10/01/2026
We are excited to announce we are now chartered by Forney Memorial VFW Post 9180!
🇺🇸 WE ARE HONORED TO CARRY FORWARD THE LEGACY OF TROOP 339
Forney Memorial VFW Post 9180 is honored to announce that we are now the chartering organization for Scouting America Troop 339 of Forney, Texas, becoming the newest stewards of a remarkable local tradition connecting Scouting, veterans, civic leadership, and service across generations.
Scouting’s roots in Forney reach back more than a century. Newspaper records document two Boy Scout troops active in the community as early as 1921, but the story surrounding the organization that became Troop 339 becomes particularly meaningful when we follow the people who helped build and preserve it.
The land associated with Troop 339 carries some of that history. Later property records trace the Scout tract to land conveyed in 1927 by John M. Lewis and his wife to Miss Kate Lewis. John Madison Lewis was more than one of Forney’s early civic leaders—he was also a veteran. Forney ISD’s historical record documents that Lewis served as a Private in Company A of the 6th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War, returned to Kaufman County in 1865, later served as a county commissioner and member of Forney’s first City Council, and, with his wife Leona, donated land to Forney ISD for the high school completed in 1922. (Lewis Elementary School)
By 1958, another remarkable Forney citizen appears directly in the Scout records: C. L. “Mac” McCuistion Jr., acting as Trustee for the Forney Boy Scouts. The following year, on May 22, 1959, R. E. L. Halford surveyed the 4.591-acre Scout property that would remain tied to Forney Scouting for generations. McCuistion’s obituary fills in the human story behind those old documents: “Mac,” sometimes called Mr. Forney, devoted 50 years to the Boy Scouts, was active in the American Legion, served his community as a volunteer firefighter, and participated in numerous civic organizations. (Dallas Morning News Obituaries)
The veteran connection continued when Vaughn Wood Daugherty American Legion Post 591 became part of Troop 339’s stewardship. Even the name of that Post carries a story that deserves to be remembered.
Vaughn Wood Daugherty was a Forney Marine. Contemporary reporting from 1943 records that he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1939, went overseas in 1940, served in Shanghai, China, and was later sent to the Philippines. He fought at Bataan, was captured following the fall of Corregidor, and died while being held in a Japanese prison camp. The American Legion Post that would eventually become associated with Troop 339 bears his name. (The Portal to Texas History)
That Post itself became part of Forney’s veteran history. The City of Forney records another longtime Post 591 member, Mick Spellman, who served in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945, including service with the 8th Air Depot Group in the African Theater during World War II. He remained a member of Post 591 for more than 50 years and continued giving back to Forney throughout his life. (Forney, TX) In 1986, Post 591 also donated the replica Statue of Liberty that greeted travelers entering Forney on U.S. Highway 80 for decades. (inForney.com)
Against that history, the relationship between Post 591 and Troop 339 becomes much more than a name on paperwork. By 2013, recorded property documents identified successor trustees acting specifically for the Forney Boy Scout Troop, and in 2015 the property was placed with American Legion Post 591 as Trustee for Forney Boy Scout Troop 339. National American Legion Scouting records also independently document Post 591 as the chartering organization for Troop 339, showing 49 Scouts and 38 adults in the troop in 2014. (American Legion)
Through all of those years, however, the heart of Troop 339 remained the people.
John Richard Brown began serving as a leader with Troop 339 in 1985 and spent approximately four decades helping young people grow through Scouting. He served as Assistant Scoutmaster, District Commissioner, District Training Chairman and, before his death in 2025, Troop Committee Chair. (Anderson-Clayton Terrell) Generations of volunteers like John transformed land, buildings, charters and organizations into something far more important: a place where young people learned responsibility, leadership, citizenship and service.
Troop 339 continued leaving its mark on Forney as well. Its Scouts participated in civic life, learned about local government, led the Pledge of Allegiance and completed projects for their community. In 2021, Eagle Scout Hunter Kasper of Troop 339 created the Orienteering Course at Forney Community Park, a project that remains available for the public today. (Forney, TX)
And now, in 2026, Forney Memorial VFW Post 9180 has the honor of becoming Troop 339’s chartering organization.
When we began looking into the troop’s history, we knew we were accepting responsibility for a Scout troop. What the records revealed was something much deeper. Across generations, veterans and civic leaders repeatedly appear alongside the history of Scouting in Forney—people who served their country, came home, continued serving their community, and invested in young people they knew would someday inherit it.
That is a legacy the Veterans of Foreign Wars understands.
Our members know that service does not end when the uniform comes off. The leadership, accountability, perseverance, teamwork and commitment to something larger than ourselves that we learned in military service belong to the next generation as much as they belonged to ours.
So today we accept this charter with gratitude for everyone who carried Troop 339 before us: the early Forney Scouting families and leaders; John Madison Lewis and the generations connected to this land; Mac McCuistion and his half-century of service to Scouting; the veterans of Vaughn Wood Daugherty American Legion Post 591; John Brown and the Scout leaders who devoted decades of their lives; and every parent, volunteer, donor, Scoutmaster and community member whose name may never make it into a newspaper or history book but whose service is represented by one simple fact:
Troop 339 is still here.
To the Scouts and families of Troop 339, we are honored to welcome you into the Forney Memorial VFW Post 9180 family. We look forward to helping write the next chapter with you—the campouts, service projects, leadership lessons, Eagle Courts of Honor and friendships that today’s Scouts will someday tell their own children about.
More than a century after Scouts first gathered in Forney, the tradition continues. And from a Civil War veteran who helped build early Forney, to a hometown Marine who never returned from a Japanese POW camp, to generations of American Legion veterans, Scout leaders and community volunteers, and now to the veterans of VFW Post 9180, there is a thread running through this history:
Service does not belong to one generation. We inherit it, we live it, and then we pass it on.
We are honored that it is now our turn to help carry it forward.
Forney Memorial VFW Post 9180
Scouting America Troop 339
The legacy continues…🫡
