A local scout is hoping to make a difference for foster children by collecting donated suitcases and other bags.
Grayson Herr, 16, and his fellow scouts from Scouting America Troop 608 collected more than 250 bags — from rolling suitcases and backpacks to duffel bags — at Christ the King Parish, 9235 S. Hamilton Ave., where he and his family are parishioners.
Herr, who will be a senior at Marist High School, planned to coordinate one or more days to clean and sanitize the bags with other scouts from his troop and other friends after returning from camp in July.
The bags will then be donated to Lutheran Child and Family Services. Last year, the agency helped provide foster homes for nearly 2,000 children in Illinois.
Herr said he got the idea from reading an article that mentioned how foster children often have nothing to carry their possessions in when they move from one foster home to another, and can end up using garbage bags or old cardboard boxes, something that can be seen as an affront to their dignity.
“Why let them put their whole world into a five-cent box or bag?” Herr said.
It wasn’t until after he started the project that he learned that his mother, Carla, spearheaded a similar drive for a women’s group she belonged to more than a decade ago.
“I didn’t remember anything about it,” Grayson Herr said.
Carla Herr said the only advice she gave her son was to take each donation with gratitude, but to understand that not all of the bags would be suitable to donate to foster children.
Terry Herr, Grayson’s father, said the family had to move a trailer out of the garage to store all the bags that he has collected. The plan is to do cleanup work and minor repairs under tents on the driveway, Terry Herr said.
Grayson Herr said he hopes to learn how to fix broken zippers by then, because that’s the most common issue he’s noticed with used bags.
Not all of the bags are used, Herr said. While most were taken from people’s attics and closets, new bags have been shipped directly from Amazon.
While the cleaning and sanitizing phase of the project will likely call upon Herr’s leadership skills more than the collection itself, he said he has learned lessons about what it takes to put such a project together from start to finish.
“It takes patience,” he said. “It takes time to do the research. At first, I didn’t know where to take them.”
It also took some time for people to respond to his appeal. Herr said he placed notices about the drive in the Christ the King Parish bulletin, in the Beverly Review and a few other local news sources. It also got picked up by Chicago television news in the days before June 21, when the collection ended, bringing a late influx of luggage.
Herr, who has been a scout since he was in seventh grade, has completed the 13 required merit badges and eight additional badges required to begin working on his Eagle Scout project, and will attend a court of honor when the project is complete. He hopes to receive his Eagle Scout rank in the fall.
His favorite badge, he said, is swimming, because before doing it, he wasn’t as comfortable in the water.
“Now I can just jump in with my friends,” he said.