Behind every 17-year-old high school senior trying to balance friends, church, school, homework and plotting his Eagle Scout badge project is a grandmother.

Edward Morant began planning his project - the revitalization of a neglected memorial to firefighters in Hempstead - with his grandmother Carolyn Morant, the vice chair of Troop 300 of Hempstead, encouraging him along the way.

"What better Eagle project could you ask for than honoring these fallen firefighters that gave their lives for us?" Carolyn Morant said in a recent interview.

Enter Jeff Spencer, the fire inspector for Hempstead Village. When he was approached by Scoutmaster Timothy Turner at a meeting about what a Boy Scout could do for an Eagle badge project, Spencer mentioned the neglected memorial to fallen firefighters near the fire department's training center.

Weeds had started to grow between the red and white brick walkway and in the individual flower beds honoring each of seven firefighters who died in the line of duty - including two on Sept. 11, 2001, and one in the 2001 Father's Day fire in Astoria, Queens.

Their names are on a plaque at the center of the memorial: Durrell Pearsall Jr. and Michael Kiefer, who both died at the World Trade Center, and Brian Fahey, who served as Hempstead volunteer fire chief and died in the Father's Day blaze - all firefighters with the FDNY. And Richard Power, who died in 1932; Jan Watela, who died in 1979; Scott Laverty, who died in 1991, and James O'Neil, who died in 2005 on the way back to the station after battling a house fire in Hempstead.

Two benches at the focal point of the memorial sat broken and grimy. Metal signs, each bearing one of the firefighters' names, were laden with rust.

"It didn't look like a memorial. It was in bad shape," said Edward Morant, who attends Uniondale High School. "There was garbage all over the place."

Faced with organizing volunteers, gathering the necessary materials and scheduling the days to work, Morant spent two months trekking to his grandmother's house after school to plan the project, then on to the memorial. Once he had a plan, he presented it to Boy Scout leaders May 4 - and waited to hear if they would accept it.

A day later his project won their approval. The timing couldn't have been better: Memorial Day was approaching and, with it, the annual fire department parade that ends at the memorial.

Just five days before the parade, Edward was joined by other Boy Scouts, fire department volunteers and, yes, Carolyn Morant, to give the memorial a much-deserved face-lift.

Edward directed his crew to plant flowers between bushes that line a walkway and paint the two decrepit benches in red, white and blue. They plucked weeds from the walkway, flower beds and around the bushes, put red bricks around the individual memorials and stationed solar-powered spotlights to illuminate new bronze plaques.

For five afternoons, they dug, weed-whacked, swept and sweated.

The project didn't end with the final sweep of the pathway. Scout leaders of Troop 300 said maintaining the memorial will be the troop's responsibility in the years ahead. The Scouts plan to work toward their community service badge by making sure the memorial doesn't return to the scene of neglect it was in before Edward Morant - and his grandmother - arrived.

"The people will now admire it so they don't litter or do anything, so we can keep this up," Edward said.

The troop had its beginnings five years ago when Richard Montrose, the deacon of St. George's Episcopal Church in Hempstead, asked parishioners to form a Boy Scout troop. Carolyn Morant took the lead, and now her grandson is due to become the troop's first Eagle Scout.

"I love what Scouting has done for him, and what it's done for all of these other boys," Carolyn Morant said. "All of the boys have become my grandkids."

She said involvement in Boy Scouts and work toward the coveted Eagle Scout badge had been especially meaningful for Edward.

"I see qualities in him that I'm sure were hidden, that Scouting was able to bring out," she said. "Scouting has started to mold him for the productive, caring man he is going to be."