For the pair, who had both belonged to Vallée de France № 329, that loss was too much to bear. So in 2021, as the group was facing consolidation, Bagdasarian, Milgrom, and several other members met for dinner and decided to form an unofficial French ritual club. Outside lodge meetings, they met monthly to practice both the California ritual (which has been translated into French), as well as the Scottish Rite ritual used by the National Grand Lodge of France (GLNF), which is the French body recognized by the Grand Lodge of California.

With wine flowing freely, conversation naturally moved to how to keep a more than century-old Masonic tradition in Southern California alive. Further meetings were held, and in 2022 the group applied for a dispensation to form a new lodge, what ultimately became La France № 885. On November 2, 2023, just weeks after Vallée de France № 329 was formally absorbed into Round Table № 876, La France received its charter, with Bagdasarian listed as master and Milgrom as secretary.

Despite its founders’ history in Vallée de France, they stress that the new group isn’t simply a reboot of the old. For one, the lodge trimmed its membership from 65 to 45, and it picked up stakes from its longtime home in Glendale for Santa Monica, where membership is more densely packed. (The group is currently meeting in the hall of the Sunset Masonic Temple.)

With Milgrom, whom Bagdasarian calls “the beating heart of La France № 885,” doing much of the legwork, the founders had to build the lodge from the ground up—and to follow the rules to a T. That meant, at least initially, only performing the California Masonic ritual. To the group’s surprise, however, the nascent lodge proved popular, gaining six new Entered Apprentices in its first year. At last fall’s Annual Communication in San Francisco, a group made up of members from La France № 885 and La Parfaite Union № 17 staged an “exemplification,” or demonstration, of the first degree of the French ritual for an audience of more than 100 California Masons. From there, word of the new Francophone group spread like gossip.

Meanwhile, La France № 885 cleared a major legislative hurdle: At the same Annual Communication, more than 92 percent of the Grand Lodge voted to allow the group to inherit Vallée de France’s grandfathered-in right to perform the French ritual. After that, “the news exploded and now everyone knows about this lodge,” Bagdasarian says. “We became famous.”

To him, that makes sense. Because while the group is understandably proud of its Gallic heritage, the fact that it is now one of the only outfits permitted to perform the Scottish Rite degrees in California gives it a distinctly international flavor. Fittingly, the new group is remarkably global, with members hailing from 10 different nations, including Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Bulgaria, several countries in the Middle East, and, of course, France.

In fact, several members of French lodges both in the United States and abroad, including Grand Master Jean-Pierre Rollet of the GLNF, even signed up as charter members.

That cross-jurisdictional membership is emblematic of members’ passion about the need to preserve French-style Masonry in America, which has a more than 300-year-old legacy. In fact, no less a figure than the Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the French and American Revolutions, is believed to have been made a Mason at Valley Forge in 1777 by his lodge brother, the Continental Army general George Washington. L’Union Francaise № 17 in New York City is the oldest French-American lodge, having received its charter in 1798. That group was invited to be the first Masonic delegation at Washington’s funeral procession.