CDP Employee Receives Highest Honor in Loyal Order of Moose

A Center for Domestic Preparedness staff member was recently promoted to one of the highest positions within the Loyal Order of Moose (LOOM).

Woody Davis, the Operations Officer at the Chemical, Ordnance, Biological and Radiological Training Facility (COBRA TF), recently received the Pilgrim Degree of Merit, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of the order. The honor is a degree bestowed upon members for their extraordinary service to the order. The order has more than 1 million male members internationally, of which less than 3,000 serving members hold the Pilgrim degree, Davis said.

Davis has been a member of Anniston (Ala.) Moose Family Center (Lodge 1669) for 27 years. Davis joked that he joined the lodge for all the wrong reasons. In 1986, he was an Army drill sergeant stationed at Fort McClellan, the Army base in Anniston. With a population of less than 30,000, Anniston is a small community. When Davis would take his family out to dinner, he was constantly running into the soldiers he was charged with training, an uncomfortable situation for both parties who were trying to enjoy their off-duty hours away from the base. “I would be out with my family and constantly having to make on-the-spot corrections. It was a very uncomfortable situation,” Davis said. His solution was to join a private, family-oriented organization far away from the soldiers in training.

Davis retired from the U.S. Army and returned to Anniston and the Loyal Order of Moose where he continues to be an active member. One of the LOOM’s core competencies is community service in order to make their communities better places in which to live. In the first nine months of Fiscal Year 2013, the LOM provided more than $11 million in cash donations and community service hours that would equal up to more than nearly $25 million.

Davis’s lodge provides monetary support from fund-raising efforts to support several charitable organizations. The Anniston Lodge members support the local community. One of the lodge’s events in which Davis is very active is the annual Valentine’s dinner and dance for members of the ARC, a local association that support mentally disabled adults. The lodge pays for and sets up the dinner/dance which is attended by more than 200 adults who have some varying degrees of retardation. “Many of those who attend live in group homes. The group home staff members drive them to the lodge for the dinner,” Davis explained. “We want to give them the opportunity to enjoy some of the simple pleasures in life.”

The lodge also provides financial support to women and children’s shelters, hosts an annual fishing derby that has going into its third decade, and provides assistance on an as-needed basis to individuals and families.

Davis is very active in raising money for United Cerebral Palsy by running the annual “road block” for the past 20 years. During the road block, members of the lodge stage at a designated road intersection and solicit donations for Cerebral Palsy from the passing motorists. Last year, the Anniston Lodge’s two-day efforts netted $4,000 for the organization.

It was Davis’s hard work on behalf of the order that earned him the Pilgrim Degree of Merit, a reward for dedication, commitment, and outstanding service to the order.