On Dec. 11, Mike Mitchell touched on highlights of 1886 to a group gathered in the clubhouse of the former Northwood Hills Country Club.
They were gathered because on Aug. 30, 1886 — 125 years ago — 28 Springfielders, among them the city’s most prominent, organized Lodge 51 Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
Caught in the general slide of lodge memberships in recent decades, the local Elks two years ago sold the downtown headquarters they built in 1910 to buy the golf course, with its clubhouse, pool and other amenities.
At the time, Tom Schilling, the club’s then exalted ruler, said, “I think we can grow our club with the things we now have to offer,” a remark borne out by the Lodge’s growth from 575 to 2,138 members.
With that historic step taken to secure the future, the Dec. 11 ceremony focused on the past.
The Elks order was begun in New York by actors, musicians and journalists united in brotherhood and the ideal “to have someplace Sunday to enjoy libations,” Mitchell said with a smile.
Because of Sunday closing laws of the time, he explained, “they couldn’t do it in a public place.”
Charlie Hayden, Lodge 51’s current exalted ruler, transported the members briefly back to that time with readings from lodge lore.
“The elk, the animal from which the order derives its name, is strong of limb, fleet of foot, quick and keen of perception, yet gentle, timid and unaggressive save when attacked,” he read. “The lesson taught every Elk is to be timorous of wrong-doing, quick and keen to hear the cry of distress, fleet of foot to succor the afflicted and unfortunate, and to exert his utmost strength to protect the weak and defenseless.”
Many prominent Springfielders signed on to further that cause in 1886.
Among them were:
• Mayor Charles Constantine.
• Druggist Theodore Troupe, later a director of the First National Bank of Springfield and the American Railway Co. of Philadelphia and a man who helped to bring electric lighting to the city.
• Armand Griffith, who was conscripted into Napoleon III’s army when studying art overseas, returned to work as a scene designer and stage manager at Springfield’s Grand Opera House and went on to develop the Detroit Institute of Arts.
• T.J. Kirkpatrick of Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick Publishing and leader of a bicycle club before leaving to become co-owner of the Akron Beacon-Journal.
“After the turn of the century, the Snyders were members here,” Mitchell added. Those Snyders were John and David Snyder, who donated the land for Springfield’s Snyder Park.
History of giving
The Elks call to reach out to others in need expresses itself these days in the annual donation of dictionaries to all third-graders in Springfield City Schools; support of the National Hoop Shoot, a free throw contest in which Springfield has had boy and girl national winners; and the Elks scholarship program.
The tradition of reaching out to others is shown in 1915 newspaper clippings that describe the Elks Lodge at 126 W. High St. as the gathering place for poor children at Christmas.
(That lodge was the order’s third home, following temporary quarters in a room rented from the Knights of Pythias and their first home dedicated March 20, 1890, above Troupe’s Drug Store at 20 N. Fountain Ave.)
Lodge treasurer Frank J. Braun said “fully 2,000 children” were expected to be on hand for the 1915 Christmas program.
The newspaper noted that social service agencies in town would use the event as a place to make contact with those who might need their services year round.
Letters written to the Elks that Christmas show how desperate some of the children were.
Nine-year-old Montrose Davis wrote that he was in the third reader and would show up to collect toys and candy at Christmas “if I get some shoes to wear” for the walk.
He said neither he nor his two younger sisters had shoes to go to school in. They did have a Pap, who was sick and couldn’t work, and a grateful spirit.
“I don’t care what kind of a toy you give me,” Montrose wrote. “I thought my skates and basket of candy was nice I got last year.”
Reflecting Poole
In 1938, the lodge memorialized the Elk whose construction company had built its lodge, William Poole.
Poole’s membership was reflective of the lodge’s ability to continue to attract prominent people.
His company had done more than build the lodge; it had changed the face of the community by erecting the First National Bank building; the Arcue Building; the Wren’s Annex; and Rockwood, Enon and New Moorefield schools.
Perhaps to show off its cultural face, the lodge hired Springfield artist Lebert Eldridge Prather, a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute, to paint Oriental murals in the lodge meeting rooms to honor Poole and his wife, Effie.
Above the panels in the redecorated room, Prather lettered the Elks’ forgiving motto: “The faults of our brothers, we write upon the sands; their virtues on tablets of love and memory.”
Open spaces
In his synopsis of lodge history on Dec. 11, Mitchell noted that prohibition had made the 1930s a trying time for the Elks, whose members considered selling their lodge.
He said the coming of World War II boosted membership to an all time high; that Lodge 51’s Willard Schwatz was elected president of the Ohio Elks Association in 1954; and during the ensuing decades Cindy Hannan became the first national Hoop Shoot champion from Springfield, the lodge hosted state association bowling tournaments, and in 1998 welcomed its first woman, still active member Kim Sweeney.
Mitchell called the move to Northwood Hills the best thing to happen to the lodge since its inception.
As 2011 ends, the open space and wooded areas of a golf course seem a setting in which Lodge 51 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks could flourish for years to come.
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