Texas’s champion teenagers

Chapters attach to sponsoring lodges, and Reagan Lodge chartered its chapter on November 8, 1921, in the lodge’s first hall at this corner. Houston Chapter No. 201 had been instituted a month earlier, on October 11, 1921; Reagan’s was the Heights chapter. By New Year’s Day 1933 the Post could report it the largest in Texas.

Competitive degree work is exactly what it sounds like: teams of teenage boys memorize the order’s full ceremonial ritual, pages of it, and perform it in statewide competition, judged on precision, delivery, and floor work. Reagan’s boys held the Texas title two years running. The new temple was drawn with lodge rooms for them on its third floor, and its ballroom carried the chapter’s name.

The dynasty had a long tail. The chapter fielded baseball and basketball teams in the twenties, marked its 45th anniversary in 1966 at the lodge’s hall on Heights Boulevard, over 400 members strong, second largest in the state. The papers called it Houston’s oldest chapter; Houston Chapter No. 201 was a month older. The papers covered its installations like sports seasons, portrait photographs and all.