For over 50 years, Mount Pleasant Mayor Troy Barnhardt has been training the future leaders of the community.
He’s offered his time to the Boy Scout of America on the district level, as well as helping Life Scouts reach the Eagle Scout level.
Barnhardt is running unopposed in Mount Pleasant’s mayoral race in the 2007 municipal elections.
“I think it teaches young men morals,” said Barnhardt, 64, of the Scouts. “I think, in today’s environment, we teach them how be self-sufficient — how to cook for themselves.”
Barnhardt, who’s been mayor for six years, helps Boy Scouts make the step into Eagle Scout by guiding through their final service project.
“It’s got be something big,” he said.
Recently, he helped a scout remodel the facade of an American Legion.
“He made it look very nice,” Barnhardt said.
Barnhardt had led Boy Scout troops on camping expeditions in New Mexico and Maine.
And recently, he traveled with a group of scouts to an international scouting conference in London, called the World Jamboree.
As part of the trip, they visited Brownsea Island, where scouting was founded by Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell, Barnhardt said.
The camping trips he’s taken with the scouts only consisted of “what you can carry on your back,” Barnhardt said.
Aside from the Scouts and roughing it while camping, Barnhardt also enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.
“We just like to have fun with the grandchildren,” he said.
He’s taken the average family trips to locations like Disney World, which he noted as a different kind of “roughing it.”
“It’s just rough on your pocketbook,” he said.
Barhardts also enjoys volunteering around the community. He’s rang the bell for the Red Cross of America and helped with projects for C-VAN.
Lillard Long has been a fried of Barnhart for 40 years, beginning when the two worked at CT Communications together.
“I think he’s a very honest guy and very sincere guy,” Long said. “Through the years, you rarely find somebody that’s consistent for that long. I find him the same person today that I did 40 years ago.”
-Eric Deines
