A Tribute to the Life of Frank H. Carpenter - Sour Lake, TX - Murals on Waymarking.com

" Graduating from Sour Lake High School at age fifteen, he received his B.S. in Commerce with Honors from the University of Arizona in 1925 where he lettered in football, and was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and Alpha Kappa Psi honor society. Receiving his law degree from The University of Texas in 1932.

While assessor/collector, business manager and secretary of the Sour Lake ISD Board of Trustees, he met and married the pretty new English teacher Louise Grounds of Huntsville in February of 1937, enjoying fifty-seven years of marriage until her death in 1994. Always civic minded, Mr. Carpenter incorporated the City of Sour Lake and served as its first Mayor from 1939-1946 without pay.

He served two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, representing Hardin County from 1953-1958. At this time he moved his family to Austin which became the Carpenter's primary domicile for the next forty years, while maintaining "Fralise", the Sour Lake residence named after he and his wife Louise. Mr. Carpenter's business interest were widely diversified, with emphasis in banking, oil and gas production, cattle ranching, and rice farming, milling, and marketing.

In 1909 Frank Carpenter Senior and future Texas governor Ross Sterling organized the Sour Lake State Bank, where in 1925, at the age of 21, Frank Junior began a long and distinguished career in banking and finance as assistant cashier. In 1939, Frank Junior became Bank President and later Chairman of the Board, positions he held for thirty-nine years. Sour Lake State Bank had the distinction of being one of the banks, which kept its doors open during the Great Depression.

He formed Fralise Farms, Inc., a rice, soybean and cattle operation, and organized and operated Carpenter Production Company and The Carpenter Corporation to drill and produce oil and gas. Frank Senior had brought in the machinery for the first well in the Sour Lake area at the turn of the century when Colonel Lucas electrified the world with the first gusher at Spindletop, not far down the road. Sour Lake was the second major oil discovery in Texas. Convinced there was still oil in the ground, Frank Junior reopened the Sour Lake Oil Field in the 1950s.

A member of the State Bar of Texas since 1932, a sixty-year Shriner and member of the Royal Order of Jesters, he also enjoyed a sixty-five year affiliation with the Lions Club as a loyal member and former president."