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Warden’s Night

by David Bella, Senior Warden

From an early age, George Washington recognized the importance of the American South and American West. He knew that they were new frontiers with unlimited possibilities.

At the age of sixteen, he was invited to survey the western Virginia lands owned by Thomas, Lord Fairfax. This first exposure sparked a lifelong intertwinement with the lands that lay to Washington’s west. Washington’s first fame came from his ill fated attempt to push the French out of the Ohio River Valley at the age of twenty-one. Upon his return, the detailed notes he took in his journal were published in several newspapers which made him a household name in the colonies as well as in political circles in England. At the time of his death, he owned over forty thousand acres in the outer western edges of European settler influence.

Washington also had significant experience with the American South. He was a southerner by birth. The only foreign country he visited was a journey south to Barbados in hopes of curing his brother’s tuberculosis. Washington marched into southern Virginia to defeat the British at Yorktown in 1781. And in 1791 he visited the southern states as our first President, going as far south as Savannah before heading back to Philadelphia.

Wardens’ Night is upon us: it is a time for the lodge to get to know their Wardens a little better. I am so honored and flattered to be asked by Worshipful Deni to sit in the East and I know that Brother Allen is equally honored and flattered to sit in the West at our wonderful lodge. In our conversations throughout the years, a dominant theme has always been our reverence for our dearest brother, George Washington, and the legacy he has given to our lodge.

Brother Allen and I both have significant ties to the cardinal directions we represent. I was born in Wasington state, our Western most lower forty-eight state. He was born in Alabama. We both hail from a state west of Virginia, growing up on opposite ends of Jackson County, Mississippi, which is one of the southernmost counties in the Deep South.

I would like to thank the Worshipful Master for allowing the officers to “move up” at Wardens’ Night, and I’ll speak for brother Allen and the other officers in saying that we are all looking forward to seeing you on the third.

A Call to Charity: Preparing the Lodge for February 2023 and Beyond

By Wor. Nikola N. Nikolov, PM, Foundation Board Chairman

In this blog, our Senior Warden Bro. David Bella, has presented a strong argument for your participation in Lodge and supporting our efforts for 2023. I echo his sentiment. Alexandria – Washington Lodge has a storied past, which presents us with a unique platform to represent Craft Freemasonry to the world. To adequately execute the plans laid forth for the Memorial’s Cornerstone Centennial Celebration and update our educational/museum exhibits in the Lodge Room and Replica Lodge Room, funds are required. The Foundation was established specifically to support the Lodge in telling the story of Freemasonry and the story of Washington as a Freemason. We are in the process of working with the Archives Committee and Officers to determine how much updates to the Lodge and Replica Lodge will cost. Initial estimates are about $60,000. This is a great deal of money, but it is not insurmountable. You can assist in raising these funds through the support of the Foundation.

Since launching the Foundation, nearly $50,000 have been raised. Thank you to everyone who has already demonstrated their support for the Lodge and Foundation thus far. To ensure the financial health of the Foundation, and to support 2023 activities and beyond, we need to double this amount through our Cornerstone Campaign. I challenge each of you to consider how much you might be able to invest in the Lodge’s future. Consider becoming a Charter Member of the Foundation with a $1,000 contribution. Some brothers question why we need to raise this money, especially when the Lodge accounts are not insignificant. The answer is twofold. First, to continue to offer strong programming and high-quality meals at each of our Stated Communications, support Lodge participation in the District Masters and Wardens Association, attendance at Grand Lodge, and participation in the Committee on Work’s Reid J. Simmons Masonic Ritual Academy – among other activities – we need to leave the Lodge accounts as intact as possible. Annually, the Lodge withdraws about three percent of its invested funds to support these activities. Taking a significant chunk from those funds will reduce our annual draw and diminish our capacity for regular activities. Continue reading →

Call to Service: Preparing the Lodge for February 2023 and Beyond

By Bro. David Bella, Senior Warden

Two hundred and forty years ago, six Alexandrians – Robert Adam, Michael Ryan, William Hunter Sr., John Allison, Peter Dow, and Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick – submitted a petition to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania requesting a warrant to operate a Masonic Lodge in Alexandria. The combined imaginative talent of those six men could never foretell what lay in store for their town’s first lodge.

The lodge they founded has hosted Presidents, dignitaries, and Grand Masters from countless jurisdictions. It has laid nationally significant cornerstones such as the United States Capitol Building, the Smithsonian Institution, and Library of Congress to name a few. It has led important funeral services. It has practiced incalculable charity in the community which has positively impacted generations of Alexandrians. It has been a leader in the international masonic community. And perhaps, most importantly, it has created life-long friendships among its members. There is no denying the lodge they created has blossomed into a truly unique and special institution. Looking around the lodge and at our historical records, I am always struck by the astonishing quality of our members. I believe that the “specialness” of the lodge is in direct parallel to the greatness of our members. Over one hundred years ago, one of the most exceptional generations of our membership banded together to set in motion the construction of the most architecturally impressive masonic structure ever conceived: an august monument to our lodge’s most august member. Continue reading →

Freemasonry: A Modern Community Institution

How do you become a Master Mason? By being a Fellowcraft first.

Master Masons don’t become Master Masons by simply going through a Master Masons degree. There is a process of educating, coaching, question answering, motivating, supporting, and showing up that is required by another individual to move a brother through the degrees. If our job is to make masons, isn’t mentoring how we do it?

At the finality of the Master Mason degree, each brother is given the Presentation Volume-a book that lays out Virginia Freemasonry’s history, degree work, ceremonies, and mentoring. Before looking at the graph below, rank those categories in ascending order based on how many pages you think the book dedicates to each section.

Mentoring is the second largest category at almost thirty percent. Obviously, the craft thinks that mentoring is important enough to dedicate almost a third of its seminal text to mentoring new members. But outside of pages in a text, what is the craft systematically doing to foster good mentorship? I would venture to guess that we are not dedicating anywhere near thirty percent of our efforts to bettering our mentoring abilities.

We have lodges dedicated to our history. Schools on degree work and ceremonies. I propose we have at least one statewide mentoring summit every year, similar to what college fraternities are increasingly doing. The summit should focus on three areas: mentoring new masons, mentoring as a lodge officer, and mentoring as a past master. Each of these areas would have unique methods, techniques, and programs but would all concretely contribute to mentoring good men and making them better. I also believe that it would be a wonderful selling point for potential members because it would be a tangible event that would signal that the craft places an emphasis on mentoring and development while also equipping experienced masons with a wonderful leadership skill.

I believe that an increased focus on mentorship would result in better member retention; it would deliver a higher quality product to men going through the degrees which would result in better retention and more involvement. This increased buy-in would ward off some of our problems: more member involvement would result in not only more vibrant lodges, it would also result in high quality members.

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”-Warren Bennis

The District Deputy Grand Master (DDGM) role is designed to be an impactful part of our organization. He is responsible for communicating the Grand Master’s message and theme to each masonic district. A regular mason may be lucky to see the Grand Master once or twice a year. A District Deputy, however, is able to interface more frequently with local masons throughout the year because of his proximity to the membership. Unfortunately, I believe that due to the fact that their terms are limited to one year, DDGMs are largely symbolic in nature and have little systemic impact on local lodges and districts.

I believe that the DDGM role should be a three year progressive line that starts with the District Education Officer position, followed by the District Membership Officer position, and culminates in being appointed as the District Deputy Grand Master. Incoming Grand Senior Wardens would make the appointments instead of waiting until they become the incoming Grand Master.

This would have four benefits. One, it gives each potential DDGM important training and forces them to focus on two of our most important focus areas. It would create a consistency of purpose among all DDGMs by forcing each to incorporate education and membership into their goals as DDGM. Two, it would enable the brother who occupies the office of Grand Senior Warden and then Deputy Grand Master to evaluate how effective their subordinate would be as a DDGM. Is their potential pick doing a good job? Is he conducting good programs and making an impact on his local lodges? If not, the Grand Officer has time to make a change. Three, it removes the assumption that the DDGM office is a ceremonial one. To get the esteemed job of DDGM, a potential brother would have to roll up his sleeves and earn it by conducting programs and adding value to his district’s lodges. Finally, it gives the brethren of the district time to get to know the eventual DDGM. Only incredibly active masons in the district know next year’s DDGM if the pick is from outside of their own lodge. A three year commitment would allow the eventual DDGM to get to know the brethren of the district and vice versa.

This structural change would ensure that we are driving toward better education and membership services and remove the ceremonial nature of the DDGM office. I believe that this would result in better prepared masonic leaders.

“What’s measured, improves”-Peter Drucker

Is lodge x better than lodge y? Maybe, but how would we prove it? We use the Hillman award and the District Deputy’s Official Visit Checklist to evaluate lodge health, but the data collected in these forums never gets collected and aggregated to glean insight. Maybe someone in Richmond does all sorts of analysis that us normal masons don’t get to see, but I doubt it. I recommend the Grand Lodge come up with a set of simple metrics that are used to measure lodge health and publish the rankings at Grand Annual Communications.

I believe that three metrics should be steadfast year to year, and two metrics should be introduced by the new Grand Master based on his priorities. The three core metrics should be yearly membership increase, dollar per member, and how many of the three lectures can be given by a lodge member. This would enable masonic leadership to be able to measure membership health, financial health, and ritual health.

Membership increase can be calculated by:

$ per member can be calculated by:

How many of the three lectures can be given by a lodge member? The answer could either be none of the three, one of three, two of three, or three of three.

Ignoring the two Grand Master measures, suppose we have this data:

To weigh each measure equally, we must normalize the data by doing a simple calculation where Zi=(Xi-min(X)) / (max(X)-min(X))

We are now able to see that Lodge A is the healthiest of the three lodges and that Lodge B is struggling in comparison to the other two. What an easy, insightful approach that requires only four data points. This approach could easily expand if the Grand Master wanted to add his own measures.

OK, now that we have this data, what do we do about it? I think individual lodges deserve to know how well they are performing in relation to their neighbors. Publishing the list allows for public praise…..and public admonishment. Who in the world wants to be the Master of a lodge that is at the bottom of the list? And if you were, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to get out of the basement? This data would also allow the Grand Lodge to put resources toward getting those lodges off the bottom of the list through various means like sending Grand Lodge Membership Committee Members to those lodges for improvement seminars or asking accomplished masons in the area to start helping build the lodge back up.

Going back to The Wire, one of the things that is shown is that all institutions “juke the stats” so we need to be vigilant about unintended consequences of using metrics to assess performance. Though they can be misleading, “stats” are imperative to continuous improvement and diagnosing institutional problems. We must implement some tracking mechanism to diagnose and measure our progress , because without measures we will never know if we are getting better or worse. The simple measures I highlighted above should be used as building blocks by the Grand Lodge to assess lodge health, learn from high performing lodges, and assist struggling lodges to rebound.

I’ll conclude by saying that I believe Masonry is still a relevant institution that has a critical role to play in our community. With slight tweaks like the ones I presented above to our historic craft, I believe we could reverse the negative trends I highlighted.

But as I learned from The Wire, if institutions do not ask tough questions and refuse to take bold action in order to live up to their founding principles, they tend to sink into mediocrity, or worse

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At the time of writing, David Bella serves as the Senior Warden of Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 where he is a Life Member in Perpetuity. He is involved in various local appendant bodies and takes great pride in being a member of the Alexandria community. The views outlined in this article are those of the author and do not represent those of Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 or the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, A.F. &A.M. of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

AW22 Past Master Series: Daniel Froggett, PM

Wor. Daniel E. Froggett, Master in 2020, is featured in the latest installment of the AW22 Past Master Series. This documentary project highlights and preserves the sage wisdom and fond memories of the men chosen as servant leaders to their brothers at Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22.
Wor. Froggett currently serves as our Lodge secretary. Thank you for your tireless efforts and the countless hours of hard work you put in for our Lodge!

AW22 Past Master Series: Jim Stone, PM

Worshipful Jim Stone, our Worshipful Master in 1976, is featured in the latest installment of the AW22 Past Master series. This documentary project highlights and preserves the sage wisdom and fond memories of the men chosen as servant leaders to their brothers at Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22. We hope you enjoy hearing his stories as much as we do!

The Brethren of AW22 are always inspired by the leadership he exemplifies and the love and dedication he has for our Lodge. Thank you, Wor. Stone, for demonstrating to us what it means to be a good Mason.

Mental Health: Fulfilling Our Obligation by Aiding a Distressed Brother

By Nelo A. Hamilton, Jr., Junior Warden

As Freemasons, we are taught to aide those in distress, more especially a brother Mason. When imaging someone in distress, we often think of someone with a broken-down car or an individual approaching us on the street to ask for money. It is important, however, to recognize that the signs of distress aren’t always so obvious. As a fraternity, Masonry should cultivate an environment and foster relationships where the Brethren feel that they can be honest and open with one another about their mental health without stigmas or judgement being attached. It should also equip our members with the knowledge and skills to aide a Brother who confides in them.

A study by the Boston School for Mental Health found that 32.8% of adults in the US experienced elevated symptoms of depression in 2021. Additionally, 27.8% of adults in the US reported elevated symptoms of depression in 2020, compared to 8.5% before the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating that depression rates are poised to remain high. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the overall percentage of adults with recent symptoms of anxiety or a depressive disorder increased from 36.4% to 41.5% from August 2020 to February 2021.Considering the challenges we’ve faced as a country and society over the last couple years, including the COVID-19 Pandemic, civil unrest, a contentious election, social isolation, the fact our lives have changed so drastically for such a long period of time and ongoing economic uncertainties, there is little surprise that we would feel some drastic effects on our mental health.

The Worshipful Master’s mission this year is a significant first step in creating an environment where mental health is both normalized and prioritized, especially among men. Speaking openly and honestly about our mental

health is a critical step towards removing the stigma surrounding it. It is incumbent upon our leadership and members to hold honest conversations about depression and anxiety in order to create an environment where a struggling Brother feels comfortable seeking support. Although it may be outside the primary theme of their year, moving forward it is crucial that future Masters of AW22 continue to highlight mental health and establish the Lodge as a support system.

When a Brother reaches out, our first priority should be to listen. This does not mean offering advice or opinions, but instead actively listening to what is being said and offering understanding. According to the Mayo Clinic, listening and understanding can be a powerful healing tool. After that initial conversation, keep an open line of communication and check in often to see how they are doing. Encourage further help and point them towards organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org). Familiarize yourself with the resources available. As individuals, we must be aware of our own wellbeing while also educating ourselves on how to be there for our Brethren. When we recognize a Brother is exhibiting symptoms of depression or anxiety, be proactive by genuinely asking how they are and lending a listening ear. Remember your obligation.

The harsh reality is that, according to the American Society for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 12^th leading cause of death in the United States, with 45,979 Americans dying by suicide in 2020 and a staggering 1.2 million attempts. Of these, men died by suicide 3.88 times more than women. Let those numbers sink in for a moment. For some men, the Lodge is their primary – or only – support system; we must be there for one another.

In addition to further promotion of mental health, AW22 will be working to compile a list of helpful resources to be made available for the Brethren on the Lodge’s website. Let’s challenge ourselves to continue having these conversations and equip our Lodge with the working tools necessary to go out of our way to aide our distressed Brethren before it too late.

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At the time of writing, Nelo Hamilton serves as the Junior Warden of Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 . The views outlined in this article are those of the author and do not represent those of Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 or the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, A.F. &A.M. of the Commonwealth of Virginia.