Troop 894: A Brief History

The troop appears to be the third Boy Scout troop at Queen of Angels, our Chartered Organization.  It was organized in 1996 from members of Troop 903 at Luther Memorial church (Wilson and Campbell) when that troop dissolved.

Its first Scoutmaster was Rich Gudmundson.  He was succeeded by David McCarthy.  When David moved on, Rich came back in for a year and was then replaced by John Rogers in March, 2004.  John stepped down at the end of February, 2009, and Jim Garner stepped up and served until August, 2009.  Doug Floyd took up the job at that point and then, in March, 2010, handed the position off to Drake Winters, our current Scoutmaster. 

Over the years, about 150 boys have been members of the troop.  Some stayed only four weeks, some four months or even four years.  Quite a few aged out, that is, they were in the troop until they turned 18.  And a large number of those had joined the troop right out of Webelos and so spent seven years with us.  As one would expect, quite a few of our members have come from the Queen of Angels school and parish but we have and will always welcome families not associated with QOA. 

Our outdoor program includes weekend tent or cabin camping during the school year, along with a variety of single-day events.  Every summer, we spend two weeks at the Chicago Area Council's Owasippe Scout Reservation about 30 miles from Muskegon, Michigan.  We camp there atop Cardiac Hill in site 14 of Camp Wolverine.  Zaxie!

Our high adventure program is designed around backpacking.  The idea is to prepare our Scouts to go on a five-day Midwest Quest trek.  In the past this has been done with the Manistee Quest trek organized by the High Adventure staff at Owasippe and we've done our own trek on the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin.   If a Scout enjoys that, we try to encourage him to head out to the Philmont Scout Reservation the following year for an eleven-day journey.  We try to stay with an alternating year cycle: One year is the shorter Midwest Quest trek, the next is Philmont.  This means that every year we have practice hikes, overnights, and backpacking lessons during meetings.  In this way, we prepare our Scouts for the rigors of back-country trekking.