Audio clip
Greg Goodman
Greg Goodman said some of the best friends he ever had he met while in the Order of DeMolay.
Members of area chapters of the international organization from the late 1970s and 1980s are invited to meet for a reunion on Saturday, June 27, at Top of the Dock restaurant.
“I met a lot of friends I’ve had for a long time,” said Mr. Goodman, 46, who was in the Red Bank chapter of the group for young men ages 12 to 21. “A lot of them I haven’t seen for a long time.”
He said a recent posting on the Facebook social networking site prompted several responses and the desire for a larger informal gathering.
In the 1980s, Mr. Goodman said, there were four or five area chapters for boys and a similar number of chapters of the International Order of the Rainbow for girls. His chapter had 20 or 25 active members, he said.
Members of both organizations, he said, usually were relatives or friends of members of fraternal organization for adults such as the Masons or the Order of the Eastern Star.
Young men in DeMolay would have twice monthly meetings, take part in community service projects and have dances and parties, Mr. Goodman said.
The organization’s Web site no longer lists a chapter for the Chattanooga area, although 11 are listed for the state.
“It may be an organization whose time has come and gone,” Mr. Goodman said.
Clint Cooper is the faith editor and a staff writer for the Times Free Press Life section. He also has been an assistant sports editor and Metro staff writer for the newspaper. Prior to the merger between the Chattanooga Free Press and Chattanooga Times in 1999, he was sports news editor for the Chattanooga Free Press, where he was in charge of the day-to-day content of the section and the section’s design. Before becoming sports ...
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