Knight Commanders

Henry Clay Chiles

17th Knight Commander

Alpha Delta–William Jewell College, 1903

Henry Clay Chiles was born in Lexington, Missouri, in 1886. He was initiated at Alpha Delta on September 26, 1903, he was the first Hamer Province Commander from 1912 to 1915.  In Kappa Alpha’s fiftieth year, he was elected as Chief Alumnus in February and then Knight Commander that December, a post he held for the next decade.  During his term, he chartered five new chapters and recharted five others.  He compiled war records for the 1922 catalogue, authored the endowment fund and the alumni association laws, and was a member of the Electoral Commission from 1930 to 1936.  As president of the Missouri State K. A. Association in 1905, he helped found Beta Theta and Beta Iota chapters and served as Number I of Alpha Delta in 1906.  Chiles also had been a loyal member of the Boston Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha during his attendance at Harvard Law School.  He returned to Lexington to practice law and served as legal counsel in the Nuremburg Trials after World War II. Chiles also served as Grand Master of Masons in Missouri. Chiles died in 1966.