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The owner and author of the material found on this web site is David L.
Peavy. David joined Scouting as a Webelos Scout in Cub Pack 280, chartered by his parish church, Holy Ghost Catholic Church. Upon earning his Arrow of Light, he joined his church's troop (Troop 280). During
his time as a Boy Scout, he earned the Ad Altare Dei and Pope Pius XII Catholic religious emblems. While working on the PPXII program, he learned about the diocesan Catholic Committee on Scouting
(Galveston-Houston diocese), and was selected to be the Committee's first Youth Member on its board. He would continue to be a member of the diocesan board for 17 years.
After earning his Eagle Scout Award and turning 18, David became an Assistant Scoutmaster for his troop, as well as
the Troop's Advancement Chairman. After completion of basic adult leader training, he joined his local scouting district's training team. While an Assistant Scoutmaster for his parish's troop, he also served
for 6 years as an Assistant Scoutmaster for an inner-city troop (Troop 994), chartered by another Catholic parish.
It was during his work with Troop 994 that David served as a Unit Commissioner for that troop's inner-city Scouting
district and later as that district's Camping Chairman. Later, he served as Scoutmaster for his parish's troop. Somewhere during this period, he found time to attend Wood Badge and complete his ticket,
earning his Wood Badge beads as a member of the Eagle Patrol!
As mentioned before, David was a board member for his Diocesan Catholic Committee for 17 years. During that time, he
served as Secretary, Vice-Chairman, and Chairman of the Diocesan Committee. As there are two BSA councils within the diocese, for many years there were two council Catholic Committees on Scouting. David
served on the Sam Houston Area Council (SHAC) Catholic Committee on Scouting as Treasurer and Vice-Chairman, as well as the committee's representative on the SHAC's first Relationships Committee.
Eventually, the council committees were dissolved by the diocesan committee.
It was the religious emblems program which introduced David to the Catholic Committee. Consequently, he not only became a Religious Emblems (RE) Counselor, but served and
chaired numerous training courses for RE Counselors. As the Scouter Development (SD) program was required for becoming a RE Counselor, David not only completed the SD program, but attended the National SD
Training School (1982) in New Orleans. As a nationally trained SD Facilitator, he served on numerous SD courses as a staff member and director for courses in his diocese, as well as several other dioceses in
the region.
His first exposure to the National Catholic Committee on Scouting (NCCS) came when he attended a NCCS Biennial Conference. At this conference he was invited to join the
National Religious Emblems Committee and from then on, was heavily involved in the committee's work. He was later appointed the Advisor to the RE Committee and became a member of the NCCS's Executive
Board. After serving as the Advisor on the Committee for four years, he was appointed the Chairman of the Committee. During his tenure on the Committee, the Committee produced major revisions of the Parvuli Dei, Ad Altare Dei,
and the Pope Pius XII programs. The Committee also approved the creation of the Light of Christ program for Tiger Cubs, which was fundamentally based on a program he helped develop for the Galveston-Houston diocese with Anne Bryant -- Agnus Dei.
A particular project of his was the training of RE Counselors. The lack of an adequate resource for diocese to develop their counselor training programs resulted in his authoring a new publication: Religious Emblems Reference Manual.
After serving for fourteen years on the RE Committee, he was elected a Vice-Chairman of the NCCS.
During his involvement with the Catholic Committee, David served on the staff of countless diocesan Scout/Explorer Retreats, as well as the NCCS Philmont Training
Conference. He was awarded the Bronze Pelican and the St. George Awards from his diocese and the Spes Mundi-O'Connell and Golden Ad Altare Dei Awards from the NCCS.
He started his research on this project in 1990. Originally, it was focused on the history of the Religious Emblem programs. However, once that was accomplished, he
realized that an in-depth study of Catholic Scouting had never been researched, much less written. Since he had spent countless hours in his previous research, what was more countless hours? And so it
continues . . .
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