Quorum Architects rented out a theater to go watch the story of the Masonic Home, "12 Mighty Orphans," with their friend and colleague Arthur Calcaterra, who was raised at the Home.Top Row, from left, Trevor Jackson, William Moore, Larry Lockhart, Arthur Calcaterra, David Lee, Scott Wilson, Billie Williams. Bottom row, from left, Marissa Davis, Molly Schurtz, Cles Follett, Patty Potter, Jodeen Lee, Arte Limani, Tania Lecona
by John Henry, Fort Worth Inc.
Arthur Calcaterra’s experience at the Fort Worth Masonic Home wasn’t made for Hollywood scripts like this summer’s “12 Mighty Orphans,” starring Dallas-native Luke Wilson, though he actually made the movie as an extra.
That’s Calcaterra among the throng cheering on the Mighty Mites of yesteryear in the movie.
But that does not mean the story of his experience, just as transformative as those football players of yore, isn’t worth telling.
Arthur Calcaterra and Luke Wilson both helped Hollywood tell the story of the Masonic Home, one as an extra and the other the leading man.
Specifically, one episode that has unquestionably stuck with him 25 years after graduating from the historic home and school for orphans on Fort Worth’s southeast side, which dates to the late 19th century but closed in 2005.
He was in high school and wanted to take a trip to see his mother’s gravesite.
When he got there, he couldn’t find it. The cemetery gave him the difficult news that she had been placed in an unmarked grave because no one had purchased a marker.
Young Arthur went back to his new home, where he had been for one year at that time, and “mentioned” the incident to his dorm’s house parents. House parents were those adults who oversaw dormitories at the Home. You get the feeling talking to Calcaterra now that “mentioning” is probably not the right word because you can tell three decades later that the incident shook him.
“Through gifts of time, talent and treasure, Quorum says it hopes to amplify their charitable activities and have some fun while giving back.”
This was his mother, who was chronically ill and chronically poor, but who cared so much about her son that she gave him up to the Masonic Home, desperate to see that he got a chance at living. He was 11 at the time he arrived and 12 when she died. She was essentially his only family.
And now, seemingly only Arthur would know she ever existed, left without a proper burial or a place for her son to come visit her.
Somehow, Calcaterra said, word of the incident got to Doug Lord, one of those guys who played football for the Mighty Mites all those years ago and who remained devoted to the Home’s boys and mission throughout his life. Lord would take the kids to the State Fair every year, Calcaterra says.
A few months later, Lord came to the Home to speak to Arthur. The elder man told Arthur that he and some others in Dallas would see to it that his mother had a headstone at her final resting place.
“Here I am in high school, it was a couple hundred dollars, but that meant the world to me,” Calcaterra says. “Whenever I go to the cemetery, I think, ‘that’s there because someone took the time. Someone cared who did something that they didn’t have to do.’
“It’s something I can’t repay to anyone in anyway except to reach out and help other people.”
Today, Calcaterra is closing in on 17 years as a project manager at Quorum Architects in Fort Worth. The company is celebrating its 30th year in 2022 with 30 acts of kindness.
A 30 for 30, in the ESPN parlance of our day.
Through gifts of time, talent and treasure, Quorum says it hopes to amplify their charitable activities and have some fun while giving back.