teen Ends Scouting Career With Top Honor

Leonardtown High Graduate Receives Hornaday Award for Conservation Work

A St. Mary's County teenager joined the ranks of elite conservationists in the Boy Scouts last week, receiving an award given to only about a dozen Scouts every year.

Jack Fritz, 18, of Leonardtown worked more than 750 hours on four conservation projects to receive the Hornaday Award, named for conservationist William T. Hornaday. It is the Scouts' equivalent of an Olympic gold medal, officials said.

"This indicates that this young man is fiercely committed to conservation and the outdoors," said Alan Lambert, a leader with the Scouts' National Capital Area Council. "We're really proud of him."

Over three years, Fritz's projects have included building boxes to facilitate duck nesting on St. Mary's Lake and maintaining grasses that prevent nutrient runoff on his family's farm. He has also set up bins at Point Lookout State Park for fishermen to discard their used lines and constructed a wildlife observation deck on the Patuxent River.

"I basically had . . . my whole scouting career to do this," Fritz said. "A lot of my friends came out to help me as well. It was like a whole social gathering, I would say, for a very good cause."

Fritz joined the Scouts when he was 7 at the urging of his father, Richard D. Fritz, the state's attorney for St. Mary's. The senior Fritz has been instrumental in his son's projects, providing transportation before he could drive and asking staffers in his office's community services division to empty the fishing-line bins at Point Lookout.

"It works pretty good. It's a program now that has a life of its own," Richard Fritz said.

The impact of Jack Fritz's work was one reason he received the award, said Tim Beaty, who chairs the Scout subcommittee that selects Hornaday winners. Historically, about 30 percent of those who apply for the award receive it, although that number has been closer to 50 percent in recent years, Beaty said, because it has been more widely publicized.

Fritz, who graduated this year from Leonardtown High School, was a member of the Scout troop at St. George's Episcopal Church in Valley Lee. He became an Eagle Scout in 2005. But with three years left before he turned 18 and could no longer remain a Boy Scout, Fritz set his sights on the Hornaday Award.

"I wanted more out of scouting," he said.

His work not only produced improvements in the environment; it also strengthened the bond with his father. The two, Jack Fritz said, shared a "connection to the outdoors."

"It almost became like a religion," Richard Fritz said. "Every Tuesday, don't plan anything. . . . We're gonna have Scouts."

Jack Fritz is no longer a Scout, and his class schedule at the College of Southern Maryland's Leonardtown campus prevents him from leading a troop. He is studying criminal justice, hoping to become a prosecutor, like his father.

He said the Hornaday award is a "complete and utter honor." Richard Fritz, a former Boy Scout, said his son probably won't realize what he has accomplished for some time.

"I don't think he'll realize it till he's about 30 or 40 -- perhaps when he has kids who are in Boy Scouts," he said.