This Week in Texas Methodist History  April 16

86 Year Old Retired Bishop Boaz Named Grand Chaplain of Grand Lodge of Texas,  1953

One of the Texas Methodist bishops who remained very active in retirement was Hiram Abiff Boaz (1866-1962).  He had been elected bishop in 1922 and served four quadrennia, the first four years in Asia and the last twelve in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arkansas.   He retired in 1938 at the age of 72 and resided in Dallas.  His main recreation was golf, but his passion was fundraising for SMU.  His main emphasis in raising money was building person ties to the Dallas community.  He did not confine his efforts to Methodists but developed friendships with the whole community.  One way he did this was to accept speaking engagements with just about any group that needed a luncheon or after dinner speaker, civic clubs, garden clubs, literary clubs, etc.  You name an audience in Dallas, Biishop Boaz was happy to provide a program.  

In performing this service for SMU, he was returning to the institution he had helped create.  Robert S, Hyer is rightly honored as the founder and first president of SMU, but Boaz was right there with him.  As Hyer was founding SMU, Boaz was president of Polytechnic College in Fort Worth.  Hyer was a physicist and academic.  Boaz was a preacher much more skilled in fund raising than Hyer so Boaz served as vice president of SMU briefly, drawing upon his Methodist preacher connections to raise money for the fledgling university while Hyer was planning the academic side.  After a stint in Nashville with the Board of Church Extension, Boaz returned to Dallas to replace Hyer as SMU's second president.  

He didn't last long in that position as the General Conference of 1922 elected him bishop. 

 His vigorous retirement included his being named the Right Worshipful Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of Texas in 1953 at the age of 86.  His connection with Masonry was lifelong.  Perhaps you have wondered about his given names, "Hiram Abiff".  In his autobiography Eighty-four Golden Years, he explains that those names are significant in Masonry.  He says that Hiram Abiff drew up the plans for Solomon's Temple, and his father, a Master Mason, gave him that Masonic name and "has caused no little interest among Masons and has brought me many favors undeserved."

Boaz died at the age of 95 in 1962 and was buried in Dallas.