ANTRIM — There’s something stirring about lines of flags dotting gravestones on Memorial Day. In Antrim, Boy Scout Troop 2 is responsible for putting those flags on all of the veteran’s graves in anticipation of the holiday.

But one Scout noticed that something was missing from some of the graves — the bronze marker marking it as the final resting place of an American veteran.

Ethan Beihl, 17, of Antrim has always felt a connection to the veterans of Antrim. In addition to putting out flags on their graves with his Boy Scout troop, Beihl, who plays the trumpet, has also bugled for Antrim’s American Legion and VFW Post on Veteran’s Day.

When it came time for Beihl, currently a Life Scout, to choose his Eagle Scout project, he already had one in mind. He wanted to catalog all of the graves of Antrim veterans, and ensure that every one of them had that bronze marker.

“They disappear for any number of reasons,” said Beihl. “People take them home to clean and then don’t bring them back, or sometimes scrap prices go up and they just disappear, as sad as that is.”

Ted Brown, Beihl’s advisor for this project, has known him since he was a child. “He is a very dynamic individual, and he’s offering a tremendous service to the town by identifying veterans in the cemeteries,” Brown said.

Brown, also a member of the American Legion, said markers go missing by accident or mistake, and that Beihl is doing a great thing for the town. “He started this over a year ago, and the VFW post and the American Legion certainly appreciate what he’s doing. It’s a service to the community.”

After months of work, Beihl concluded the biggest piece of the project in August — the actual survey of every grave of every veteran in every graveyard in Antrim, a Herculean task. Looking at thousands of graves definitely had an emotional impact on the young man.

“There was one cemetery that we found off Route 31 that had graves for soldiers from as far back as the French and Indian War up until today,” he said. “We found the graves of three brothers who had (fought) in the Civil War (and died) within five years of each other.”

Beihl said the project is all about discovering and preserving such stories. “There’s a lot of history in Antrim, and the only way it’s going to be preserved is with the community’s help,” he said.

Chris Healey, one of the assistant Scout masters of Beihl’s Troop, agrees: “I think it’s great for Antrim. We like our history. When you’re in small towns, a lot of this stuff can get lost and buried under footnotes.”

Beihl discovered that the task of cataloging veteran’s graves was anything but straightforward. With the help of his own troop, and from Troop 8 in Peterborough, he visited every graveyard in Antrim to record the position of graves, both the ones that were clearly war veterans, and ones that merely provided some clues.

Beihl said one of the challenges was coordinating his fellow Scouts effectively as a leader of this project.

“It’s been a lot of leadership development trying to organize the younger Scouts, who might not be as focused, and controlling the older Scouts, who were sometimes trying to run ahead to the next row,” he said. “It’s been a great experience for me.”

Beihl collected all the information and began to look at graves that weren’t clearly recognizable as belonging to veterans. He then cross-referenced that information with records belonging to the American Legion and the Antrim Historical Society.

He also put up dozens of fliers around town asking for help, but was a little disappointed by the lack of response. “I hoped it might help speed up the research,” said Beihl. “But I put up dozens of fliers and I only got one call.”

The fliers did help raise awareness of the project. “I’ve had a lot of people come up and talk to me about it, which is a good thing,” he said. “One of the aims of this project is to raise awareness about those markers.”

Beihl is moving into the final stages of the project, which he hopes to conclude before returning for his second semester as a freshman at Stony Brook University in New York. There are two main sections left to complete.

First, he must compile the mass of information on the graves he’s collected into an electronic format. He hopes to make a booklet of the information for the town library and the American Legion, as well as an on-line database that can be updated as new information comes in.

Beihl hopes to make the on-line database accessible from the town’s website on the Cemetery Commission page. He estimates that this stage of the project will take at least 15 or 20 more hours of work to complete.

In the final phase of the project, Beihl plans to work with the American Legion to set up a fund for donations to replace any missing bronze markers.

Brown says he has no doubt Beihl’s project will meet the necessary standards for the Eagle Scout award.

“It’s a great accomplishment; not many people make Eagle Scout,” said Healey. “It’s great for Ethan.”

This article appears in the Jan. 3, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.