Brother Randolph Scott and his palomino horse, "Stardust"

Born on January 23, 1898, this young man, at age 25, worked quietly on West Tenth Street in Charlotte, North Carolina, as an accountant for Scott Charnley Company. He had graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, after transferring there from Georgia Tech following a football injury. He joined Phalanx Lodge No. 31, the historic first Lodge in his hometown of Charlotte, and in 1923, he petitioned for the Scottish Rite Degrees, Valley of Charlotte.

In the ensuing 64 years, he sustained his Masonic ties, even though his work took him to the West Coast in 1928. He would come home to Charlotte from time to time to visit family, but mostly he worked hard in California-making movies, more than 100 of them, including 42 Westerns.

His full name was George Randolph Scott. Dropping the George, Randolph Scott became one of the most widely known and successful heroes in American film history. His handsome, rugged, six-foot-four good looks, his I-mean-business demeanor, his straight-arrow authority, his respect for women, and his superb good-guy image on his palomino "Stardust" made Randolph Scott the ultimate American cowboy hero.

Once Gary Cooper's dialogue coach in the 1929 film The Virginian, Bro. Scott's big break came in 1936 when he played Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans. Then he achieved undisputed stardom in 1941 with Western Union. After that, there was always another script and another film for him. As a result of his professional success-and his reading of the Wall Street Journal between scenes-he left a quarter-billion-dollar estate to his second wife, Patricia, and children, Christopher and Sandra, when he died in 1987.

He also left behind many best friends, among them Cary Grant, Joel McCrea, Fred Astaire, and fellow Charlottean, the Reverend Billy Graham. Brother Randolph Scott is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte on a hill overlooking the city center.

To Charlotte Masons, he will always be "The Good Guy."

Walter J. Klein is a member of Excelsior Lodge No. 261 in Charlotte, N.C., and of the Scottish Rite Bodies of Charlotte. While working to create a museum at the Charlotte Scottish Rite Temple, he developed the idea that the Hezekiah Alexander House was built as a Masonic meeting hall, and he believes it to be the oldest Masonic structure in America. A member of the Scottish Rite Research Society, he received in 2000 the highest Masonic award in North Carolina, the Joseph Montford Medal, for his services to Freemasonry and America.