Build To Spill

Couple gives back to vets to honor father's memory

Alexander Scranton smiles when asked about his father Tom.

"I'm just so proud of him because he's the one who's made it. I told him he's like the American Dream."

It would be hard to argue the point.

A state champion golfer at Camden Catholic and a graduate of Glassboro State College, Tom Scranton used his entrepreneurial instincts to become president and CEO of Patriot Environmental Services, a Wilmington, Calif.-based company that specializes in cleaning up oil spills.

He built that company -- which helped clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year -- into a $25 million-a-year business, more money than he could have imagined as a youngster growing up in Merchantville.

But the 51-year-old Scranton is giving something back. He and his wife, Rennie, recently purchased two houses in Strathmere. One is a family summer home, but they're opening the second one to the Wounded Warriors, an organization that provides aid for injured veterans from America's wars.

The idea is to provide those veterans and their families a chance to have a free vacation at the Jersey Shore.

The Scrantons say their inspiration for the project was Tom's late father, Walter, a World War II veteran twice awarded a Purple Heart.

"Because of my dad, we wanted to do something to help the wounded vets," Scranton said. "So Rennie said why don't we buy another home and instead of renting out like most people do, we give it to Wounded Warriors families to try and help them out."

About 30 years after the war, Walter Scranton died from the lingering effects of a wound.

While recovering from his war injuries in an Atlantic City hospital, Walter met Florence, a Red Cross nurse he later married. Florence, 93, now lives in Pitman.

Rennie Scranton said since the family resides in Las Vegas, there was some discussion whether to invest in a shore property.

"We had looked at a few houses around here (in Strathmere) and it was one of those things where we were sitting on a fence, we couldn't decide what to do," Rennie recalled.

"Then a light went off in my head -- that this was a way to honor Tom's dad, to have veterans here.

"We talked about it and we decided it was the right thing to do."

It's been a long but successful climb for Scranton. After attending Camden County College and Glassboro State, he picked up odd jobs, "just trying to find myself," he said.

Toby Keith's latest single weirdly sounds a lot like Built To Spill

It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that Toby Keith’s latest single is called “Made In America,” and that it’s about a feller who flies the red, white, and blue over his farm, has a Semper Fi tattoo on his arm, and only buys products from the good ol’ U.S.A. But what is sort of shocking about “Made In America” is how much it sounds like Built To Spill—specifically the song “Else” from 1999’s Keep It Like A Secret.

A.V. Club contributor Evan Rytlewski wrote about the similarity over the weekend, and while it only really applies to the beginning of the song, it’s pretty uncanny. Compare and contrast for yourself.

Built to Spill Albums, The Normal Years, Perfect from Now On, There Is No Enemy, Live, You in Reverse, Keep It Like a Secret

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