Louis G. Rosenberg, Sr.

Louis G. Rosenberg, Sr., was born in Houston on May 30, 1890. He received his degrees in Gray Lodge: the Entered Apprentice on November 19, 1915, the Fellowcraft on December 18, 1915, and the Master Mason degree on February 5, 1916. He was appointed Junior Steward for 1916–1917 and Senior Deacon for 1917–1918 and was elected Senior Warden for 1918–1919.

Plans to install the officers of all nine lodges of the 30th Masonic District at the San Jacinto Battleground were washed out by weeks of heavy rain, so the four Houston lodges held a joint installation at the Masonic Temple instead. District Deputy Grand Master Fred J. Burkey installed him as the 48th Master, and Secretary Rothwell wrote, “Thus was another link welded in the Masonic chain of Brotherly Love in this city.”

His was the first full year of the postwar boom, and the lodge’s growth was extraordinary. Degree work ran from early afternoon into the night; on March 20, 1920, the Entered Apprentice degree was conferred on 24 men between 2 and 8:50 p.m. A blackboard in the corridor listed every applicant, and a special meeting was called just to examine candidates in their trial lectures. The Secretary’s salary was doubled to keep pace. When the lodge room could no longer seat the membership, Worshipful Master Rosenberg joined a committee with Holland Lodge to study enlarging it or building a new Temple.

The lodge also answered the Grand Master’s call on postwar matters, agreeing to pay its share of the Grand Lodge war relief fund, naming Brother A. Dow to the local War Savings Committee, and assigning Past Master Crooker to compile the service record of every member who had served. It sent $100 to the victims of the September 1919 Corpus Christi hurricane. In March 1920 it witnessed a rare family degree, when Clarence Z. Kowalski was raised by his father and five brothers. Gray Lodge reached its fiftieth year with 753 members, having raised 178 Master Masons that year, and its membership had grown by more than 136% in a decade.

He was a 32° Scottish Rite Mason, a Shriner of Arabia Temple, and a member of Temple Beth Israel. In 1921 he helped design the lodge’s Past Master’s Jewel. He died on January 14, 1970, in the lodge’s centennial year. Dr. Hyman J. Schachtel conducted the funeral, and he was entombed in the Beth Israel Mausoleum with Masonic ceremonies by Gray Lodge.