Masonic Service Association Relocated to Iowa

by Christopher Hodapp

For over a year, the current commissioners of the Masonic Service Association have expressed their intention to move the MSA from their longtime Washington D.C. headquarters in suburban Maryland back to its original home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Yesterday, I reported that the msana.com website had vanished into the aether. Now today, the MSA has issued the following press release officially announcing their new location.

MSA Relocates to Iowa

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Now in its 101st year, the Masonic Service Association of North America (MSA) has relocated its headquarters to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
In effect, this is a return to its roots, because MSA was created at a meeting of Grand Masters of the United States in 1919 in Cedar Rapids. Most of MSA’s life has been in the Washington, D.C., and nearby Silver Spring and Burtonsville MD, areas.

For the past year, MSA has been restructuring its organization, to provide a more functional and cost-savings method to serve Freemasonry across the continent. A primary goal was to move out of the costly rent area of the nation’s capital.

MSA’s new address and contact information:

813 1st Avenue SE Ste 357 Cedar Rapids, IA 52402-5001

Tel: 319-365-1438 Fax: 319-365-1439

email: msa@gl-iowa.org

MSA now will be operating out of the building housing the Iowa Masonic Library and Museums, which is regarded as one of the best facilities in the world to perform Masonic research. The large marble structure houses the library, several museums, special exhibits, and the offices of the Grand Lodge of Iowa. “What an outstanding location for the Masonic Service Association and its variety of service and information-producing responsibilities,” said Lanny Sanders, Chairman of the MSA Board of Commissioners. The Library houses more than 250,000 volumes, of which thousands are rare Masonic books for the serious researcher and a circulating collection for the casual reader. The Library also collects materials dealing with non-Masonic topics. In 1884, the first Masonic library building anywhere in the world was opened to the public in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The building was supposed to last 100 years, but nobody predicted the impact a building would have on the collections which grew so quickly that the building housing them proved too small and crowded. Thus, in 1952, the old library was demolished and, in 1955, the current white marble, four-story building was opened on the same site. Last year, as part of the reorganization, Craig Davis was named Administrator for the Masonic Service Association, its chief operating officer. He also serves as Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Iowa.

 In its new home, MSA will continue its variety of services to Freemasonry in North America, including:

• Service to military veterans at approximately 150 U.S. veterans hospitals and clinics in the country. MSA is the only Masonic organization represented on the Veteran’s Administration’s Voluntary Services Organization Advisory Board.
• Preparation and dispersal of Masonic information to assist Lodge education efforts, general Masonic content for the public, and useful data for the benefit of any Mason. These efforts include monthly distribution of the Short Talk Bulletin and Emessay Notes publications, operation of the Masonic Information Center, and periodic development of brochures and digests.
• Gathering and dispersal of Disaster Relief Funds to Grand Lodges in times of need.

 Millions of dollars over the years have been collected and provided to assist in times of trouble. MSA has become the key organization trusted by Grand Lodges and Masons to filter such relief to needed areas. Every penny donated through MSA for disaster relief is sent to those in need.

Iowa's Masonic Library & Museum Highlighted

by Christopher Hodapp

The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa yesterday featured a substantial and nicely written piece about the Grand Lodge of Iowa's magnificent Library and Museum and its curator/librarian, WB Bill Krueger. It doesn't get the attention that the venerable Masonic museums and libraries in America's northeast often do, but Cedar Rapids is arguably one of the top Masonic research resources in the world. The original library's home was erected in 1884 and was the first Masonic-specific library building in America. The present 1955 facility today has more than 155,000 volumes, in addition to its fine museum collection.

The reporter asked Bill to name the top five treasures in the Museum today. His choices were: 

•The Sargent Table
Built in the early 1900s by Cedar Rapids Mason Philip J. Sargent, this stunning marquetry drop-leaf table features 37,000 tiny pieces of inlay from 100 kinds of wood, and scores of Masonic symbols.

•"The First Three Degrees of Masonry" painted by artist Grant Wood in 1922.
A stunning triptych symbolizing the Masonic degrees and stages of man.

•Benjamin Franklin’s 1734 printing of James Anderson's 1723 'Constitutions of the Freemasons'

•PGM Theodore Sutton Parvin's diaries
Parvin was one of the founders of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, and started the Iowa Masonic Library in 1842 with a $5 gold piece.

•Joseph Smith’s Ledger
Smith's final ledger book from the Mormon community in Nauvoo, Illinois that was being kept at the time of his death at the hands of a mob in 1844.

The entire article with photos can be seen HERE.

Please call the Grand Lodge of Iowa Library & Museum to ask about visiting hours, especially during the COVID shutdowns. I called several times in the last couple of months, but the building has been closed for much of the year. In fact, it's always a good idea to call before visiting any Masonic library and museum. They are generally staffed infrequently by volunteers, and can often have erratic hours.

Masons and Community: County Court Uses Masonic Hall for Jury Duty

by Christopher Hodapp

I spotted an interesting tidbit in the news today that demonstrates how a Masonic lodge can be of unique service to its surrounding community. The Masonic Center in Clinton, Iowa is being leased by the Clinton County Court as a venue for jury pool selection. According to the article on the Clinton Herald website, state and local COVID regulations about social distancing in government venues forced the court to find another, more spread out location for choosing jury pool members. The courthouse could not properly accommodate the required safe distances needed for gathering large groups of people in one space. So, the Brethren of the Clinton Masonic Center came to the rescue.

Clinton County Attorney Mike Wolf says the county will lease the space for jury selection at a cost of $400 for each week the county needs the site. The rate includes set up on Friday, storing equipment at the site over the weekend and selecting the jury on Mondays. The actual trials will be held starting Tuesdays in the County Courthouse, as usual.

The Clinton Masonic Center is the home of the Clinton Valley of the Scottish Rite Bodies, York Rite, Western Star Lodge #100, and Emulation Lodge #255. The article doesn't say, but I suspect their 'Red Room' will be the probable location because of its size and horseshoe seating.

In similar news, David Bloomquist on Facebook reports that the Scottish Rite Valley of Lincoln, Nebraska's spacious lodge room is being used for Lincoln and Lancaster County court trials.

And Joe Schumate, Jr. tells me that Denham Springs Lodge #297 in Denham Springs, Louisiana is also being used by their local court system for trials during the COVID pandemic.

The point to be made from this is that the public at large really isn't aware anymore that our buildings have these large, unusually arranged spaces that work out perfectly for trial/jury/spectator uses. It's worth reaching out to your local courts to inform them. Back in the days when we had members from every walk of life, they knew. We have to spread the word now.

Back in the day, our downtown temple's auditorium in Indianapolis was used for swearing in new immigrants. We could be doing that again.

A couple of guys have groused online that $400/day sounded too cheap. It's a token amount, sure, but it's $400 more per week than the room was making when it sat empty. Plus, it gets the local Masonic hall back in front of literally hundreds of eyeballs that otherwise knew little or nothing about us. That's more important than anything these days. We will never rebuild this fraternity as long as we are invisible and a forgotten mystery to the community around us.

The COVID Lull: What Is Your Lodge Doing?

by Christopher Hodapp

How is your Masonic lodge responding to the almost nationwide shutdown of group activities as the coronavirus restrictions roll along?

Here in my own jurisdiction, my Mother lodge wasted no time in organizing a "virtual refreshment" Thursday night. Brethren connected via the Jitsu.org internet platform with their webcams and smartphones because Broad Ripple Lodge wouldn't be complete without a Thursday night meetup. I'm sure countless other Masonic lodges around the world are attempting something similar using Zoom, Skype, Teams, or other group video chatting and meeting solutions. If you are new to the idea, here's a list of some of the more common systems available.

Masonic education committees and just individual brethren everywhere are busily working on creating online video, audio or PowerPoint programs. Meanwhile, vast numbers of brethren are taking this golden opportunity to learn new parts of their ritual, or reacquaint themselves with old ones. 

If you're a lodge Master, consider this little addition. Earlier this week I mentioned a Closing Charge for Master Mason lodges that many jurisdictions require, but others don't. Some states, like my own, permit this to be done by the Master as an option, and print it in their Monitor. It's been around for over 200 years in the U.S. The Brethren of Waco Lodge No. 92 in Texas posted this image from Jeremy Cross' True Masonic Chart in 1819. All of our brethren should take it to heart, and it's an important reminder to our members worth repeating after every meeting. 

No time like the present to learn it, if it's not required in your neck of the Masonic woods.

Many grand masters have encouraged their area Masons to reach out and connect with their fellow brethren to be sure anyone needing assistance can get it, especially during this extraordinary and bizarre moment in time when enforced physical isolation is the rule almost everywhere. We should all be doing that without being reminded. If you have a lodge Brother who is currently bedridden at home or in the hospital, see if he has a smartphone, tablet or laptop and maybe include him in your virtual meetups. Or just check on his condition and cheer him up by utilizing Facetime or other video application.

Don't forget your lodge's widows at this time, too. Pay special attention to members and widows who are living alone right now. Everybody is using food delivery services to pick up dinner from their favorite local restaurants. Nothing prevents any of us from doing just that ourselves and delivering dinner occasionally to our shut-in members, as long as you wear gloves and use recommended hygiene practices.

But what about the wider communities in which we reside? What can Masons do to help our neighborhoods?

Masons in Belfast, Northern Ireland are delivering 300 'Rescue Packs' to the elderly that include eight rolls of toilet paper. Hard to believe that toilet paper would become such a vital and weak link in this crazy situation, but it has. Brethren at Belfast's Crumlin Masonic Hall have taken on the problem.

Brethren of Iowa's Mahaska lodge in pre-COVID days

Brethren of Mahaska Lodge 644 in Oskaloosa, Iowa made their offer to the community a simple one: the lodge announced that Freemasonry is filled with young, healthy men that are ready and willing to assist with running general errands, like picking up groceries or prescriptions. All anyone needs to do is contact the lodge and they'll come running. 

This Alameda, California food bank normally needs a hundred
volunteers a day to operate under normal circumstances

While most cities and states are requesting or demanding groups avoid social gathering, that hasn't negated the need for warm bodies to volunteer to distribute supplies all over the country. Many church congregations have stepped up in some cases, and there's no reason why Masons cannot or should not be doing it, too. 

Case in point: stories are appearing all across the country that food banks are being especially hard hit because their normal volunteer partner groups are staying home. In many populated areas, the bigger food pantries require a hundred or more volunteers every day just to deal with the demands of sorting, packing and stocking food and supplies. But volunteers (who are traditionally retirees and now the most at-risk members of the population) are staying home, and donations of both money and food are drying up.

A story from San Francisco reported Thursday that nineteen food pantries in the Silicon Valley which normally serve 2,400 households or more a week in usual circumstances have already shut down, with more expected to close by this weekend. In San Francisco, the number of pantries that had closed jumped from thirteen on Wednesday to nearly thirty on Thursday, out of a total of about 200. (Colorado had a similar story on Wednesday So did Iowa and countless others - it's the same all over the country.)

Drive-thru food bank at a church in Oregon

It's harder now than ever for families and individuals who rely on food pantries, as hoarding, panic buying, and distribution chain disruptions have decimated grocery stores and old reliables like Walmart and Sam's Club. In response to the volunteer shortages, some food banks have started pop-up, drive-thru food pantries in parking lots in areas where central distribution sites have closed. In areas with fewer services than urban areas, families may have nowhere else to turn. Churches have been stepping in at many locations. Masonic lodges might consider this, as well.

The largest food bank in Indiana, Gleanor's in Indianapolis, was just supported with a major donation by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. He announced via the local newspaper that he would kick in a million dollars to Gleanor's if citizens first raised $200,000. Donations poured in and hit over $300,000 in less than a day. Not every city or town has a local millionaire to do this sort of thing. Perhaps grand lodges or Scottish Rite valleys might consider a similar kind of challenge grant to help their communities and to remind citizens that we are still alive and well and vital to them.

It's the sort of thing we Masons used to do in an earlier time.

Has your lodge, chapter, valley or grand lodge come up with its own unique program to help your town or city during the COVID pandemic? Share your ideas with me and I'll be happy to pass along what you're doing here. Send me your stories at hodapp@aol.com or comment at the link below.

Meanwhile...

Iowa's Masonic Library & Museums' Book Restoration Project

The Grand Lodge of Iowa A.F.&A.M.'s incredible Masonic Library and Museums complex in Cedar Rapids has one of the largest Masonic collections of books and manuscripts in the world. Assistant Librarian Bill Kreuger now reports in the March 2020 issue of the Grand Lodge of Iowa Bulletin that Grand Master William R. Crawford has selected as one of his major fundraising projects the restoration and re-binding of books from their Rare Book collection. 

The first Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids in 1884

It's depressingly uncommon for a grand lodge to support their own library and museum as enthusiastically as Iowa does, and they have reason to brag. In 1884 Iowa opened the first Masonic library building anywhere in the world in Cedar Rapids. In 1952, the inadequate 19th-century library was demolished, and the current marble, Mid-Century Modern building opened on the same site in 1955. Today, the library houses over 250,000 volumes of both rare and circulating Masonic books. 

Iowa's Masonic Library and Museum is also home to several noteworthy specialized collections, including the A.E. Waite Collection of esoteric and occult science, and the Joseph A. Walkes Collection of Prince Hall Masonry. (If you're serious about researching African-American and Prince Hall-derived Freemasonry, Iowa absolutely needs to be on your itinerary. They have numerous volumes that don't exist anywhere else, including many sets of annual proceedings dating into the mid-1800s from the earliest predecessors of what we refer to as 'Prince Hall Masonry' today.)

The basis of Iowa's Library came about in the 1882 after the death of Brother Robert Franklin Bower, who was reputed to have owned one of the largest and most valuable Masonic book collections in the world at the time. Born in Philadelphia, Bower was first made a Mason in 1850 at Madison, Indiana (the Ohio River town that was the location of the founding of the Grand Lodge of Indiana in 1818). He moved to Iowa 20 years later, and he became General Grand High Priest of the Grand Chapter of the Royal Arch in 1880. Upon his death, the Grand Lodge of Iowa purchased his vast Masonic book collection from his estate. 

Many of the volumes in Bower's famed collection were quite rare, even for the late 19th century. The passage of 140 years has made them even rarer and more valuable than ever. And more fragile. Between environmental conditions, the original materials, decades of use by researchers, and the ravages of time itself, some of the rarest books have fallen into disrepair.

Recently conserved books include: Benjamin Franklin's American publication of Anderson's Constitutions (1734); an Ahimon Rezon (1817); and an 1840 manuscript by Mormon founder Joseph Smith. 

The books currently being restored include Anderson's Constitutions of Free-Masons (1723), and The Freemasons Monitor (1797). There are also several extremely rare, bound volumes of late-1700s Masonic magazines: Freemasons Magazine (1797-98); Sentimental and Masonic Magazine (1793-94); and American Museum or Universal Magazine (1790).

Conservation of these delicate works is not an inexpensive proposition — the estimated cost of re-binding and repairing a year's volume of the fragile, two century-old bound magazine sets is approximately $500. The restoration and re-binding work is an ongoing project being done by Brother James Twomey, a Mason and proprietor of the Book Restoration Company over in LaFarge, Wisconsin. 

Iowa's vast Masonic Library collection listing can be accessed online HERE.

To donate to Iowa's book restoration project or the Library & Museums, contact Associate Librarian Bill Kreuger at librarian@gl-iowa.org

New GL of Iowa Website

The Grand Lodge of Iowa AF&AM has redesigned its website. Be sure to have a look at the Masonic Education section, along with its other resources. Nice job.