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MILAS LASATER
VOL. 5, p. 1899-1900

MILAS LASATER was born in Palo Pinto County, Texas, in the year
1872, and is the eldest of four sons of George M. and Mary S.
(JOHNSTON) Lasater.

George M. Lasater, the father, was a pioneer cattleman of Palo Pinto
County, his father having been the first county judge after the
organization of that county, to which unorganized territory he had
removed from Fannin County in the early '50s.

Milas Lasater spent his boyhood on his father's ranch, and attended
the public schools of that section of the state. He was for a time in
the city schools of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and lastly continued his
studies at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana. While prosecuting
his own studies, and afterwards, he engaged in teaching school in
Indian Territory and Texas. In the year 1898 he withdrew from this
work and settled on a ranch near Pauls Valley, the present county
seat of Garvin County, Oklahoma. In that locality he conducted
trading operations in the live stock business, and engaged in the
breeding of pure bred Herefords. He became a stockholder in the First
national Bank of Pauls Valley, later cashier and active vice
president of that institution, of which he still remains a director
and one of its vice presidents. While engaged in the banking business
at Pauls Valley he became owner and publisher of the Pauls Valley
Democrat.

It was at Pauls Valley that Mr. Lasater had met and wedded Miss
Sarah WAITE, whose father, Thomas Waite, was a pioneer settler of
that section of Indian Territory and whose mother was a member of the
Chickasaw tribe of Indians, one of the Five Civilized Tribes. Mrs.
Lasater's early education was in the Chickasaw tribal schools, but
she spent nine years in the schools at Oberlin, Ohio, graduating from
Oberlin College with an A. A. degree. Mrs. Lasater takes an active
interest in the public school work of Oklahoma City, and devotes much
of her time to the education of their daughters, Corinne and Carol.

Mr. Lasater's material interests in Oklahoma are varied and
important, consisting of banking connections and ranching interests
that he has maintained for many years, but the major part of his time
and attention is given to his executive work as agency supervisor in
Oklahoma and Kansas for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New
York.

The following statements were written by one familiar with the
character and services of Mr. Lasater: A citizen by marriage of the
Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, Mr. Lasater has for many years been a
representative leader in the growth and development of that section
of the state. In recent years his activities have far transcended
local limitations, and his philanthropic spirit has been manifested
in divers ways. He is a man of high intellectual attainments, broad
views, and distinctive liberality. His public career has covered
several years, beginning with membership in the Sequoyah convention
that assembled at Muskogee and adopted a constitution for a state
proposed for Indian Territory alone. In 1906 he was elected a member
of the Constitutional Convention that prepared and adopted the
organic constitution of which is based the government of the present
State of Oklahoma, combining the two territories, then Indian
Territory and Oklahoma Territory.

As a member of the Constitutional convention of the State of
Oklahoma, Mr. Lasater was chairman of the Committee on Revision,
Compilation, Style and Arrangement, and as such he edited and
prepared for permanent record every paragraph of the constitution. He
was a member also of the Committee on county boundaries, the report
of which he prepared, also a member of the Banking committee, the
committee on Public Institutions, and other special committees
created from time to time.

In 1908 Mr. Lasater was appointed by Governor HASKELL a member of
the first Text-book commission of the new commonwealth, a position of
which he continued the incumbent until a decision held the work of
the commission to be not legally effective. Later, when the defect of
law was remedied he asked that he be not reappointed a member of this
commission. In 1908 also Mr. Lasater received from Governor Haskell
appointment to membership on the board of control of the State
Training School at Pauls Valley. In this position he aided in the
founding of this institution. In 1909 Governor Haskell appointed Mr.
Lasater, state insurance commissioner, a position particularly
important at that time for it was during this administration that
Oklahoma's Insurance Code became operative. Mr. Lasater made a good
record in the administration of the affairs of that office.

Wherever he has lived Milas Lasater has been active in the social
and club life of the community. At Pauls Valley he served as
president of the Commercial Club of that city. He is a life member of
the Pauls Valley Lodge of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. In
the Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry
at McAlester he has received the thirty-second degree. He is a Noble
of the Mystic Shrine. In college he affiliated with the Delta Kappa
Epsilon Greek Letter Fraternity. He is an active and influential
member of the Oklahoma Life Underwriters' Association, and in the
capital city he is identified with the Oklahoma City Golf and country
Club, the Men's Dinner Club, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Lasater is a staunch and effective exponent of the principles of
the democratic party. He is liberal in his religious views with a
deep reverence for the spiritual verities as expressed in the
following beautiful words by William Henry CHANNING, words that he
has stated most perfectly represent his creed: "To live content with
small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement
rather than fashion; to be worthy, no respectable, and wealthy, not
rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to
listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to
bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in
a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up
through the common - this is my symphony."

Typed for OKGenWeb by Sherry Van Scoy Hall, July 22, 1999.

SOURCE: Thoburn, Joseph B., A Standard History of Oklahoma, An
Authentic Narrative of its Development, 5 v. (Chicago, New York: The
American Historical Society, 1916).