AMD Meeting

Well tonight was our AMD meeting and the presenter of papers were PDDGHP Hank Dodson and MEC George Shell. AMD (Allied Masonic Degrees is an invitational group whose purpose is to provide a forum to discuss Masonic (and some non-Masonic) subject to try to learn more about various subjects and a place to discuss upcoming York Rite activities and what our members can do to help promote and improve the York Rite. It is also limited to a total of 27 members per Council so every person attending is really important. This can be shown from the dedication of our Sovereign Master for this year, Paxton Mendelson who flew in from Florida for the meeting and is flying back out tonight. We learned tonight that one of our members, Dave Barr, passed away a couple of weeks back and Carey Fenton probably had a stroke today (not a good year for him as his wife and son both died within the past few months).

Dayton Dragons

After taking a few days off for family events including a camping trip, tonight I worked the Dayton Dragons for Marty Trent as part of his fund raiser for his journey in the Grand Commandery line. It was a great night weather wise and a very busy night at the park. Food and drink sales were brisk all night and I was able to experience the new staff taking care of the stands and I enjoyed working with them as they worked with you instead of against you (a nice change from what it had been in past years). I think I have 3 more days for Marty and a couple for Ormus Grotto I'm working this summer. I will admit though since last year was the first I hadn't worked several games in the every year since they opened (they cancelled the training session on me last year and told me I couldn't work without it!),  it definitely is a LOTS of hard work when serving at the Dayton Dragons Game.

Miami Valley KYCH Meeting

Tonight was the KYCH meeting for the Dayton area held at Houston's Restaurant near Mason.    We had around 40 members and their ladies present. Our speaker for the evening was MWB Mike Himes, Past Grand Master.The food was great, as always, and the purpose of this meeting is to allow the local KYCH's and their wives to fellowship and propose potential new knights  who have qualified for membership. The restaurant has a great salad bar with many items not normally found on a salad bar (like devilled eggs) and of course I had what they are known for frog legs (the best I've ever had).

Trinity Chapter Stated Meeting

Tonight was the stated meeting for my Chapter and it was nice to be able to actually attend a meeting for my Chapter. I was happy to see 15 in attendance and it would have been 16 but the High Priest had to work late. Unfortunately, we are working through some challenges with a significant dues increase (almost double) needed to pay the increase in rent from the Temple Board. We are hoping some of the big improvements made in the Temple can help to reduce costs and in the long run allow the rent to be reduced. After the meeting, Laura and I went for ice cream in her new car to replace the VW Bug which was totalled when a lady ran the stop sign and hit her....(I'm wondering when I get one this nice!)

Shrine Meeting and Planning

While you might think this would have nothing to do with Chapter, you would be wrong. Tonight after the monthly meeting of the Past Potentates, we meet to discuss the Great Lakes Shrine Meeting being held at Great Wolf Lodge. Doug Sorrell of Antioch in Dayton is the President this year and for the 3rd time in history, we will be sponsoring the event. One of the highlights of the event will be a parade being held on September 14th. We are hoping to have a nice showing of ALL Masonic and Masonic Youth Organization including the Chapter for the parade that morning in Lebanon Ohio. I'm hoping to have a nice showing from the 3rd District and from Grand Chapter as well.

Grand Family Meeting

Today we met in Delaware Ohio to discuss future plans and potential future officers for the Grand Chapter of Ohio. It was another nice day but they were having a major street fair which made it difficult to get around in Delaware. There were some good discussions and preparations made for the future progress of the Grand Chapter. Some potentially new ideas were also thrown out and discussed. After a full afternoon, I headed back home so I could get two yards mowed....summer is definitely almost here.

Another Busy Day

Well this morning started out early with a Shrine parade in my home town of Miamisburg followed by an afterglow party. As soon as I was done there, Pam and I got on the road for the long trip to Norwalk (near Cleveland) and the Grand High Priest Reception in the 9th District. It ended up being a nice day for a drive after the morning started out raining until just before the parade. REC Robert Blankenhorn was also present and the Grand High Priest "tough'd it out" as he could hardly speak. We then turned around and headed back towards Dayton.

Chapter Circus Worker Recognition Party

Tonight we held a recognition dinner for those who helped out at the circus. We held it at the Shrine and several of the Divan members were able to join us for the dinner. Rick Maynard put on a very good meal and we swapped stories about the weekend working out in the cold.  Some of the workers were unable to attend but there were since around 25-30 present for the evening. MEC Steve Duncan and his wife Toni were there as they held out at several of the sessions parking cars back in February.

Grand High Preist Reception Youngstown

Well, tonight I went to the Grand High Priest Reception in the 19th District in Youngstown. With this visit, I would have made every Capitular District this year. I will admit with the trip up, I wasn't sure I would make it. I left an hour and a half early so I could leisurely make the trip and make a couple of stops. It rained and it rained to I decided to eliminate the stops and keep driving. Then the traffic stopped and we waited and we waited. Finally it started up and while I was waiting I looked for alternative routes. According to the Internet, they were in even worse shape so I decided this was the route I had to take. For more than an hour I never went over 20 miles per hour. I determined that I was going to be late. How could this be 6 hours for a 4 hour trip! It was then I decided....it wasn't about being there on time but rather the challenge...I would make it! Finally I arrived and while I figured I would miss dinner completely, apparently the Grand High Priest was in the same traffic and had just arrived before me. So I sat down with my long time friend Tim Flack (we were State Officers in DeMolay together) and had a nice dinner. I decided that I needed a break so for the rest of the weekend, I would be working at home and trying to replace the VW Bug Laura had as the insurance declared it totalled...what a bummer for her and she didn't even have anything to do with the accident.

Great Evening

Tonight was a great evening as I was able to assist the Vandalia Chapter for DeMolay in their journey towards getting re-instituted by training 7 advisors (along with one from Hamilton). They are very enthusiastic about getting the Chapter started and potentially have some from RH McMillan DeMolay in Xenia who may want to transfer (or be dual members) and possibly 6 more from Vandalia. Now we are working to get an initiation in Vandalia for the potential new members. Exciting news!

DeMolay, Commandery and Grotto

Over the past three days the activities have been a little closer to home and a little bit routine though in each case helped to reinforce some important lessons/ideas. With DeMolay, I met with Mike Himes to get materials to help train the Vandalia Advisory Council. It helped to reinforce the importance of teamwork and delegation. Mike will be unavailable to train so I'm taking on the task of helping him out so we can keep things moving. Next I headed to the Commandery stated meeting where we worked on the importance of planning. Several officers were not able to attend much this year so they were trying to plan who should be in each position. Next I attended the Grotto meeting which reinforced the value of each member as several of the officers were unavailable to attend and without a few visitors and one new officer we would have not been able to accomplish anything.

Couple of Big Events Today

Today the first event of the day was at Tadmor Shrine which I got up at 3:30 this morning to attend the Ohio Shrine meeting where Gary Blackford was being elected and installed from Antioch as the State President. We had some good discussions on membership and heard an interesting discussion on right sizing for buildings. We also heard from the GM's rep and each of the Youth Groups. I left shortly after lunch to return back to Miamisburg where Valley Commandery held the first ever Table Commandery with around 40 in attendance. It was an interesting program and I was really glad I attended.

Third Chapter District annual meeting

Last night was our annual meeting for the 3rd Capitular district. Unfortunately it was probably the best day of the year so far which hurt attendance. But despite a much smaller than normal crowd we still conducted the business of the district. There was a lot of discussion concerning membership and what we could do to take advantage of the Grand Masters class. We decided to see if we could put together a letter to invite all the new members to our district picnic. We also discussed the success of the fundraiser at the shrine parking and that next year we will again have that duty. The best part was while the crowd may have been small we discussed many exciting ideas we can hopefully implement to help improve the third district.

Scottish Rite 33rd Dinner

Tonight was the get together for the 33rd degree Masons from the Valley of Dayton. It was a meeting to introduce the new 33rd elects and to also discuss the upcoming events including the Supreme Council Session. We also discussed several changes which are coming in the future to the Supreme Council Session. A major change is in review of the cost of a full Supreme Council Session, it has been decided to go with an every other year format to save a significant amount of money while allowing the prestige to remain on an every other year basis. They realized that they are still trying to put on the same event they used to do with almost half the members and since inflation hasn't stopped around twice the costs. While I'm not suggesting Grand Chapter do this drastic of a measure, we probably will have to continue looking at how we do business and there might be some dramatic changes needed.

Headed off to Cincinnati

Tonight I went down to the Cincinnati area for the Oola Khan Grotto meeting but also to do some Chapter business. You see we have had such a great response at the Grand Masters Class, that we ran out of the packages to pass out for the event. I happened to find around 30 more packages from the Dayton event so I took them to Cincinnati for them to use on May 11th. Attending the Grotto meeting also gave me an opportunity to talk about Chapter as two of their members had been Past High Priests (between them they had served around 10 times) so when I mentioned my position in Grand Chapter, both of the Past High Priests immediately ask who was not a member of Chapter and then they started to see if they could get them to join. It again proved my point why it is good to go to non-Chapter events because just attending Chapter functions is probably not going to lead to finding many new people to talk to about joining the Chapter. Another point is the Grand High Priest, MEC Don Owens, is a member of Willis-Mariemont Chapter which also meets in the same building as the Grotto. By my attendance it gave them a reason to talk about the Grand High Priest and be proud members of the same Chapter as the Grand High Priest.