Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
September 24, 1995, Sunday, Final Edition
(STYLE; Pg. F01)
Life in the Fez Lane; Crumbling Masonry: America's Biggest Fraternity Faces Old Age 
Danny Hakim; Luke Mitchell, Special to The Washington Post

BURLINGTON, Vt.

        The Freemasons -- the ancient fraternity whose members once included presidents and tycoons, 
whose arcane symbols adorn the very coin of the  realm, whose leaders have been demonized as tyrants 
and lionized as humanitarians -- are intent on raising some holy heck. The Shriners of Canada and the 
Northeastern United States, which is kind of a superstar Masons organization, have been arriving here for 
days. Now they are poised for their march down Main Street of this trendy college town on this crisp 
September afternoon. They are here to strut their stuff, to show that they are still formidable, vital, their 
message universal: that despite their dwindling numbers, they remain engaged, relevant, hip.

        So far, everything is hunky-dory. 

        Here they come! They are coming the way they have always come, in fezzes and costumes, 
some in powdered wigs. The spectacularly ancient among them ride in huge convertibles, Delta 88s and 
Eldorados mostly, 1970s-era behemoth boatmobiles with commodious seats and fatted upholstery 
benevolent to bursitis. The merely old promenade themselves, some with canes; some have wigs and 
muskets; a phalanx of men with chowdery Boston accents are dressed in turbans, with scimitars, their 
faces painted a  garish swarthy brown. The real whippersnappers -- men in their fifties and sixties -- ride 
on tiny go-karts, knees tucked under chins, executing spirited figure-eights in vehicles festooned to look 
like little boats and dwarf Model T's and weensy monster trucks. A brass band of Masons plays "Hello, 
Dolly!" Men with kilts squeeze bagpipes. Men wear odd ceremonial aprons. Men wear plaid cutaway tuxes 
that are, to be frank, lost somewhat between spiffy and snazzy. Spazzy, let's say.
 
        Amid all this aggressive fuddy-duddyism, joy reigns. It is only on the fringes of this happy homage 
to goodwill and bad taste that one detects a subtle unraveling. The streets are not lined as they used to 
be, during the heyday of Masonry. There was adequate advance publicity, but the crowd is a little 
disappointing, just one or two deep in places; half seem to be children, beguiled by the spectacle, the 
other half oldsters who one suspects are friends and spouses of the marchers.
 
        Heading into the millennium, Freemasonry is undeniably in decline. Other fraternal orders -- 
Moose, Odd Fellows, Elks -- are in decline, too: casualties, it is said, of an American society at war with 
no-longer-fashionable notions of community and fellowship. But for the Freemasons, the fall seems more 
precipitous. Once, they were so powerful that a major national political party arose simply to oppose them. 
They were second on Hitler's hit list, after Jews and before Catholics. 

        Masons still do fine and worthy things. They raise big money for good causes. They finance 
children's hospitals and burn-injury clinics. They have been hemorrhaging membership, but are still almost 
2 1/2 million strong. Still, the fear among the Mason elite is that the organization's days are numbered, 
that to much of America they seem silly, secretive, hidebound, exclusionary, obsolete -- a modern-day 
version of the sorry group of losers lampooned in Preston Jones's "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the 
White Magnolia." In that devastating 1973 play, a Southern fraternal lodge very much like the Masons 
comes face to face with modernity and its own seedy irrelevance.
  
        The Masons are struggling fitfully to face difficult questions about themselves. The marchers here 
today are unnervingly homogeneous -- all white, all men, mostly superannuated. Some of the 
informational placards they carry are open invitations to new recruits, but even these are oddly off-putting: 
"Shriners Are Masons," declares one, mystifyingly. "Kora's Past Potentates," reads another. "The Shrine 
of North America has 191 Temples With Approximately 190,000 Members," boasts a third.
 
        Temples? Potentates? Approximately? 

        On the reviewing stand, a bearded young man tentatively approaches Shriner Richard Cornwell. 
Cornwell, 61, is a manufacturer's rep. He wears a fez declaring him to be the Grand Rabban of the Aleppo 
Temple in Wilmington, Mass. He is a big shot. 
        
        The stranger looks to be in his thirties. He is in black jeans and a T-shirt. He looks earnest.
 
        A possible recruit. 

        A possible young recruit. 
 
        The stranger asks what Shriners are, and Cornwell proudly explains that it is the top rung of a 
steep climb. Before you get there, he says, you must have attained a certain degree in the York Rite or 
Scottish Rite Masons. And before that you have to reach a certain degree in a Blue Lodge, and to do that 
you've got to go through all sorts of degrees and tests. 
 
        What sort of tests, the man asks, reasonably.

        Cornwell gets a little squinty-eyed. 
 
        It's a secret, he says.
  
        Ah, the stranger says.
  
        Can't exactly tell ya, Cornwell says.
  
        Ah, the stranger says. 
 
        "Do I have to have money?" he asks. "I'm on welfare."
 
        "That'd be a problem," Cornwell says.
  
        The man turns to leave. 
 
        "Start putting a few bucks aside," Cornwell suggests. 
 
        But the would-be recruit is already shambling away into the indifferent crowd.  
        
        The Consultant
 
        The Freemasons in 1995 are bedeviled by a fundamental paradox. The very things that have 
made them historically strong -- their elitism, their predilection for secrecy, their corny theosophy, their 
reverence for tradition and ritual -- now threaten to destroy them. Times are changing. That's the message 
that Dudley Davis is trying to give 35 top Masons in this hearing room in a hotel in Tempe, Ariz. It is 
October 1994, and on this day, the Masonic Renewal Committee of the Free and Accepted Masons of 
North America are all business. No fezzes, no aprons. Davis is pacing in front of the lectern. His 
Baltimore-based management consulting firm, Davis Consulting Group, was hired to help the Masons 
figure out why no one is joining their fraternity. 

        They have lost 1.6 million members in North America in the last four decades, mostly through 
attrition. New members are joining faster than old members are quitting, but old members are dying faster 
than new members are joining. A lot faster. The average Mason is 67 years old. That's the average. 
Statistically, for every 45-year-old, there is an 89-year-old. Or two 78-year-olds. Any way you slice it, these 
are not good numbers.  

        At a ruddy and trim 60, Davis looks to be one of the younger men in the room. He strides to an 
easel and draws three circles in the shape of a leaning snowman. His marker squeaks as he writes "89%" 
inside the largest one. "Eighty-nine percent of Freemasons haven't been to their lodge in three years," he 
says, leveling a Socratic gaze on his fellow Masons. He asks why this is. 

        "They're in nursing homes!" someone shouts. 

        The room convulses in laughter.
  
        Davis is not amused. He has been at this now for six years, and it is a tough sell. Masons are 
joyful people, mindful of their problem but seemingly not consumed by it. Being Masons, they are 
consumed with having fun.
  
        To an image doctor, they can seem aggressively self-defeating -- like aging spinsters who want 
very much to look youthful but will not stop dying their hair blue. 
 
        Davis gathers up his papers and affixes the group with a steady, serious gaze. "In evolutionary 
terms," he says, "the choice, starkly put, is to adapt or to become irrelevant."
 
        Davis began this crusade as a paid consultant only, but eventually joined the Masons, he says, 
because of their selflessness. He is urging the Masons to unite the financial and intellectual resources of 
2.4 million men behind a single, high-profile campaign: a basic reading program for children nationwide, 
with a goal of universal American literacy. But Davis's primary concern in Tempe is more immediate. 
Without members, he warns them, there will be no money for such things, and no people to accomplish 
them. The Masons, he says, must improve their recruitment. Get new blood. He brandishes a company 
newsletter from the Nordstrom department store chain.

        "What image does this project?" Davis eyes his audience, the Masonic Renewal Committee, as 
they browse articles like "Nurturing a Culture That Cares" and "Our Return Policy: Making the Customer 
Happy." Davis makes his point: "Nordstrom's owns its customers." 

        Now he hands out a Masonic product. It is a promotional Sunday insert from an Ohio newspaper. 
On the cover is a painting of a man in a skirt-length Masonic apron, sandals, long wavy hair and a black 
beard. He wears a V-necked navy-blue medieval tunic and skirt, and holds an L-shaped ruler and a 
compass. It is bizarre. He looks like some dowdy 15th-century drag queen architect. Inside are snapshots 
of old men wearing fezzes, sandwiched between thick layers of text.
 
        "This is not what we want the public to see as a first impression," says Davis. "It's dark. It's 
mysterious. It's cultist." 

        (Such imagery may help explain why the Masons have been accused of heresy by popes, by the 
Southern Baptist Convention, and even by Pat Robertson, who claimed in his 1991 book "New World 
Order" that a shadowy cabal of Masons, among others, now controls the Federal Reserve, and possibly 
orchestrated the Lincoln assassination.)
 
        In the meeting room there are nods of agreement. This sort of cultish image must be stopped, 
everyone agrees. But soon the meeting breaks up without any grand battle plan consensus. The Masons 
join their wives in the parking lot, board a chartered bus and are off for good times at the Pinnacle Peak 
Patio for beer and steaks.

        Hovering over the meeting in Tempe is a question. It is never openly stated, but here it is: The 
Masons may be cornball, they may be too male and too pale, but they exist to promote the basic decent 
universal values of brotherhood and good fellowship. Their money goes to comfort the afflicted of all races 
and religions and social classes. So what are we to make of the fact that this particular organization, as 
old as America, seems to be dying because it has become, to our way of thinking, unacceptably uncool?
  
        One Mason's Story 

        Ernie Higgins is 91. He is driving, and it's quite a ride. You ask him what it means to be a Mason, 
and between harrowing lane changes, he will tell you. 
 
        His nickname, proudly displayed on his calling card, is "The Old Goat." At the moment, he is 
careering down the confused one-way mesh of D.C. streets in a tiny Hyundai loaner like a man who's 
seen most of the city built around him, which he has. The Crown Vic is in the shop.
 
        We are driving to the House of the Temple at 16th and S -- the headquarters of Masonry's largest 
branch, the Scottish Rite Freemasons, and one of local Masonry's most imposing structures. 

        For Ernie, the lodge is a place where men come together to drink coffee, to talk and to retreat 
together from the world. 

        He's been a Mason since -- he summons the date effortlessly -- Aug. 18, 1925. He has been 
master of Theodore Roosevelt Lodge 44 of Washington, D.C., three times. First  in 1934, then in 1984 and 
once again in 1994. 

        He was even Harry Truman's bodyguard for a day when the president, a Missouri Mason, came to 
a service at a local lodge some 40 years ago. The real Secret Service boys weren't Masons, so they 
couldn't enter the lodge room. Even national security sometimes yields to Masonry. 

        Seven years before he became a Mason, Higgins knew he would someday be one. He decided 
as a boy, at  his father's funeral. 
 
        "My father had one hand," explains Higgins. "To be a Mason then, you had to have a full body." 

        "They paid the doctor's bill," Higgins says about the Navy Yard, where his father worked. "But 
they didn't  give him any sick leave in those days. But they gave him permission to sell tools in the Navy 
Yard." 

        His father worked hard and gained the respect of the Navy men to such a degree that they 
accepted him as one of their own. "Papa died on Thanksgiving 1918. The war was on -- men would work 
six or seven days a week and couldn't take time off. But so many came from the yards anyway, the church 
was full, there was no room for them.
 
        "Men with white aprons and white gloves stood facing each other outside the church, in two facing 
lines, from church steps to the grave." 

        He pauses. 

        "I asked Mama  what it was, and she said they were Masons. And they thought of Papa as a 
Mason. He had learned to be such a good man he must've been." 

        From that moment, as a boy of 14, Higgins decided that he would be the Mason that his father 
couldn't be. 
 
        Being a Mason in those early years was filled with tradition, in an era when tradition was 
vigorously protected. Back then, nobody challenged why women couldn't be Masons, or why black and 
white Masonic lodges were segregated, or why Masons had such elaborate ceremonies. They only 
wonder about that stuff today. 

        Trailing him through the House of the Temple on 16th Street is like walking through Masonry's 
well-storied past. The House is a limestone monument to hundreds of years of Masonic tradition, an 
approximated replica of the tomb of the 4th-century B.C. Carian king Mausolus, one of the Seven 
Wonders of the Ancient World and the origin of the word "mausoleum." Inside is a crypt of Masonry's 
departed brethren. 
 
        Higgins can remember staring up at the entryway as a kid. Its double doors are the height of two 
men. 

        Now Higgins knows every nook and cranny of the massively mysterious structure: the secret 
doors, the names of all the people in the fading portraits on the walls. 

        Thirty-three 33-foot-high columns support the temple's main pyramid. That's no accident,  
ccording to Higgins, nor is it coincidence that the temple's address is 1733 16th St. Thirty-three is a big 
number for Masonry, which is divided into 33 ranks known as degrees. The main staircase is flanked by 
large black marble statues of the Egyptian gods Osiris and Isis. Just left of Osiris, in a side hall, is a 
painting of million-dollar Masonic contributor Gene Autry, smiling next to his trusty steed Champion.

        Autry and Osiris. It is a startling juxtaposition, just one of many. Immediately beyond the main wall 
is a shrine of sorts to the very king of secrecy himself, a man of whom Ernie Higgins and other Masons 
here at the House speak in reverential terms: Brother Mason J. Edgar Hoover. He is wearing men's 
clothing. To the Masons, he is a symbol of justice and machismo of a bygone era. To the Masons, his 
reputation remains unblemished. 
 
        Hoover relics line the inner sanctum -- his FBI desk, his boxing gloves, a snapshot of the director 
and Shirley Temple, newspaper clippings chronicling his heroics. And of course, set aside in a glass 
display case, his fezzes.
  
        The House of the Temple, to say the least, is an odd place.
 
        The origins of this heady swath of cultural kitsch are the subject of much speculation, but the 
tangible beginning is in London, where the first lodge was built in 1717 by a group of stonemasons. The 
"secrets" of masonry then were largely trade secrets for a thriving profession during a boom time of church 
building. Once the Masons lost their craft, they continued to embrace the secret rituals already in place. 
Masons won't let you watch these rituals, which have been passed down over the years, occasionally 
reinvented, but always revered as the defining factor of Masonry. Even Dudley Davis, who seeks to 
modernize the Masons, stresses that the ritual must stay, even if it is scaled back. 

        The secret rituals -- required to advance in the 33 degrees of Masonry -- usually involve tests or 
lessons performed by Masons wearing elaborate period costumes and acting out parables extolling basic 
values like honesty, bravery, loyalty.

        Non-Masons are not allowed to witness such events, but a trip to the basement of the 16th Street 
local Scottish Rite Temple tells part of the story. Rows of closets line the "costume room." There are racks 
of swords and muskets on the wall. The outfits are arranged by period: stacks of Colonial  garb, with 
ponytailed wigs and tricorn hats. Another sliding door reveals Arabian robes and headdresses. Still 
another beckons with medieval armor: chain mail, codpieces, that sort of thing.
  
        At the House of the Temple, the ceiling of the main meeting chamber soars a hundred feet 
overhead. The massive room is circled with wooden thrones and benches, glitteringly entwined serpents 
and, in the center, a large altar. Ernie Higgins lets us play the giant, swirl-toned organ. The sounds fill this 
neo-gothic chamber. It's impressive. It's like the setting of the world's most bodacious game of Dungeons 
and Dragons. This could be Camelot, or a Deep Purple video. 
 
        It's all quite a hoot. 
        
        The Morgan Affair 

        Masons built our country -- literally and figuratively. George Washington, Ben Franklin and other 
brothers laid the actual cornerstone of the Capitol, the White House and the Washington Monument. 
Colonial Masonic lodges were a refuge where men could talk revolution. They were hard drinkers. 
Wenchers. Scrappers. Then, in 1826, disaster struck.  

        The honeymoon ended in Batavia, N.Y., when William Morgan, an ex-Army captain who fought for 
Gen. Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, disappeared, creating a national scandal. What actually did 
happen that summer is anyone's guess, but varying media accounts render it something like this:

        Morgan arrived in Batavia in 1821 and petitioned the local lodge for  membership. He claimed that 
he was already a Mason, which he most likely was not. At first embraced by local Masons, Morgan -- as 
well as his credibility and character -- over the next few years came into question. By 1826, the Masons 
threw him out of the Batavia lodge, saying he was a profligate drunk who had joined under false pretenses.
 
        To get back at them, Morgan resolved to publish the Masons' secret rituals, and joined forces with 
another ex-Army officer and printer to publish an unauthorized account of Masonry. When Morgan was 
arrested for a minor offense, a contingent of Masons arrived at the jail and spirited him away. He was 
never seen again.       

        Much of the public believed Masons had kidnapped and killed him. The response to the scandal 
devastated Masonry. The country's first national third political party was formed, the Anti-Masonic party, 
its entire platform being to bash Freemasons. Thousands of members, horrified by the publicity and 
scandal, fled the brotherhood. By the 1830s, Masonic numbers had plummeted to some 40,000 
nationwide.
 
        But the need for fellowship proved stronger than the stench of scandal. By the end of the 19th 
century, there were 750,000 Masons. The brotherhood was back in full swing. Masonry this time around, 
though, was different. Not so roguish or sexy. More conservative. Less dangerous. Never again would it 
be an instrument of change in America -- instead it became an instrument of stability. That has lasted for 
100 years.  
        
        Call to Order 

        The members of Osiris-Pentalpha Lodge 23 meet on the first and third Wednesdays of the month 
in a plain three-story brick building at the corner of Carroll and Maple streets NW in Takoma. It is just 
down the street from Friedrich's Modern Dry Cleaning and catercorner to Stein Hebrew Funeral Home. 
There are thousands of Masonic lodges just like this one across the country.
        
        On this drizzly night, the brethren gather in a small powder-blue anteroom on the second floor, 
about three dozen men in brown or blue business suits. This group is as heterogeneous as Masonry 
generally gets. Most are in their sixties, but a few are twentysomethings, and a few are black. (Though 
black men are admitted into the mainstream Mason organization, most black Masons belong to a separate 
organization, known as the Prince Hall Masons, which has an estimated 250,000 members nationwide. 
The segregation is not a hot issue. "We got our own charters," says Fred Williams, Imperial Director for 
Publicity for the Prince Hall Shriners, "and just stayed separate." He said it's not a big deal.)
 
        This could be a meeting of any men's club anywhere, except all of these men wear small, 
spotlessly white aprons.
  
        At 8, Barry Benn arises. He is the Tiler. He knocks once, twice, three times on the door to the 
main lodge room.
  
        Inside, the Worshipful Master, Chip Mahaney, asks the Senior Warden who is knocking. 
 
        The Warden asks Tiler Benn, and Tiler Benn tells him. The Warden reports this to Worshipful 
Master Mahaney, who then instructs the Warden to tell Tiler Benn and the boys to come on in. The 
meeting is called to order. 
 
        The main meeting hall is painted the same prom-tuxedo blue as the anteroom, and lit by overhead 
fluorescent lights. At one end of the room is a platform that supports a throne, flanked by two smaller 
seats. On the throne sits the Worshipful Master. He calls the meeting to order.
  
        In the center of the room is a waist-high altar, and on it are a Bible and a yellow mailing tube. The 
Bible is a reminder of the God-fearing (though strictly ecumenical) nature of Masonry. The tube contains 
the lodge's charter. It is opened once a year, when a new Worshipful Master is announced. As it happens, 
at least half the men in the room have been Worshipful Masters -- you can tell because they put the initials 
P.M., for Past Master, after their names on their business cards and official programs. The main order of 
business on this night is a visit of members from Theodore Roosevelt Lodge 44, and a formal meeting of 
two current Worshipful Masters, the boyish Mahaney and Roosevelt Lodge's sixtyish Vince Hardwick. An 
appeal is made for aid to Masonic earthquake victims in Kobe, Japan.
 
        Mahaney welcomes Hardwick and the other representatives of Lodge 44 and asks the Warden to 
lead him to the podium. The Warden escorts Hardwick by the elbow. He makes a brief, earnest speech 
about brotherhood and its importance to Masonry. The point is that the two lodges should get together 
more often. 

        Refreshments are served.
  
        The meeting is friendly, open and egalitarian. Its goal is to advance fellowship. You cannot help 
but be impressed with the good nature of the group, its happy adherence to ceremony, its gentlemanly 
respect for title and position, its quaintness and its overriding civility.  

        It reminds you of a time long gone. 

        Knights in Tulsa
 
        L.D. Alexander: People got to where they didn't want to join up anymore. Can you imagine that? 
They didn't want to be Knights of the White Magnolia. . . . They turned around and stabbed their 
granddaddies square in the back. . . . Little by little the lodges just sorter dried up. Nobody wanted to join. 
No new people. Jesus, but we was big once, Lonnie Roy. Hell, there was governors and senators that 
was Brother Knights. We had con-ventions and barbecues and parades. Took over a whole hotel there in 
Tulsa. Gawd, and it musta been somethin' to see. Bands playin' and baton girls a-marchin' along. The 
Grand Imperial Wizard of the brotherhood rode in a big open carriage pulled by six white horses, and up 
above the whole shebang was this great old big blimp towin' this here banner sayin' TULSA WELCOMES 
THE KNIGHTS OF THE WHITE MAGNOLIA. Gawdamighty, now wasn't that somethin'?
 
        Lonnie Roy: Jeeezus, you mean to say that with all that great stuff,that people quit joinin' up? 
 
        L.D. Alexander: That's right, Lonnie boy. 
 
        -- From "The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia," by Preston Jones.  
        
        Adjournment 
        
        Here in Burlington, the parade is ending. The go-karts are being stowed onto semi trailers, the 
streets reclaimed by college types on in-line skates, yuppies with cell phones.
 
        At the end of the parade route, on College Avenue near market Square, the kilted highlanders 
from the Kora Temple are squeezing one last song out of their bagpipes. It's not scripted, it's just 
something that felt right. They play "Auld Land Syne," and when the final, sad, inscrutable lines are played 
-- We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne -- the pipes fall silent, and the drummers keep the 
beat a few seconds more, a steady, dignified, haunting dirge.  

Photo, glenn russell for The Washington Post; Photo ; Photo, nancy andrews, Clockwise from left: Many 
Masons say the eye above the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill is an ancient Masonic emblem; Harry 
Truman, in Mason regalia, from a painting; Teddy Roosevelt as a Master Mason; Mason Ernie Higgins; 
consultant Dudley Davis.  A Shriner on parade in Burlington, Vt. Can fezzes and go-carts still cut it as we 
approach the millenium?



Copyright 1995 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
October 07, 1995, Saturday, Final Edition
OP-ED; Pg. A28; LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
'Wake Up, and Slow Down'
LETTER;

The article "Life in the Fez Lane; Crumbling Masonry: America's Biggest Fraternity Faces Old Age" [Style, 
Sept. 24] speaks volumes, not only about the future of Masonry but the state of our society. We have 
fallen prey to our insatiable urge to "save time." 

        We rush to the drive-through lane to grab "fast" food.

        We scoff at posted speed limits and jump from lane to lane to save a second. 

        We jet to our destinations. 

        We fax our correspondence. 

        If we must eat at home, we microwave our meal. 

        We deposit our paycheck electronically and withdraw money at the ATM. 

        But with all this time  "saved," there is not enough for Masons or other groups to meet, sit down 
and enjoy one another's company and go about doing good works. 

        If there were a "drive-through" Masonic Lodge, it might well be filled with members. Yes, I am one 
of those 67-plus-year-old Masons who rarely attends lodge meetings. Yes, I am a Mason who knows of its 
good works but does not share my enthusiasm with others, and yes, I am one of those caught up in our 
rush to "save time." What are we doing with all this time we save? Just taking more pills, I guess.

        The reporters correctly point out Masonry's slow demise, and it well may be a harbinger of our 
"rush- rush" society's demise as we now know it. 

        Maybe we should wake up and slow down -- even join some kind of lodge and go to a meeting 
and meet a new friend and rest a little bit. 

        Who knows? 

        At the rate we are going, soon we will have so much time on our hands we once again can take 
our time and enjoy life and one another more. 

        Perhaps, it is goodbye to Masonry and the Elks and the others, but it might be hello to a society 
that comprehends we must be wasting the time we save, for we never see any of it. 

        As environmentalists, perhaps, we should try to save our highest order -- mankind. Perhaps, then 
we would have time for Masonic meetings. 

W. L. MILLWOOD 

Locust Grove, Va.
