Forest Preserve Partner Awards Go to Bolingbrook Company and Manhattan Scout

Manhattan Boy Scout Jaden Fehrenbacher accepts his 2020 Appreciation of Partners Award together with his mother, father and younger brother. From left to right are Forest Preserve Board President Joe VanDuyne; Jackie Fehrenbacher; Conyer Fehrenbacher; Tony Fehrenbacher; Jaden Fehrenbacher; and Ralph Schultz, the Forest Preserve’s chief operating officer.

A Bolingbrook company and a Manhattan Boy Scout were both recently awarded 2020 Appreciation of Partners Awards by the Forest Preserve District of Will County’s Board of Commissioners.

Crane Nuclear was selected for the award after 43 of the company’s employees participated in two volunteer workdays to open the view of the DuPage River along the trail at Riverview Farmstead Preserve in Naperville. Crane officials said the company was looking for a way to give back to the community during the pandemic and working outdoors at the Forest Preserve site was the perfect opportunity because employees could wear masks and social distance from each other. Crane employees cut and hauled small trees and tree limbs to the trail’s edge for wood chipping, and their efforts cleared an area nearly eight car-lengths long.

Boy Scout Jaden Fehrenbacher, a member of Troop 49 in New Lenox, was chosen to receive the award for his Eagle Scout project, which involved organizing a team to repair a dilapidated trailside shelter built by the Civilian Conservation Corps decades ago at Hammel Woods in Shorewood. He supervised reconstruction of the Hammel Woods shelter’s limestone pillars and the complete redesign and construction of a new roof. The structure’s roof and top two feet of each column had been absent for decades. The project took 182 hours to complete.