Some took an hour or two to earn. Others took months. In total, they can’t count the hours it took to join the ranks of the 250 or so Scouts who have accomplished this feat since the 1920s.

“This has kind of consumed his life in a way,” said Stamm’s mother, Marjean Stamm.

Both boys accomplished their goals with similar tenacity, but they followed radically different paths.

Dylan Stamm took a more traditional route to earning his final badge this October.

The son and nephew of Eagle Scouts and the grandson of an assistant scoutmaster, Stamm began in a tight-knit troop that raced to earn merit badges. In April 2007, he read a story in The World-Herald about a kid in Maryland earning all the badges. Soon after, he set his sights on the goal.

“That’s when I knew it was possible,” he said.

He began by earning his wood carving badge by carving a spoon at a camp in Fremont with friends. This fall, his path ended at Iowa Western Community College when he wrapped up his off-and-on pursuit of the theater badge.

In the car ride over from their home in Omaha, father Dave Stamm remembers his son telling him, “I really don’t know what this is going to mean until later in my life.”