Minnetonka Teen's Eagle Award Completes Two-Generation Family Legacy

On Saturday, Hopkins grad Ben Dustman stood in Oak Knoll Lutheran Church and received his Eagle Scout Award, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts. The award made the 18-year-old Minnetonka resident part of a select fraternity of more than 2 million scouts who have earned the award since 1912.

But Dustman’s accomplishment didn’t just welcome him into a scouting legacy; it completed a family legacy going back nearly five decades. The Dustman family has produced eight Eagle Scouts from 1965 to 2013—or every male in the family for the past two generations.

In addition to Ben, there is his father, John Dustman. There are his twin cousins Mike and Geoff Dustman. There is another cousin, Adam Dustman, whose Eagle Scout ceremony a decade ago was the most recent until Ben’s came along. Then there are Skip Dustman, Rich Dustman and Kyle Bennett.

“I think the legacy of it all, to me, that’s more important than the award itself,” Ben Dustman said.

That legacy—which the family has dubbed “joining the Eagle’s Nest”—has turned the ceremony into a family reunion. Relatives have travelled to Minnesota from Virginia Beach to Washington state.

The family tradition introduced Ben to scouting early. He watched Mike, Geoff and Adam received their awards.

“It definitely kind of gave me an early taste of what scouting was like—in the best possible way,” he said.

Ben started in scouting as a Bear Scout in elementary school and denies that his parents put any extra pressure on him.

His father—who earned his Eagle award in 1978 and is the youngest of the five elder Dustman siblings—admits that he felt some pressure as the lone family member with a son who wasn’t an Eagle.

He needn’t have worried, though. Ben had the same persistence as the other men in his family and the same attraction to scouting.

“We all have a tendency to the outdoors. We all enjoy nature. We all have a relationship with God,” John Dustman said.

Yet even with seven Eagle Scouts watching his progress, Ben managed to carve his own path.

This could be seen in his Eagle Scout project. Ben, a soccer player, learned about the Courage Center’s wheelchair soccer program while working on his Disability Awareness merit badge. Where many Eagle Scouts do construction-type projects, he filmed every game at one of the center’s soccer tournaments, mailed copies to each team and put together promotional video that the center used in fundraising.

John Dustman said his only contribution to his son’s Eagle Scout project was the 10 minutes he spent rounding up a power strip.

“I didn’t put a lot of pressure on him; he did this all himself,” John said.

Even though Ben is a newly minted Eagle, he’s already conscious of continuing the legacy. He expects each of his generation’s Eagle Scouts will introduce their sons to scouting and his own award will accumulate ever more meaning as the years go by.

“What it means now is nothing compared to what it’ll mean however many years down the road,” Ben said.

The Thursday night before Ben Dustman’s Eagle Scout ceremony was a long one. He stayed up until 3 a.m. trading stories with his father and cousins Jeff and Adam about their scouting experiences.

Those experiences span decades, but they all have similar points of contact: camping, morals, leadership and more.

“Scouting is a lot about tradition. It’s a lot about making memories,” Ben said. “We all had tears in our eyes at one point or another.”

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