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LOOM 620

 LOYAL ORDER OF MOOSE

   PILGRIMS

FELLOWS

25 CLUB MEMBERS

 ** 50 Division ***75 Division ****100 Division

What Are Your Responsibilities As an Officer: The Lodge GOVERNOR

> The Governor is the President of the corporation that the Lodge legally exists as. He presides at all meetings of the Board of Officers, all regular meetings, and any specially scheduled meetings of the Lodge. The Governor’s primary objective is to promote the fraternal operation of the Lodge. His major specific responsibilities include:

Maintaining order and decorum at meetings, ensuring that meetings are run according to Robert’s Rules of Order.

Appointing certain designated officers and the chairmen of all standing and special committees, except as otherwise provided in the

General Laws; also to ensure the continuing activity of committees by appointing replacements as needed.

Chairing the House Committee. He is NOT—and cannot be—the manager of the Social Quarters. He has no authority over the Social Quarters, except when he is presiding at a House Committee meeting.

MOOSE MEMBERS MUST EARN TOP DEGREES OF ORDER

One of the basic precepts of the Loyal Order of Moose is that "no institution that labors for self and self alone can remain great and mighty, and serve posterity." Therefore, the two highest degrees conferred on members of the Moose Fraternity are bestowed as a reward for devotion and service to the philanthropic programs of the Order. These are the Fellowship Degree and the Pilgrim Degree of Merit.

When a man is enrolled into the Loyal Order of Moose, he automatically becomes a member of the first degree, and becomes eligible for advancement to the Second Degree, the Moose Legion.

Once enrolled as a Moose Legionnaire, he is eligible to wear the maroon Moose Legion blazer, striped tie and lapel pin, and to participate in the celebrations and other activities of his Moose Legion Unit.

If a member has demonstrated his leadership ability by giving of his time and effort to serve on various Lodge and/or Moose Legion committees and by being a loyal, enthusiastic and active member of his Lodge and Moose Legion, he may be granted the honors of the third degree--the Fellowship Degree of Honor.

He is then able to wear the Fellowship regalia and the Fellowship lapel pin. Conferral of the Fellowship Degree takes place at the International Moose Convention and at state and provincial association conventions and authorized special meetings.

The first full week in December is set aside each year as "Fellowship Degree Honor Week," and all Lodges throughout the Moose domain are requested to conduct appropriate activities to pay tribute to their members of the third degree.

The highest and most coveted degree of the Order, the Pilgrim Degree of Merit, is conferred on roughly 150 to 200 Moose members each year, and only once a year, in a solemn and impressive ceremony held in late May or early June in the House of God on the Mooseheart campus.

Only those who have compiled an outstanding record of meritorious service to the Order over a period of many years receive this distinction. Pilgrims are entitled to wear the gold Pilgrim jacket and tie, and the Pilgrim lapel pin.

One of the most colorful rituals in the Moose is the Pilgrim regalia presentation ceremony. When a new Pilgrim is named, his home Lodge sponsors a ceremony in which Pilgrims in the area convene in their regalia to invest him with his Pilgrim apparel. Some larger Moose Associations have received permission to “present” all of their year’s Pilgrims at one time, in a statewide ceremony.

The regalia of the Moose Legion, Fellowship Degree of Honor, and Pilgrim Degree of Merit can be worn at any authorized Moose function--but must be worn in their entirety; it is improper to wear a degree jacket without its correlating necktie, or vice versa.

Members of the Fellowship Degree and Pilgrim Degree are recognized throughout the Moose organization as fraternal leaders because they have earned the respect of their brother Moose by their service to the Order.

25 CLUBBERS ARE MOOSE "MEN OF DISTINCTION"

Membership in the "25 Club" of the Loyal Order of Moose is attained by sponsoring a minimum of 25 candidates for membership in the Moose fraternity.

The 25 Club was organized at the 1940 International Convention of the Order at Des Moines, Iowa, to give recognition to Moose members who have given that "extra effort" to keep the fraternity strong and growing.

To date, more than 75,000 members have qualified for membership in this coveted organization and more members attain this level each month.

A new 25 Clubber receives a gold 25 Club lapel pin with a silver inset Moose head. As he sponsors more candidates, the member advances to the 50 Division and earns a diamond in his pin; upward to the 75, 100, 150, 175, 200, 250 Divisions and beyond, he earns additional diamonds in his pin. Upon reaching the 250 Division, the member is presented a Life Membership in the fraternity. Upon reaching the 500 Division, he retains his pin for life and his presented with a solid gold 25 Club ring. A quality diamond is added to that ring for each 100 members sponsored thereafter, up to fully 25 diamonds in the ring upon reaching the 3,000 Division.

As of the beginning of the 21st century, only three individuals had ever reached the stratospheric 3,000 Division: the late Sam Trowbridge of Seattle, WA Lodge 211, the all-time champion Moose sponsor with 4,824 members; the late Jack Burns of Phoenix, AZ Lodge 708, who sponsored 3,156; and the late William T. Arnold of Sebring, FL Lodge 2259, who died in 2002 with 3,926 members to his credit.

This is not the only recognition extended to 25 Clubbers for their extraordinary efforts on behalf of the fraternity. Each year, a special 25 Club party is held by the state associations, and one of the highlights of the International Convention is the elaborate party, usually featuring top-name entertainment for new and qualifying 25 Clubbers.

In each issue, generally two pages of Moose Magazine are devoted to the "Order Salutes the 25 Club," in which pictures of new members of the 25 Club are printed, and those rising to higher divisions are mentioned

THE MOOSE FRATERNITY: A LEADER IN COMMUNITY SERVICE

By compiling an exemplary record of community service, the Loyal Order of Moose has earned an outstanding reputation as one of America's leading fraternal and service organizations.

Community activities in Moose Lodges are intended to supplement the humanitarian services that limited government resources can't provide.

Every one of the more than 2,000 Lodges is urged to participate in a "Six-Point Program" outlined by the fraternity's Community Service Department. These six areas of concentration include:

     1. Youth Awareness / Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.)

     2. Youth Sports

     3. Scouting and Yellowstone YCC

     4. Senior Citizens/Moosehaven/Food & Shelter

     5. Mooseheart

     6. Local Volunteer Services

Perhaps the most prominent point of the "Six-Point Program of Community Service is the Moose Youth Awareness program, in which hundreds of bright, enthusiastic teenagers are recruited each year and then guided to create and deliver their own distinctive "KidsTalk" presentations to help younger children make positive, healthy choices in life. The teenagers present these "KidsTalks" to groups ranging from ages four to nine. Every year, Moose “KidsTalk” reaches up to 100,000 youngsters across the U.S. and Canada. Dedicated to the betterment of humanity, the Moose fraternity has also actively supported national health endowments throughout its history. These have included the Kidney Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Cerebral Palsy, Arthritis Foundation, Epilepsy Foundation, and the Alzheimer's Association.

Special emphasis is placed on Community Service activities for youth. The Moose is an active participant in youth Special Olympics, as well as youth baseball, softball, basketball, hockey and soccer.

Hundreds of Lodges are charter sponsors in local Boy and Girl Scouting groups. The key to the success of any Scouting troop is leadership. Moose members are active leaders in local Scouting programs, building the future leaders of your community. Moose sponsorship of Scouting includes Lodges that are chartered partners with a Boy Scout unit or provides financial support for Boy and Girl Scout units. It also provide for Lodge donations of $50 or more in a fiscal quarter to the Scouting programs a Mooseheart.

Youths are also served by the Moose fraternity’s complete financial underwriting of the Youth Conservation Corps program at Yellowstone National Park. Every summer, YCC gives selected youths from all over the continent (including at least four from Mooseheart and three more from Moose families) an unforgettable eight-week work/learn/earn opportunity in the vast beauty of America’s premier national park.

Other Moose-sponsored projects include "Adopt-A-Highway," "Meals on Wheels," and feeding the homeless, and sometimes, housing them temporarily in the wake of natural disasters or other emergencies. . Years ago, Moose "Youth Honor Day" played an important role in reducing vandalism on Halloween night. "Operation Santa Claus," in which Lodges collect toys and distribute them to needy children, has been responsible for providing thousands of children with gifts at Christmas. Additionally, most Lodges sponsor more locally-tailored projects designed to fit the needs of the area in which it is located.

Counting volunteer hours worked, personal miles driven, and monetary donations, Moose men and women contribute nearly $90 million annually in Community Service donations throughout North America. Lodges everywhere are making substantial contributions to society by providing the initiative, organization, and manpower to make our communities better places to live.

THE MOOSE FRATERNITY

Although the Moose fraternal organization was founded in the late 1800s with the modest goal of offering men an opportunity to gather socially, it was reinvented, during the first decade of the 20 th century, into an organizational dynamo of men and women who would set out to build a city that would brighten the futures of thousands of children in need all across North America; then, less than a decade later, another, more compact community that would furnish comfort, dignity and security during the golden years of the dependent elderly among its membership.

When Dr. John Henry Wilson, a Louisville, Kentucky physician, organized a handful of men into what was dubbed the Loyal Order of Moose in the parlor of his home in April 1888, he and his compatriots did so apparently for no other reason than to form a string of men’s social clubs.  Lodges were instituted in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the smaller Indiana towns of Crawfordsville and Frankfort by the early 1890s, but Dr. Wilson himself became disillusioned at some unpleasant dissension with the fraternal ranks, and he left the infant order shortly before the turn of the 20 th century.

It was just the two remaining Indiana Lodges that kept the Moose from disappearing altogether, until the fall of 1906, when the outgoing young city clerk of Elwood, Indiana, one James John Davis, was invited to enroll into the Crawfordsville Lodge. It was on Davis’ 33 rd birthday, October 27, that he became just the 247 th member of the Loyal Order of Moose.

Davis, a native of Wales who had worked from boyhood as an “iron puddler” in the steel mills of Pennsylvania, had also been a labor organizer. Knowing that moose in the wild were large, powerful animals that used their size and strength not as predators but as protectors of their young and weak, Davis immediately saw potential for human Moose to build great size and strength, to protecting their own as well.  A much larger, more powerful Loyal Order of Moose could, he envisioned, provide security for a largely working-class membership.

In 1906 America, little or no government “safety net” yet existed to provide benefits to the wife and children of a breadwinner who died or became disabled. So Davis proposed to “pitch” Moose membership as a way to provide such protection to the workingman at a bargain price— annual dues of just $5 to $10. The leadership of the moribund Order happily gave him a green light and the title of “Supreme Organizer,” and Davis set out with a few well- chosen colleagues to solicit members and to organize Moose Lodges across the United States and southern Canada.

Davis’ marketing instincts were on-target: By 1912, in just six years, the Order had multiplied, from 247 members in two Lodges, to a colossus of nearly 500,000 in more than 1,000 Lodges! Davis by now was appointed the organization’s first chief executive with the new title of Director General, realized that it was time to make good on the promise he had envisioned.  The Moose first began a program of paying “sick benefits” to members who became too ill to work—and, more ambitiously, Davis, along with Supreme Secretary Rodney Brandonand other Moose officers, laid plans for a “Moose Institute,” to be centrally located somewhere in the Midwest, that would provide a home, schooling and vocational training to children of deceased Moose members.

The Birth of Mooseheart. After careful consideration of numerous sites, the Moose Supreme Council in late 1912 approved the purchase of what was known as the Brookline Farm—more than 1,000 acres along the then-dirt-surfaced Lincoln Highway, between Batavia and Aurora on the west side of the Fox River, about 40 miles west of Chicago.  Ohio Congressman John Lentz, a member of the Supreme Council, conceived the name “Mooseheart” for the new community: “This,” he said, “will always be the place where the Moose fraternity will collectively pour out its heart; its devotion and sustenance, to the children of its members in need.”

So it was on a hot summer Sunday, July 27, 1913, that several thousand Moose men and women (for the Women of the Moose received formal recognition that year as the organization’s official female component) gathered under a rented circus tent toward the south end of the new property, and ceremonially placed the cornerstone for Mooseheart. The first 11 youngsters in residence were present, having been admitted earlier that month; they and a handful of workers were housed in the original farmhouse and a few rough-hewn frame buildings that had been erected that spring.  

Addressing Need on the Other End of Life: Moosehaven. Mooseheart’s construction proceeded furiously over the next decade, but it only barely kept pace with admissions that swelled the student census to nearly 1,000 by 1920. (Mooseheart’s population would reach a peak of 1,300 during the depths of the Great Depression; housing was often “barracks” style—unacceptable by today’s standards. Mooseheart officials now consider the campus’ ultimate capacity at between 400 and 500.)

Still, by the beginning of the Twenties, Davis and his Moose colleagues thought that the fraternity could and should do more—this time for aged members who were having trouble making ends meet in retirement. A limited number of elderly members had been invited to live amid the children at Mooseheart since 1915, but within a few years it was realized that this was not a practical long-term solution.

After another round of site consideration, 26 acres of riverside property was purchased just south of  Jacksonville, Florida, and in the fall of 1922, Moosehaven, the “City of Contentment,” was opened, with the arrival of its first 22 retired Moose residents.  Moosehaven has since grown into a 63-acre community, providing comfortable housing, a wide array of recreational activities, and comprehensive health care to more than 400 residents.

Meanwhile, as the Moose fraternity was growing in visibility and influence, so was Jim Davis. President Warren G. Harding named him to his Cabinet as Secretary of Labor in 1921, and Davis continued in that post under Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover as well. In November 1930, Davis, a Republican, won election to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, and he served there with distinction for the next 14 years. As both Labor Secretary and U.S. Senator, Davis was known as a conservative champion of labor, who fought hard for the bargaining rights of unions—but who felt that the workingman should expect no “handouts” of any sort. In the Senate, it was Davis who spearheaded passage of landmark legislation to force building contractors to pay laborers “prevailing” union-level wages in any government construction work. The law would forever bear his name: The Davis-Bacon Act.

An Independent, Autonomous Women’s Component.Though the Women of the Moose (originally termed the Women of Mooseheart Legion) had received formal recognition as a Moose auxiliary in 1913, they at first had little structured program of their own beyond the Chapter level.  That changed in 1921, when Davis met and hired a remarkable woman named Katherine Smith.

When the 19 th Amendment had granted women the right to vote in 1920, Smith, from Indianapolis, reasoned that women in politics would be a “growth market.”  She quit her secretarial job to go to work in Warren Harding’s successful Presidential campaign—and, still in her 20s, was rewarded with an appointment as Director of Public Employment in Washington.  In that post, her boss was Secretary of  Labor James J. Davis.  

Davis immediately recognized Smith’s talent and drive, but it took him five years to convince her to quit her government job and go to work for him running the Women of the Moose.  A stereotypical “women’s program” held no interest for her, Smith protested.  “So get out there and make a program,” Davis retorted.  She did exactly that, as the organization’s first Grand Chancellor, for the next 38 years until her retirement in 1964, at which point the Women of the Moose boasted 250,000 members.  (It has since grown to more than 540,000, in approximately 1,800 Chapters.)

As Davis committed more time and energy to his Washington duties in the 1920s and beyond, he had less time to run the Moose fraternity.  In 1927 the day-to-day management of the Order’s business was assumed at Mooseheart by Malcolm R. Giles, in the office of Supreme Secretary.  Giles, an accountant who had worked fulltime for the Moose since 1915, set out to implement a reorganization of the fraternity’s finances, and in 1934 modernized its recruitment apparatus into a formal Membership Enrollment Department, under the direction of a gregarious and talented young man named Paul P.  Schmitz.

Davis’ health was uncertain as he left the Senate in early 1945, and he settled into an elder statesman’s role with the Moose.  He collapsed on the podium while addressing the Moose convention in August 1947, and died that November.  Giles continued  to run the organization’s business as he had for 20 years; in 1949, the Supreme council granted him the title of Director General.

The “Proof of our Value:” Community Service. For a quarter-century the Moose had directed its efforts solely toward Mooseheart and Moosehaven; now, with postwar prosperity driving male Moose membership to nearly 800,000 members, Director General Giles set out to broaden the organization’s horizons.  In 1949 he conceived and instituted what was to become the third great Moose endeavor of the modern era, the Civic Affairs program (later renamed Community Service).

Giles explained his rationale thusly:  “Only three institutions have a God-given right to exist in a community—the home, the church and the school.  The rest of us must be valuable to the community to warrant our existence—and the burden of proof of our value is on us.”  The Community Service program has since flourished into a myriad of humanitarian efforts on the local Lodge level, as well as fraternity-wide projects such as the Moose Youth Awareness Program, in which bright teenagers go into elementary schools, daycare centers and the like to communicate an anti-drug message to 4-to 9-year olds—as many as 100,000 every year.

Malcolm Giles’ term as Director General was cut short when he suffered a heart attack and died, at age  59, in September 1953.  He was replaced on an interim basis by J.  Jack Stoehr, the well-respected Director of the fraternity’s most successful geographic region, which included Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  For a permanent successor, the Order turned to the commanding presence of Schmitz, the Membership Director who in 19 years had nurtured the fraternity from a low of 240,000 members during the worst of the Great Depression, to nearly 900,000 by the early 1950s.  

Schmitz, an Aurora, Illinois, native, led the Moose for nearly 21 years, longer than anyone except Davis.  During the tenure, both the Mooseheart and Moosehaven physical plants received substantial modernization, and he guided the Moose smoothly through the tumultuous 1960s into the 1970s with continued steady membership growth, to more than 1 million men (in more than 2,000 Lodges) and 300,000 women before he retired in April 1974.

Schmitz turned over the Director General’s office to Herbert W. Heilman—the first time a Mooseheart graduate (Class of 1934) had risen to lead the organization that had raised him at its Child City.  Heilman, a teacher and athletic coach originally from Tiffin, Ohio, had been hired by Giles in 1948 to run the fraternity’s sports program, thenhad worked for 17 years as Membership Enrollment Director under Schmitz.  Heilman’s tenure saw men’s and women’s combined Moose membership rise to nearly 1.8 million before his retirement in January 1984.

 When Paul J. O’Hollaren, a lawyer and insurance executive from Portland, Oregon, became the Supreme Council’s choice to succeed Heilman, it was the first time since Davis that a non-employee had assumed the Director General’s chair.  O’Hollaren had, of course, been a active Moose for a quarter-century: charter Governor of his Lodge in 1958, President of the Oregon Moose Association, Chief Justice of the Supreme Forum, and, in 1978-79, Supreme Governor.

Director General O’Hollaren’s whirlwind decade in office saw a full computerization and modernization of the fraternity’s business operations; the change of its corporate name to Moose International; the stirring observances of the organization’s Centennial in 1988, a completely updated redesign of the fraternity’s ceremonial degree regalia (away from headgear and robes to distinctive color-coded blazers and neckties); a rebuilding of Mooseheart’s utilities infrastructure, and the start of a long-range construction program to completely renovate or build new residential space for every Mooseheart student and Moosehaven resident.

O’Hollaren retired in February 1994; his successor, Director General Frank A. Sarnecki, also came to chief executive post out of the Moose “volunteer corps.” Sarnecki, a real estate and insurance executive from New Jersey, served as Secretary of the Perth Amboy Lodge for 12 years in the 1960s and ‘70s; he rose to become Supreme Governor in 1988-89.  During his five years in office, Sarnecki guided the fraternity toward sweeping changes – a fully equitable relationship between its men’s and women’s components in admissions to Moosehaven and in Lodge facilities that have been re- dubbed “Moose Family Centers”; a fraternity-wide effort to fund a new $16 million LifeCare Complex at Moosehaven; and, an expansion of Mooseheart admissions to accept applications from all children in need—a move that inspired renowned ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey to refer to efforts of the Moose Family Fraternity, in an August 1994 broadcast to his 24 million listeners throughout North America, as “a dynamic demonstration of civilized man’s better self.”

In April 1999, Frank Sarnecki resigned as Director General to pursue business interests back home on the east coast; after a period of weeks in which Paul O’Hollaren returned to run Moose International operations on an interim basis, longtime Supreme Secretary Donald Ross was elevated by the Supreme Council to become the fraternity’s eighth Director General on June 15, 1999.  Although Ross was a 28-year career Moose staff officer at the time of his appointment, he also was, at age 49, the organization’s youngest chief executive in more than 75 years.