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History Of The Moose
Though 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 20th century into an organizational
dynamo of men and women who set out to build a city that would brighten the futures of thousands of children in need all across
North America.
Dr. John Henry Wilson
Founder, Loyal Order of Moose When Dr. John Henry Wilson, a Louisville,
Ky., physician, organized a handful of men into the Loyal Order of Moose in the parlor of his home in the spring of 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 dissatisfied and left the infant order well before the turn of the century.
It was just the
two remaining Indiana Lodges that kept the Moose from disappearing altogether, until the fall of 1906, when an outgoing young
government clerk from Elwood, Ind., was invited to enroll into the Crawfordsville Lodge. It was on James J. Davis' 33rd birthday,
October 27, that he became just the 247th 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 and immediately
saw potential to build the tiny Moose fraternity into a force to provide protection and security for a largely working-class
membership. At the time little or no government "safety net" existed to provide benefits to the wife and children
of a breadwinner who died or became disabled. Davis proposed to "pitch" Moose membership as a way to provide such
protection at a bargain price; annual dues of $5 to $10. Given a green light and the title of "Supreme Organizer,"
Davis and a few other colleagues set out to solicit members and organize Moose Lodges across the U.S. and southern Canada.
(In 1926, the Moose fraternity's presence extended across the Atlantic, with the founding of the Grand Lodge of Great Britain.)
James J. Davis
Founder:
Mooseheart & Moosehaven Davis' marketing instincts were on-target: By 1912,
the order had grown from 247 members in two Lodges, to a colossus of nearly 500,000 in more than 1,000 Lodges. Davis, appointed
the organization's first chief executive with the new title of Director General, realized it was time to make good on the
promise. The Moose began a program of paying "sick benefits" to members too ill to work--and, more ambitiously,
Davis and the organization's other officers made 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 North 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 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 the admissions that swelled the student census to nearly 1,000 by 1920.
(Mooseheart's student population would reach a peak of 1,300 during the depths of the Great Depression; housing was often
"barracks" style ??acceptable by today's standards. Mooseheart officials now consider the campus' ultimate maximum
capacity as no more than 500.) Still, by the Twenties, Davis and his Moose colleagues thought the fraternity 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 at Mooseheart since 1915.)
They bought 26 acres of shoreline property 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 to a 63-acre community providing a comfortable home, a wide array of
recreational activities and comprehensive health care to more than 400 residents.
As the Moose fraternity grew in
visibility and influence, so did Jim Davis. President Warren 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 Senator, Davis was known as a conservative champion of labor, who fought hard for the rights of unions--but
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 bore his name: the Davis-Bacon Act.
An Independent, Autonomous Women's Component
Katherine Smith
First Grand Chancellor
Women of the Moose 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 19th Amendment had granted women the right to vote in 1920, Smith, (from Indianapolis,) reasoned
correctly, 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, she was rewarded with an appointment as Director of Public
Employment in Washington. Labor Secretary Davis was her boss, and he immediately recognized her talent and drive. 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 argued. "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
1,600 Chapters.)
Malcolm R. Giles
Director General
1947 - 1953 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
by training who had worked full-time 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 almost completely toward Mooseheart and
Moosehaven; now, with discharged WWII Veterans driving 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: "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.
J. Jack Stoehr
Director General
1953 Malcolm Giles' term as Director General was cut short when he suffered a heart attack and died, at just age 59,
in September 1953. He was replaced on an interim basis by J. Jack Stoehr, the well-respected Director of its 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.
Paul P. Schmitz
Director General
1953 - 1974 Schmitz, an Aurora, Ill., native, led the Moose for nearly 21 years, longer than anyone
except Davis. During his 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.
Herbert
W. Heilman
Director General
1974 - 1984 Mr. 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, had been hired by Giles in 1948 to run the fraternity's sports program, then had 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.
Paul J. O'Hollaren
Director General
1984 - 1994, 1999 - When Paul J. O'Hollaren, a lawyer and insurance executive from Portland Ore., 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 an active Moose for a quarter-century: charter Governor of his Lodge, 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.
Frank A. Sarnecki
Director General
1994 - 1999 O'Hollaren retired in February 1994; his successor, Director
General Frank A. Sarnecki, continued the pattern of coming to Mooseheart from 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.
In his first few years in office, Sarnecki guided
the fraternity into two sweeping changes: providing a fully equitable relationship between its men's and women's components
in Lodge facilities that may also qualify as "Moose Family Centers"; an extension of Moosehaven eligibility to all
Moose men and women, 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."
After 5 years in office, Director General Sarnecki resigned in April 1999 to return to business and family interests
in New Jersey. Paul J. O'Hollaren stepped in as Director General on an interim basis from mid-April to mid-June. On June 15th,
1999, Donald H. Ross, who had served 16 years as Supreme Secretary, was appointed by the Supreme Council to become the organization's
eighth Director General. Two months shy of his 50th birthday as he took office, he became the fraternity's youngest chief
executive in more than 75 years.
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