August/September/October 2006


Feature Articles:


‘Davis Lit the Torch; Now
It’s Up to Us to Pass It On!’

By KURT WEHRMEISTER


Opening his first International Convention as Director General, William B. Airey sought to remind members of the astounding achievements of the Moose fraternity’s early leaders--and of our responsibility now to use today’s much greater resources and advantages to strengthen our numbers and our humanitarian work.

> ‘Over the last eight weeks I’ve heard the question asked, though it’s not been asked of me directly: ‘What kind of ship will Airey run?’”

“The answer is really pretty simple,” said Director General William B. Airey, addressing 4,000+ men and women of the Moose early in the Friday evening, May 26 Convention Premiere, his first International Convention as the organization’s CEO. “We’re going to run a fraternity--the Moose fraternity.” And his audience, eager for the back-to-fraternal-basics message they would receive over the next five days, interrupted with applause for the first of dozens of times.

Airey cautioned that the clock couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be turned back: “We are not going to run the same programs, the same way we ran them in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s; we know too well that doesn’t work; times have changed . . . family patterns have changed. We’re going to run a fraternal order that isn’t afraid to try new ways to present our program (a reference to Moose International’s participation with the Queer Eye television show), or to get our message across . . .and when we make mistakes, and we will, we won’t be afraid to admit it, and make adjustments.” This latter reference, to the major snags in the implementation of the Centralized Dues program also drew an ovation.

“But--the important things haven’t really changed, have they?” Airey continued: “The needs of a child, for a loving home and responsible care, haven’t changed,” he said, referencing Moose support of Mooseheart Child City & School.

“The needs of an 80-year old, who desperately wants to be free of life’s stress and worry, haven’t changed,” he said, referring to our Moosehaven retirement community.

“And, the craving that every human being has, for the friendship and caring of others, hasn’t changed,” Airey asserted--alluding both to our commitment to Community Service and family activities in our Moose Centers.

“Those issues are the agenda of the Moose fraternity we’re going to run,”Airey declared, adding, “. . .frankly, it’s the only one that I would care to lead.”


A standing-room-only crowd of more than 4,000 jammed the Sheraton Chicago Ballroom to watch both the lectern and the big side projection screens during the 2006 International Convention Premiere.

‘It is the same Moose fraternity,” the Director General said, moving into the evening’s theme, “that . . .has remained astonishingly durable and resilient for 118 years--only because it ultimately has stayed true to its course; that of addressing these basic human needs; of caring for, and serving, other human beings.

“Tonight,” Airey said, “I invite you to listen to our story--and perhaps add life to the flame of fraternalism that burns within every one of us here in this room. There is much we can learn from this story . . . to make our fraternal flame burn brighter within us all; bright enough to sustain us, and guide us, in the months and years to come. Let us begin.”

And with that, Convention attendees heard, for the first time in any form since the 1988 Centennial, a comprehensive history of the Moose, presented with live narration accompanying an audiovisual presentation, roughly 90 minutes in length. Its script emphasized especially the early efforts of James J. Davis, whose joining of the Order marked the beginning of its rebirth--and occurred exactly 100 years ago this coming Oct. 27.

Telling the story were the following narrators:

118th International
Convention


Please click on any photograph below to view a larger image.









‘Suppose some master puddler of humanity could gather thousands into a melting pot, a fraternity . . .’






















The entire transcript of the Convention Premiere narrative is available:

2006 Final Convention Premiere Script (PDF)
















The Mooseheart Concert Band under the direction of Steve Schmidt was a huge hit at the Convention Premiere; before a Sheraton Ballroom crowd of more than 4,000, the band performed all three National Anthems and other preliminary music splendidly.
  • Jim Fleming, Moose International Secretary, recounted the first 18 years of the Order after its founding, strictly as a social club, by Louisville’s Dr. J. Henry Wilson.

  • Bryan White, retired CEO of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain, told of Davis’s birth and early childhood in Tredegar, Wales (also White’s own birthplace), his adolescence in the steel mills of western Pennsylvania, and his later experiences as a union organizer and government official in Indiana.

  • Kurt Wehrmeister, Director of Communications, related Davis’ thoughts on a “new kind” of fraternal order after witnessing families of killed millworkers thrown into poverty; and his agreement in October 1906 with the tiny Moose order to build Lodges and membership toward ultimate construction of a “city of children.”

  • David Chambers, General Governor, told of the meeting two months later of Davis and young Rodney Brandon in Anderson, IN, and of the unlikely partnership of these two different men--one who hit the road building Lodges, the other who handled the Order’s business affairs as its first Supreme Secretary. Together in just 15 years between 1907 and 1922, they built the Moose from virtually nothing to nearly a half-million strong, and created both Mooseheart and the Moosehaven retirement community.

  • Mooseheart Executive Director Scott Hart, Supt. of Education Gary Urwiler and Mooseheart Board member Mark Penzkover reviewed the 93-year story of the Child City--from its July 1913 dedication, under a steaming tent with a huge crowd and just 11 children, to its status today as mid-America’s largest residential childcare facility.








  • Shawn Baile, Director of the Moose Legion, spoke on Davis’ controversial creation of the Degree of Service in 1913 as a way to create an Endowment Fund that indeed would help sustain Mooseheart through difficult times ahead.




  • Chet Albright, retired Supreme Secretary, reviewed the establishment, and the ongoing contributions, of the Pilgrim Degree of Merit and the Fellowship Degree of Honor.




  • Janet Fregulia, Grand Chancellor of the Women of the Moose, told of the eager willingness of Davis and Brandon to get women involved in the Moose program--but the strong opposition they encountered until 1914, when Davis simply declared that women were eligible to join the new Moose Legion degree for $1 a year. Fregulia also related the story of Katherine Smith, who met James J. Davis in 1921, after he had been named President Warren Harding’s Secretary of Labor and she the Director of the Office of Public Employment. Davis ultimately persuaded Smith to leave Washington in 1926 and develop the program of the Women of the Moose--which now raises more than $6 million a year for Moose endeavors.
  • Faye Stevens, Executive Director of Moosehaven, noted that while the original plan of Davis and Brandon was to care for both children and seniors at Mooseheart, this swiftly proved impractical, and Moosehaven was founded as the “City of Opportunity,” essentially a communal farm for middle-aged or senior Moose, in late 1922. By the late 1940s it had essentially become the retirement community it is today--having grown into a 70-acre campus providing full residential and medical care.

  • Jim Morgan, Director of Fraternal Programs, discussed the late-1940s creation of the Moose Civic Affairs program, later renamed Community Service--which, totaling donations, volunteer hours worked and miles driven, now generates more than $75 million in service to North American society every year.
  • Darrell O’Brien, Director of the Membership Department, recounted its creation in Depression-wracked 1934, at which point Moose membership had dropped by more than half in just five years. Over Davis’s objections, Supreme Secretary Malcolm Giles and the young Paul Schmitz created a program that enrolled 75,000 new members over the next two years, and set the stage for even greater growth from the 1940s into the ’90s.
  • Jerry O’Connor, Assistant General Governor, told of Davis’s decline--but feisty defense of the Moose Legion--shortly before his death in 1947, and traced the succession of Directors General Malcolm Giles (1949-53), Paul Schmitz (1953-74) and Herbert Heilman (1974-84); while Barbara McPherson, Director of Operations for the Women of the Moose, reviewed the fraternity’s years under Directors General Paul O’Hollaren (1984-94), Frank Sarnecki (1994-99) and Donald Ross (1999-2006) before bringing Airey back to the lectern.

“We have come here to Chicago this week under the theme of “Light the Torch,” Airey said. “You’ve heard the story of how in 1906, Jim Davis ignited a flame of Moose fraternalism . . .If we can take from Davis’s example and re-ignite that torch, then our mission for today, tomorrow and in the months to come, can only be to spread the warmth of Moose membership, to hoist that torch and--in the words of our new 2006-2007 Preferred Member Campaign--PASS IT ON!”

After outlining the details of the May 1, 2006-April 30, 2007 PASS IT ON campaign, Airey concluded: “The enormous legacy of James John Davis has become our legacy; our responsibility to perpetuate...it was passed on to you by your sponsor . . .take that fraternal flame--and PASS IT ON!”


At the close of the Premiere, the several dozen Mooseheart students present were invited to come to the stage and join in the “Pass It On” campaign celebration, using special battery-powered “torches.”




PSG Conferrals to Brice, Fleet, McGinnis--and Bullock

> With close to the entire Convention’s attendance--a joint session of the men and women of the Moose--in the room for the Convention Premiere, Director General Airey chose this session to confer the ultimate honor of Past Supreme Governor on four long-serving retired veterans of the Membership Department field staff.


Charles Brice served as Director in Virginia, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania and Georgia.


Ross Fleet, in the 1970s State Director in West Virginia before serving as Director of Admissions and later Superintendent of Moosehaven.

















Milton McGinnis (with his wife Bettimae), a 54-year Moose veteran and retired Regional Director from California.




Also receiving the honor was retired Florida/Bermuda Regional Director Robert Bullock who had to receive his medallion later; multiple flight cancellations prevented him from getting to Chicago for the Convention.