Jack S. Luckie

Jack S. Luckie received his degrees in Gray Lodge in 1904: the Entered Apprentice on April 26, the Fellowcraft on June 7, and the Master Mason degree on July 6. The following year he was appointed Senior Steward. He then served as Junior Deacon, was elected Junior Warden for 1907–1908 and Senior Warden for 1908–1909, and was installed as the 38th Master in 1909.

Past Master J. R. Cade installed him, with Past Master O. M. Longnecker as Marshal. The minutes called the “most pleasing feature of the evening” a visit from R. M. Elgin, the oldest living Past Grand Master of Texas, who had been raised in Austin Lodge No. 12 on St. John’s Day 60 years before. The lodge honored him with the private grand honors.

It was a hot summer. The lodge spent $9 on a fan for the Master’s station, and on August 18, 1909, Houston reached 108 degrees, the hottest day in the city’s recorded history. On September 12, 1909, Past Master John Sydenham Wilson, 33°, the first Scottish Rite Mason in Houston to receive the 33rd degree, died, and Worshipful Master Luckie appointed the veteran D. E. Bloxsom as acting Treasurer. The lodge’s charity reached from Houston, where it paid for the care of a member’s widow, to Guthrie, Oklahoma, where it covered the burial of a member who died there.

In April 1910 a Masonic Relief Board was established again, in partnership with Holland Lodge No. 1. In May Brother C. H. Milby presented the lodge with a stone from King Solomon’s quarry at Jerusalem, brought back from his travels in the Holy Land. On June 2, 1910, many Gray members joined Holland Lodge for the presentation of “The Traveling Trowel,” which the Grand Lodge of New York had started on its journey in 1895. By the end of his year Gray Lodge counted 276 Master Masons, and Houston was celebrating federal funding to complete the Houston Ship Channel.

Soon after his term the lodge presented him with a Past Master’s Jewel. In 1921, although Gray Lodge had made all its Past Masters life members, Brother Luckie demitted on October 19 to help form Woodland Lodge No. 1157, which was chartered on December 6, 1921, with J. S. Luckie as its charter Master. He died on November 23, 1945.