We’ll Make Technology Work For Us, and
Re-Ignite a Flame

> I was already home in my kitchen, getting dinner together in the early evening of March 14, when I was summoned back to the office by telephone. Once there, I was informed, in a phone call from Supreme Governor Ronald Sweetman, that Director General Donald Ross had decided, after 35 years of service to Moose International, to resign his office.

Don Ross led this fraternity through some difficult times over the last seven years, and while I realized he deserved some stress-free, much-earned time with his family, this came as a shock. But then, Supreme Governor Sweetman shocked me further, when he asked me if I would agree to be Don Ross’s successor; to become the ninth Director General of the Moose fraternal organization.

At first, frankly, I balked. This was not an appointment I had ever expected, nor had ever sought. Plus, I thought, I had just marked my 65th birthday at the beginning of March.

But, this fraternity has been at the core of my life for 42 years, and I have always tried to serve it any way I’ve been asked. With that in mind, I said to Brother Sweetman that if the Supreme Council wanted me to look after the fraternal affairs of Moose International as Director General, on an interim basis, I would be honored.

Better news, I thought, was the Council’s decision to also appoint General Counsel Leonard Solfa to a new post of Chief Operating Officer--supervising the Executive Directors of Mooseheart Child City & School, the Moosehaven retirement community, and Moose Charities; plus charge of all business and legal affairs of Moose International.

On March 27, the Council saw fit to make my appointment, and Len’s, permanent. In the days since, I have become convinced that together, we and the Moose International staff can make tangible positive progress, even before the International Convention in Chicago. Here is some of what we look to do:

• Len Solfa and Chief Financial Officer Joe Mech have full authority to review the status of our Centralized Dues system and ongoing technology implementations, toward making whatever adjustments might be necessary to ensure we have a system that’s truly beneficial to our fraternal units, as well as to Moose International.
  
  
• Grand Chancellor Janet Fregulia will have the autonomy that chief executives of the Women of the Moose have historically enjoyed, to freely operate what has traditionally been the most efficient and effective component of the Moose organization.
  
  
• We are acting immediately to ensure that member-sponsors are placed in a No. 1-priority position--where our fraternal predecessors have always placed them over the last 70-plus years--in the knowledge that without them serving as generators of new blood, new energy and new ideas, we are nothing.
  
  
• Finally, we will re-ignite a fraternal flame that James J. Davis built into a roaring fire nearly 100 years ago--to warm the souls and illuminate the lives of nearly 1.5 million men and women, and to encourage them to pass this flame to friends, neighbors and associates throughout the world.
  

We’re conferring--not only with Moose International staff, but more importantly with the men and women on the front lines in our Lodges, Chapters and Moose Legions (contact me at BAirey@mooseintl.org)--to determine the form that these and other initiatives will take.

But we’re working hard during these weeks to guard and protect a legacy which has been built over nearly a century, by men and women committed to caring for kids in need and for senior members in their sunset years, to making communities better places to raise families, and to celebrate life. This is what we have done; this is what we’ll continue to do. I promise you that.

[Back to top]