Frank S. Land was one of the greatest youth leaders ever produced by the United States. Certainly few men have had such direct influence on the character building of so many young men as did he. He was a man who had no sons of his own, who devoted his life to the better citizenship and leadership training for other men's sons and was affectionately referred to as "Dad"Land by hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of young men.

     Frank Sherman Land was born on June 21, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. He spent the grade school years of his life in St. Louis Mo., where he began to lay a foundation for the principles of living which would follow throughout his lifetime - principles developed by faithful attendance at Fountain Park Congregational Church Sunday School.

     As a result of his early religious training Frank Land overcame the shyness and timidity that he showed in school. Through holding afternoon Sunday School classes in the basement of his home, he received widespread publicity in St. Louis and was named "The Boy Preacher of St. Louis". When Frank Land was twelve, the family moved back to Kansas City.

     On June 29, 1912, he became a member of Ivanhoe Lodge in Kansas City, which he began an illustrious career in Masonry. He liked the philosophy of Masonry, and he liked the teachings of the ritual. He immediately went through the various appendant Masonic bodies. He became a volunteer in a social service program in the Scottish Rite Bodies in Kansas City.

     It was early in the year of 1919 Frank Land met Louis G. Lower, a sixteen year old boy who had recently lost his father. There was Louie , just at the the age when a boy needs, more than any time in his life, the guiding hand of a man.

     And so it was in the Scottish Rite Temple in March of 1919, that Louie and eight other friends gathered to visit with Frank Land, and the Order of DeMolay was founded, which for all intensive purposes from that day forward became the life of Frank. Land. The new boy's organization for young men 16 to 21 flourished so successfully, that in 1922 Frank Land gave up his social service job with the Scottish Rite and became full time Grand Scribe in the Headquarters of the DeMolay organization.