The post below is the text of an address I gave last evening to my hometown Lodge. I think it points out a major failing of our Fraternity in these times, and provides an easy solution to that failing.
I quite often hear the lament that our Lodges used to be filled with the leaders of our community, but now rarely are. Certainly we see this with our Legislature. Today, to my knowledge, only one of Washington’s Legislators is a member of the Grand Lodge of Washington. But if we look at overlapping membership in the early days of our State, we see that virtually all early Washington Legislators were Freemasons.
If we hope to see a return to that level of influence, if we want to see our elected officials within Masonry, if we want to see our bank presidents, our attorneys, our Chamber of Commerce directors, our doctors in our Fraternity, well then we have to make it possible for them to join.
This is an issue that every Lodge in our Grand Jurisdiction falls down on, so please don’t think that I am picking on Centennial Lodge, but I’m going to use my own story in relation to Centennial Lodge to illustrate how we can make it so that these men that we want to attract to our Fraternity can actually be in a position to join us.
If I can delve into local history a bit, doing so will illustrate my argument:
Centennial Lodge was Chartered in 1877.
In 1889, the State of Washington was founded.
In 1890, The City of Snohomish was incorporated.
My family, were sort of latecomers to Snohomish. Albert and Ellen Bailey beat the State and the City, by settling here in 1888. They started by farming 40 acres along the river.
In 1918, their son, my Great Grandfather Earle took over that little farm, and began expanding it. Expansion that continued throughout his lifetime. Today, generations later, we are still farming that land just south of the City, indeed most of my family still lives right there on our farm.
About the time Earle took over the farm, he joined Centennial Lodge, and he maintained his membership throughout his lifetime. Although Grand Lodge records show that he had some difficulty paying his dues on time during some of the years of the Great Depression. He died a 50 plus year member of Centennial Lodge.
Since those humble beginnings as newcomers in 1888, my family has been mightily involved with the Snohomish Community. Earle led an organization called The Seattle Milk Shippers, an organization that still exists today, in our time we know it as Darigold. My grandfather Cliff served as a Snohomish County Commissioner, and after Snohomish County achieved Home Rule Status, a County Councilman. In fact, the Charter that established Home Rule for Snohomish County was largely written on my desk. He later went on to represent Snohomish in our State Senate. Beyond that, both my Grandfather, and my uncle served on the Snohomish School Board, and both led that Board as President.
As for me, well, I’ve served as a member of the Snohomish City Council, and was deeply honored to lead this City, for a time, as its Mayor.
Given this history, I think that there can be little doubt but that I am a Snohomish man, through and through. My family has been extremely active in this community for six generations now, and we aren’t leaving anytime soon.
So, I’m a Snohomish guy, but when it came time to join a Lodge, I went up Highway 2. I joined Sultan-Monroe Lodge.
Why did I do that?
Why did the Mayor of this City go to Monroe and join a Lodge there?
The answer is simple really.
I’d figured out that in order to become a Freemason, one needed to ask a Freemason.
Well, the trouble with that was that, I didn’t know any Freemasons in Snohomish.
I knew where the Lodge was of course, for I lived not far from it in one of our historic Snohomish homes, but I didn’t know any Masons.
I did sort of know a Mason in Monroe, so he’s the one I asked.
And that is how my home Lodge ended up being Sultan-Monroe Lodge.
It is a simple explanation really, but let’s ponder it for a minute.
Should there be a community, anywhere in this State, in which the Mayor and other local elected officials haven’t met the Worshipful Master of the Lodge?
Shouldn’t the doctors, attorneys, business owners, and other professionals within our communities all have opportunity to meet the leaders of our Lodges?
If we hope to have these kinds of men in our Lodge, how can that be accomplished if they do not know who we are?
How can we say, ‘To Be A Freemason, Ask A Freemason’ and actually have that work, if we lock ourselves away, hide in our Lodges so that no one can find us to ask?
When I was Mayor of this City, we built a lot of stuff. As a result, my name is on a lot of little stones on public facilities in this community. Most notably in my opinion, our beautiful new Library.
The thing is, none of those stones are Masonic Cornerstones. They all could have been. We in City government at that time would have been deeply honored to have the Freemasons lay cornerstones on our facilities. Alas though, we had no idea how to get in contact with the Freemasons. We knew about this building. It looked vacant 99% of the time, and to be honest about the only sign of life ever seen at it were the gem and rock shows that took place here.
Again, I am not picking on Centennial Lodge. This is a failing in every Lodge in this Grand Jurisdiction. I am simply using Centennial Lodge to illustrate my point, because of my own personal history with Snohomish.
If we hope to attract the very best men in our community to our Lodge, then we must get to know those men, so that if and when they decide that they are ready to join our Ancient Craft they know who to ask about doing so.
We need to get our local elected officials into our Lodge for dinner, and ask them to explain their long term vision for our community.
We need to invite the Chamber of Commerce into our Lodge for dinner, asking them to talk about their current initiatives, and offering our help for the future.
We need to invite the President of our Local bank to dinner with our Lodge, and ask him to talk about the possibilities for economic development within our City.
We have hospital districts. Who better to invite to a Lodge dinner to talk about local health initiatives than our local hospital district Commissioner?
Let’s get our Masonic Temples Open.
Let’s start cooking or catering some fine meals.
And Let’s invite the men who lead our Community in to talk with us as a Lodge.
Let’s make those meals fun, and a quality experience for our guests.
If we do that, those men will know who to ask about Freemasonry when the time is right for them to become Freemasons.
If we don’t do that, we will never actually succeed in attracting these men to our Fraternity, for no one wants to have to spend hours digging around the internet, just to try and figure out which one of his neighbors might be a Freemason.
We can do this. We can, with dedication and time, see a future like our past, when a non-Masonic male Legislator is a true oddity.
Let’s do it together.
This is my plea to the Freemasons of Washington. Let’s open our Lodges to the leaders of our community. Only by getting to know us, will they have a chance to join us.
Like every Thursday, we will have a live open thread today for those with a paid subscription to Emeth. We can talk about whatever Masonic topic is on your mind, no holds barred.
The email opening the thread will go out at 8:00 AM, and I’ll remain on the thread until 6:00 PM. I hope to chat with you there.
If you found value in this post, and the idea it explored, will you consider sharing it with your Masonic Brothers?
Just in case you missed them:
When my Dad was an active Mason when he was alive, the Masons in our town were filled with local leadership and men from prominent professional careers. I’ve mentioned this previously, but I have no idea what happened to them. They were once a vibrant, solid part of our community, but now they are for. Their last Temple turned into a school administration building after it sat homeless for over a decade. That’s sad. 😔 Thank you Cameron ✨🤗
As far as political leaders in our community, we only have one male, the others are all women. The one male has been to our lodge, he was at our consolidation ceremony a few years ago. Nice guy, but didn't seem interested in joining. Our local former sheriff is a member of the fraternity, but never attends any meetings that I am aware of.
We have had several local business owners join, but it turns out they were all looking for networking more clients, not the fraternity. Once they found out that it actually takes some dedication and time to become a MM, they stopped coming.
I don't necessarily look down upon this line of thinking, after all we've had (and still do) have members of our fraternity make a tidy profit from it's members. Nothing wrong with capitalism. But when we have businessmen come and want to join, I am always a little leery of their true motives.
But you're right, the fraternity used to feature the movers and shakers of the community. When we look at the portraits of past masters on our wall, quite a few names jump out as recognizable names from around town. Community centers, street signs, etc all make appearances. I'm sure that is true in all lodges.