Freemason Wisdom: Rudyard Kipling On Love

Rudyard Kipling

by Midnight Freemasons Regular Contributor 

Judy Gordon 

“Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.” 

~Rudyard Kipling

Hope and Esperance Lodge No. 782, India

Ray and Judy Gordon--then and now

Remember last week’s Blog I wrote, “Have you ever received a reward that made you speechless?”

This is in regards to me being speechless. I ALWAYS have something to say…Well, on 2/1/91, I was speechless…yes I was. All I could do was nod my head..”YES” I will marry you. 

Ray had it all planned out to have someone say the proposal speech in front of about 100 people at a Jaycee event. Ray was sitting next to me just grinning from ear to ear with a diamond ring. Going forward... two kids, two (soon to be three) grandsons, and one very spoiled dog later, we will be celebrating 20 years of marriage on 6/20/12. 

Happy Anniversary Ray! Ray has certainly earned the patience award for being with me over 25 years.

~JAG

Judy Gordon considers herself a York Rite Child. She's very active in Job's Daughters. She's the Past Honored Queen, and Bethel Guardian of Bethel No. 55, Pekin (IL). She received the Cryptic Masons Masonic Youth Leadership Award along with her husband, Ray Gordon in July 2007. She's also Past Matron of the Morton Chapter No. 974 (IL) of the Order of the Eastern Star and Historian of the Emblem Club No. 424 of Pekin (IL) Ray and Judy have two (soon to be three) grandkids, and a very spoiled dog, Reggie (who incidentally volunteers as a Therapy Dog at local hospitals and nursing homes.)

Todd's Note:  I'd like to congratulate my friends Ray and Judy on twenty years of marriage!  I often tell the story about my wife Valerie.  I told her when I became a Mason it would be one meeting a month and the occasional pancake breakfast.  Then there was the Scottish Rite, then the York Rite, then a book, then four more...  I always expected at some point I was going to reach the end her patience.  So I finnaly asked why she never got upset with me.  And she told me quite simply, "because I get something out of it to.  I wound up with a much better product than the one I married."

Trivia: A Few Fun Facts About Famous Freemasons

by Midnight Freemasons Regular Contributor

Todd E. Creason

Originally posted 9/15/10

Here's a few interesting facts you may not know about famous Freemasons: 

General George Washington

-Although George Washington seemed reluctant to accept the commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he had done very little to try and stop the nomination, and had taken to wearing his buff and blue military uniform every day when the Second Continental Congress met.

John Philips Sousa

-As a boy, John Philips Sousa accompanied his father to Gettysburg with the Marine Marching Band, where he witnessed Abraham Lincoln give his famous speech. He would later grow up to conduct that same band, and would spend his life writing patriotic marches.

Roy Rogers & Trigger

-Roy Roger's famous horse Trigger had a job even before he met Roy.  He was horse ridden by Olivia de Haviland in the Errol Flynn classic film Robin Hood.  Back then, Trigger's name was "Golden Cloud."

Harry S Truman

-Harry S Truman cheated on his eye exam in order to qualify for military service. He once joked that his weak eyesight had always been a problem, in fact, he was unable to play baseball as a boy until his teammates found him a job he could do that didn't require good vision--umpire.

John Wayne

-John Wayne's nickname "Duke" came from his boyhood when he used to run around around town with the family dog--a giant Airedale.  The local firemen used to call the two "Big Duke" (the dog) and "Little Duke" (the boy).

Now wasn't that interesting?

~TEC



Todd E. Creason is the author of several books, including the Famous American Freemasons series. He is the Past Master of Ogden Lodge No. 754 (IL), and a member of the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, and a Shriner

If you enjoyed these, many more little known facts about famous Freemasons can be found in Famous American Freemasons

We're moving!

Over the next week or so, The Midnight Freemasons are moving from toddecreason.blogspot.com to midnightfreemason.blogspot.com.

Please take due notice and . . . well, you know the rest . . .   We hope to see you there!

~TEC

Lake Reflections: Memories That Last Generations

by Midnight Freemasons Regular Contributor

Michael H. Shirley

Big Crooked Lake, Wisconsin

It’s just dawning outside, the dogs are quiet, and the kids are still asleep. My wife and I are drinking coffee, resting a bit before throwing the last few things in the van, save the kids, and heading north for our annual vacation to Wisconsin’s north woods. We’re going to YMCA Family Camp Nawakwa, on Big Crooked Lake. My family’s been going there on and off since 1967, when my mother, up too late, won a week’s stay there for thirty-five dollars in the Channel 11 auction. Actually, she came in second, but the guy who won couldn’t go, so we loaded up the station wagon and drove north, where we fished, swam, canoed, and generally had a wonderful time. We kept going back every year until my siblings and I were grown and busy. Truth to tell, the camp had gotten shabby in those last years, and we were too old to overlook it. We moved on.

In 2005, my brother, sister, and I were looking for a way to celebrate our parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and discovered the camp was still in business and had been fixed up nicely, so we booked a week there in June. With parents, kids, grand kids, outliers, and attendants, we swarmed into camp, dispersed, unpacked, and met for dinner at our parents' cabin. We talked, and laughed, and listened. And were transported. It was then and there, sitting at the campfire on that first night back, that I discovered it was possible to become a child again if you have a child of your own. Watching my son, then five,  discover the lake and the trees and the fish and the quiet, as I had nearly forty years before, was to become both my father and my young self. Teaching him to fish, as my father had taught me, made me realize that I could only hold on to the past by living in the present.

And here we are again, the kids awake and eager, the van over-packed as usual, ready for the nine-hour drive. Things are different now, with Wi-Fi at the lodge and bathrooms in the cabins, but the lake will be the same, and the memories my children create will be their own, as mine are mine. 

My father's gone now, but he is still in this place, his spirit and my memories of him alive in my children's joy.

~MHS

W.B. Michael H. Shirley is Past Master of Tuscola Lodge No. 332 and Leadership Development Chairman for the Grand Lodge of Illinois. He's also a member of the Illinois Lodge of Research, the Scottish Rite, the York Rite, Eastern Star, and the Tall Cedars of Lebanon. He's also a member of the newly-chartered, Illini High Twelve No. 768 in Urbana-Champaign. The author of several articles on British history, he teaches at Eastern Illinois University.