ROTTERDAM — Fred Slurff Jr. has joined an elite class of Boy Scouts.

After more than a decade of hard work and determination, the Schalmont student last month completed earning the 21 merit badges needed to become an Eagle Scout, a designation only about 5 percent of all Scouts achieve. He’s among only 45 Scouts to earn the honor since the first member of Troop 54 did in 1962.

“I was the first one on my mom’s side or my dad’s side to be an Eagle Scout,” the broadly smiling student proclaimed after his classes at the Schonowe School this week. “It was hard, but I worked through it.”

But for those who know the amicable 20-year-old, the distinction is far more incredible. Fred, a student in Schalmont and Mohonasen’s joint Community Transition Program, has a cluster of autism-related disorders that hinder his abilities to concentrate on tasks and talk with others.

As a young child, Fred had a vocabulary limited to a handful of words and had extreme difficulty communicating, recalled his mother, Heidi Slurff. As he grew older, she said, symptoms from his disorders made it difficult for him to advance to the middle school level.

Yet when he joined the Boy Scouts in sixth grade, she said, the organization seemed to have the right combination of structure and support to channel Fred’s drive to excel. She said the Boy Scouts motivated her son to follow tasks through to the finish.

“The Boy Scouts have been there through the whole haul,” she said. “Structure is very helpful for kids like this.”

Fred earned his final badge by organizing a cleanup of the Cobblestone Reformed Church off Putnam Road, the church where he’s volunteered since his childhood. He directed a group of Scouts and volunteers in a project to clear dead vines from the church, refurbish a shed and landscape the grounds, a task made more difficult given Fred’s degree of autism.

Fred also completed a merit badge for biking, which required him to pedal 50 miles over the summer. His mother said his disorder had kept him from riding bicycles since his early childhood.

“It was a big accomplishment for him,” she said of his Eagle Scout designation. “He had to overcome many of his hindrances.”

Accomplishing the honor has also motivated Fred to seek another achievement: earning his general equivalency diploma. He was on the path to earn an Individual Education Plan diploma — a tailor-made plan for special education students — at the Neil Hellman School in Albany before deciding to embark on a more difficult path last year.

“I wasn’t satisfied with an IEP degree,” he said. “So I told the teachers that I wanted to come here and get my GED.”

Since starting the program offered at Schonowe, Fred has excelled, said Lisa DeSieno, one of his teachers. She said Fred is one of the most determined students in the program,

As part of the transition program, Fred is attending vocational classes and hopes to start a career as a diesel mechanic. And those who have witnessed Fred’s determination expect that earning his diploma is only a matter of time.

“Fred is definitely a hardworking student,” DeSieno said. “I’ve never met anyone with as much heart as Fred.”