Peterson was born in 1925 in
Warren, Pennsylvania. He played baseball while attending
Upsala College, and later was a writer and editor with the
New York World-Telegram newspaper, which folded in 1966. Peterson's 1970
chronicle of
Negro league baseball entitled
Only the Ball Was White was hailed by
The New York Times as having "recaptured a lost era in baseball history and a rich facet of black life in America". The baseball commissioner at the time,
Bowie Kuhn, later credited Peterson's book with having "focused greater attention on the accomplishments of Negro League players", leading to their admission to the
Baseball Hall of Fame. In it, he discusses the history of Scouting's various programs, such as the founding of the
Order of the Arrow by
E. Urner Goodman, and the influence
Ernest Thompson Seton's successful use of
American Indian culture in his
Woodcraft Indians program had on Scouting's early development, particularly the Order of the Arrow. Peterson also wrote numerous articles for
Scouting magazine in the 1970s–1990s, such as a tribute to
William Hillcourt in 1985, acclaiming the influential BSA leader as "the foremost influence on development of the Boy Scouting program". He subsequently wrote another article for
Scouter magazine about Hillcourt in 2001. Among the articles Peterson penned for the BSA's
Scouting magazine was an account of Scouting activities in the
Japanese-American internment camps during
World War II. Peterson died of
lung cancer on February 11, 2006, in
Salisbury, Pennsylvania, survived by his wife Peggy and a son and daughter. At the time of his death, he was on a
committee selecting Negro league players for the
Hall of Fame. ==Bibliography ==