Eagle Scout project honors “Mr. P” with a native garden, includes time capsule for Bellerose Avenue

When it came time for Pixie Ryan to plan her final Eagle Scout project, she set out with a lofty goal: to build her community back up after a very sad and difficult time. A rising eighth grader at East Northport Middle School, Pixie chose to honor Christopher Pendergast, a beloved district elementary school teacher who inspired countless students during his decades-long fight with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“Mr. P immediately inspired me from the first time he came to our elementary school,” Pixie said during her fundraising effort for the project. “Sadly, Mr. P passed away last October after battling A.L.S. for 28 years, but he leaves behind so much, including his inspiration,” she said.

The final service project performed by an Eagle Scout is meant to represent the spirit of caring and giving. Many focus on a sense of community, and Pixie took a multi-layered approach to hers, guided by Mr. P’s strength and perseverance.

The 13-year-old is currently planning a garden edged with engraved pavers in Mr. P’s memory, to be located in the playground named after him, Mr. P’s Playground, in Veterans Park. At the suggestion of her guidance counselor, Theresa Braun, Pixie contacted Matt Gorman, a Northport resident and co-founder of the Northport Native Gardening Initiative, for assistance in making sure the garden benefited the community. Because Mr. P loved nature, Pixie said, she is working hard to create a garden that has a positive impact on the local ecosystem as well.

She also spoke with Mr. Pendergast’s wife, Christine, and together with Matt made a plan that incorporated Mr. P’s favorite flower, black-eyed Susans, and plants like butterfly weed, common yarrow and purple coneflower, which attract butterflies and hummingbirds.

“Pixie was a joy to work with. She did her research, was well prepared, and was willing to learn,” said Matt. “It makes me feel good about our future, knowing there are young people like Pixie growing up in our community.”

Included in the garden will also be a time capsule for neighboring Bellerose Avenue Elementary School, one of two district elementary schools voted by the board of education to close this year. The other elementary school shuttering its doors is Dickinson Avenue, where Mr. Pendergast was teaching when he received his A.L.S. diagnosis in 1993.

A Bellerose Avenue graduate, PIxie wanted to commemorate her alma mater; the closing of Bellerose wasn’t official at the time, but all signs were leading up to it, she said. Pixie has fond memories of Bellerose, the nature walk and fifth grade field trip to Washington, D.C. are some of her favorites, and her younger brother, Phoenix, just finished second grade there. Her parents, Nicole and Jason, met at Bellerose as kindergarteners.

Pixie knows well the many emotions swirling around the community over the past year: first the pandemic, she said, then Mr. P’s passing in October 2020, then word of the school closings. “The community was so upset, and angry,” she said. “I just wanted to do something positive.”

When Pixie was in third grade, Bellerose Avenue staff and students opened a time capsule buried 50 years earlier. “I thought it was amazing, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world in third grade, I still think it is,” she said. “I wanted to do something like that for the community, for them to remember Bellerose by, for a positive thing to come out of this very sad and difficult time.”

Pixie researched time capsules, and worked closely with school officials, including Bellerose principal Lori Beekman, to help build a time capsule that would commemorate getting through Covid and the closing of the school, and include general memories of the school from teachers and students, she said. Participants shared those memories, wrote letters to their future selves, and a long-term plan was established to make sure a set of directions for the time capsule would be passed on from superintendent to superintendent over time.

The goal is to begin building the garden next month, and to continue honoring Mr. P’s legacy through it, she said. She thought of Mr. P’s positive impact, how he persevered through adversity to become an advocate and inspiration for fellow A.L.S. patients and communities near and far, and hopes that in her small way, she too can “show a positive outcome of a very difficult situation.”

Pixie is a member of Female Troop 218 of Suffolk County Council, BSA. Information on the A.L.S. Ride for Life, which Mr. Pendergast founded in 1997, can be found here: https://alsrideforlife.org.