SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Portraying Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the father of scouting, John Eure salutes Monday at the Blue Ridge Mountains Council Service Center in Roanoke.

The connection between Neil Armstrong and Nick Socky, an 18-year-old with hair falling over his forehead, could be drawn Monday night in Roanoke's Boy Scouts headquarters.

On Monday, leaders of the Blue Ridge Mountains Council celebrated 100 years of the Boy Scouts of America with decorous speeches, and Socky stroked the Eagle Scout handkerchief around his neck and listened.

Socky is a Cave Spring High School senior and already knows he wants to be an aerospace engineer. He also knows that America's most famous astronaut was a Boy Scout, too.

"That's one of the things that has inspired me about the Boy Scouts -- that Neil Armstrong was a Boy Scout," he said.

Scouts across the country celebrated the century since Lord Robert Baden-Powell of England, the father of Boy Scouting, exported to America his brand of good citizenship, chivalrous behavior and outdoor skills for young people. Dan Johnson, executive of the Blue Ridge Mountains Council, argued that scouting has given generations a moral compass.

"The skills and lessons of scouting have been time-tested, and today ... the lessons remain not only valid, but crucial to the future of our country," he said.

He invoked American Boy Scout leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Harrison Ford and Walter Cronkite. At the proclamation were some local leaders with scouting backgrounds: U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, Roanoke County Supervisor Butch Church and Vinton Mayor Bradley Grose.

For Socky, leadership in the Scouts has gone beyond his work with Troop 221. For his Eagle Scout community service project, he led 12 other Scouts in making eight cedar benches and landscaping spaces for them at Mill Mountain Zoo.

About the same time, he also led a group in an aerospace program, the Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholars. In a simulation, he managed a team responsible for designing a rocket that would get people to Mars.

Socky has been accepted to Virginia Tech's College of Engineering for next fall, and he said he plans to follow Armstrong's path and become an astronaut.

He explained, "All of these things overlap for me."