If you want to see the future leaders of Missouri, take a look at the front page of Tuesday's News Tribune.
Hundreds of new Eagle Scouts came to the Capitol for the annual Missouri State Eagle Scout Recognition Day.
This is the cream of the crop. Boy Scouts tends to draw youths with a propensity toward leadership. The organization then polishes these diamonds in the rough.
However, among them, only 4 percent complete the rigorous requirements to earn the top award in scouting: the Eagle Award.
Of the 1,412 Missouri scouts who earned it in 2017, several hundred came to the House of Representatives chambers on Monday to be honored.
Missouri Supreme Court Justice Paul C. Wilson told the young men they, too, would remain lifetime members of the brotherhood.
Wilson, also an Eagle Scout, said his father told him that he could only do two things in high school that would stick with him the rest of his life: "One of them is to become an Eagle Scout. The other is to pick up a felony conviction," he said, quoting his father - long-time Cole County Associate Circuit Judge McCormick Wilson.
Paul Wilson recalled, as a Scout, feeling cold, wet, hungry and exhausted while scouting. Despite that, he remembers "feeling great."
He told them a person's honor is the only thing in his life that is truly his own.
House Speaker Todd Richardson R-Poplar Bluff, also an Eagle Scout, told the scouts it's their responsibility to do "extraordinary things."
They already have: In 2017, Eagle Scouts cumulatively earned 29,841 merit badges, camped 28,240 nights, attended 180,000 troop meetings and contributed more than 221,000 hours to service and Eagle projects.
About 35 of the scouts attending the recognition day were from the Boy Scouts of America Great Rivers Council, which includes Central Missouri.
We congratulate our state's newest class of Eagle Scouts.
We have full confidence they will go on to lead our state in a variety of careers. Some of the Scouts who sat in the House chambers, we presume, will one day occupy those seats as elected officials, working to make Missouri a better place to live.