By Kate Pastor
At age 10, he decided that instead of just watching television, he would use the time to pen nearly 100 fan letters to the celebrities he saw on screen, requesting autographs.
In high school, he spent his summers working in a real estate office, and during the school year he served not only as the editor-in-chief of the Oceanside High School paper, The Fider Press, but also as its advertising director.
"I just like to keep myself busy," he said.
Yet despite his record of achievement and can-do attitude, no one thought Goldsmith would pull off his latest accomplishment: earning 121 Boy Scout merit badges - the maximum number offered by the organization - by his 18th birthday. Nobody, that is, except his late grandmother, Celia, who gave him the idea in the first place and in whose honor he earned them.
"Shawn, there's no reason you shouldn't try to attain all the badges," he recalled his grandmother, an Oceanside resident, saying.
But it was clearly a race against time.
Goldsmith, also an Oceanside resident and a member of Troop 240 in Riverdale, N.Y., had already earned 62 merit badges, in areas from first-aid to fingerprinting, by the age of 17 with Troop 303 in Oceanside. That's already almost triple the number he needed to achieve the Boy Scout's highest rank of Eagle Scout. But it took him nearly five years.
According to Boy Scout rules, members have until their 18th birthdays to earn badges. So, he had half a year to more than double the number of badges on his sash.
And he was up against another, less reliable clock, too.
Goldsmith wanted to earn the remaining 59 badges while his grandmother, who was battling lung cancer, was still alive.
While there was doubt, Goldsmith used the words of his friend and Riverdale Scoutmaster Joseph Acquafredda as inspiration: "I have a vision of what future success looks like. If you can see it, you can be it."
Earning the remaining badges meant challenging himself to complete activities he never would have dreamed of trying.
"I've never done water skiing. I've never done rock climbing. I've never held a shotgun," he said. But there was a first time for everything.
The summer before he went away to SUNY Binghamton as a college freshman, he began hopping from one Boy Scout camp to another - almost getting knocked down from the recoil of a shotgun, getting queasy from the insect study he had to undertake and surviving alone in the wilderness - to earn the remaining outdoor badges. Rules dictate that scouts cannot earn all their badges at one camp.
After spending several weeks in a handful of Upstate New York camps, scaling walls, making a monkey bridge out of rope and branches and learning to sling arrows, the scout was 31 badges shy of his goal.
"They thought I was sick," he said of his fellow campers.
To earn the rest, he needed to meet with individual counselors throughout New York City and Long Island, where he had to prove his skills in areas like stamp collecting, skating and sculpture.
Of all the badges that Goldsmith worked hard to get, his favorite is public speaking. Goldsmith says that the public speaking merit badge has had the greatest impact on his life.
"Mr. Acquafredda was my merit badge councilor for the public speaking merit badge, and that merit badge has affected me most in my life," Goldsmith said. "And it helps me do what I'm doing right now, and because I want to do a career in business and politics, it's just really important to me."
With a month to spare before his birthday, Goldsmith was able to pin the final badge to the sash across his chest. Unfortunately, his grandmother died in August before he completed his goal, with only 18 badges to go.
On Dec. 19, he was recognized at a Riverdale Troop 240 dinner, and was invited to a Hanukkah party by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg three days later.
"It was just a great honor because I promised my grandmother I'd get all the merit badges and meet [Bloomberg], because she knew I idolized him," Goldsmith said. "He's the ultimate businessman and politician. So that just capped off everything."
He wears the merit badges in two sashes over his shoulder. One holds the badges he earned before his race against the clock and the other is for those he earned for his grandmother.
The irony is that scouts are no longer permitted to wear the sashes after their 18th birthdays. Still, he's got plenty of memories to carry with him.
"It was a long experience and there are a lot of people to thank, but my grandmother is the one who stuck her neck out first," Goldsmith said.
Alex Costello contributed reporting for this article. This article originally appeared in the Riverdale Press, a part of the family of Richner Communications publications, on Jan. 1. Questions about this article?
ACostello@liherald.com
