The Golden Age · 1930–1935
Texas’s champion teenagers
1933
From the source
DE MOLAY POST ELECTS OFFICERS. Reagan Chapter Picks Louis Thomas Jr. as Councilor.
“Reagan chapter is the largest and one of the most active in the state, having for the past two years won the state championship in competitive degree work.”
Houston Post, January 1, 1933, p. 2. Clip 1193706129, research archive.
The Order of DeMolay was founded in Kansas City in 1919 by Frank S. Land, a Masonic youth movement named for Jacques de Molay, the last grand master of the medieval Knights Templar. Chapters attach to sponsoring lodges, and Reagan Lodge chartered its chapter on November 8, 1921, in the frame hall that stood here before the temple. It grew into Houston’s oldest chapter, and 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 temple’s second floor was drawn for them from the start, with the youth orders’ own lodge rooms and the ballroom that carried the chapter’s name.
The dynasty had a long tail. The chapter fielded baseball and basketball teams in the twenties, initiated a thirty-boy memorial class in 1964 after an advisor died in a car crash, and marked its 45th anniversary in 1966 as Houston’s oldest chapter, over 400 members strong, second largest in the state. The papers covered its installations like sports seasons, portrait photographs and all.
The source
