PROCEEDINGS GRAND LODGE - Freemasons of Wisconsin

home, how many were you missing? Masonry has a wonderful opportunity today,thanks to ‘National Treasurer’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’, two novels that openedpeople up to asking questions like who are the Freemasons. ‘National Treasurer’ wassimply fiction. People ask me if there is really a national treasurer and I say, yes thereis. It is called brotherhood. Have you ever noticed that the anti-Masons come up andsay that this is a sign, this is a word, and they’ll quote ritual, as if this is a big secret?These are not the secrets of Masonry. The secret is brotherhood. You cannot fake that.Brotherhood is about who we are, it’s the bond that builds us across the world. It iswhat brought you here today, to be at this Grand Session. Yes, I know that your lodgewas summoned to be there by your Grand Lodge law, but you come because of thebrotherhood, the friends you have, the friends you are about to make. That’s what hasmotivated me to go around the country, teaching Masons about putting new life intolodges.”Now let me tell you a little background before we get into the program. I promisedthe Grand Master no more than half an hour. I will stick to that. You may be requiredto listen faster. When I joined Masonry 29 years ago, I got to be Worshipful Masterin a few years at the age of 26. I transferred to Calumet Lodge in a dying mining townand a dying lodge. I went to my first meeting as a visitor and somebody said “Hey,maybe he wants to be Worshipful Master.” Well, I was interested, so they made meJunior Warden. My transfer papers arrived a month later. Then I was Senior Wardenand I was the last Master of that lodge. For three years I put on one EnteredApprentice Degree and conducted 30 funerals. I did a very good job on the funerals,not one corpse got left out. I was 26 years old so I asked what do I do? These guys were50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 years old. I said what do you want and they all stared at thecarpet. Do you ever have that when you ask the Brothers, what do you want to do, andthey all look at the carpet? If you ask for volunteers, they stare at the carpet. What Idiscovered though was that after 3 years and we merged three lodges into one, I feltlike a failure, because the lodge closed on my watch. Yes, we lost one quarter of themembership. Yes it was a dying area, but in the back of my mind I kept saying tomyself, “there was something I could have done, what was it?” The answers were notwithin the lodge. It turned out that the answers were within the ritual. The answerswere within the fraternity, because 3 years later with the new consolidated lodge, theywere on the verge of closing. We had $200,000 in cash, 330 members and could barelyget a quorum to a meeting. They turned to me and said, “Would you be WorshipfulMaster?” I said yes under one condition, I did it your way for 3 years and it failed,let’s try it my way.”I called up Grand Lodge. You know that little book of committees that Wisconsinmust send out? You all looked at the book and said there’s a piece of worthless paper.Why did they print that? I called those chairmen and said, ‘what can you do for me?’We’re up here in this northern lodge in Houghton, MI calling people living 500 milesaway. First there was silence, nobody had ever done that before. Then they said I gotthis, this, this and this. They were dying to help, but nobody asked for help. I wasbringing people up from Grand Lodge, all the way up, in the wintertime! For thoseof you from very southern Wisconsin, in northern Michigan we get from 300-400inches of snow per winter. You can wake up in the morning and have three feet of snowon your car and the “cherry-pickers” in southern Michigan, that’s what we call themdown below, the trolls below the bridge, got scared because they thought they had awhite car. You don’t drive white cars in the UP because they are mobile snow banksin the winter. They came up and we built the lodge up. We took a lodge on the vergeof closing to number two in the state in the lodge of the year program. We got our name82