Above photo: Looking a wee bit like a leprechaun, Karl Gonzalez (foreground), the soon-to-be Master for Mountain Lodge No. 529 in Windham, welcomes Saint Patrick’s Dinner guests with (back left to right) Jason Gardinier, Jeff Gonzalez, John Landi, Bob Rhoades and Wade Spanhake.
Original parchment charter from 1804 of Revival Lodge #117 in Prattsville, (signed by, among others, Most Worshipful Jacob Morton Esquire, Grand Master), evolving into Mountain Lodge No. 529.
Mountain Lodge No. 529 Free and Accepted Masons historian and Past Master Robert Rhoades in The Lodge ceremonial grand room.
WINDHAM - History continues to be forged within the Mountaintop Lodge No. 529 Free and Accepted Masons in Windham where the 27th Annual Saint Patrick’s Day fundraising dinner was held last weekend.
In the most intrinsic way, nothing has changed inside the centuries-old fraternal organization that is “very community oriented” said Robert Rhoades, the historian and Past Master of the local fellowship.
Rhoades was also serving as ticket-taker for the event that backs multiple programs for the Masons, chartered here in 1862, enlivening the original 1804 incorporation in the town of Prattsville.
“Back in horse-and-buggy days, members would meet in taverns and homes,” Rhoades explained, waiting for the next guest to arrive.
The spot housing the current temple, in the heart of downtown, was once the site for what is now Windham-Ashland-Jewett school.
Masons, in 1937, purchased the building that, in 1957, was lost to a fire, dedicating their existing structure two years later.
While the externals have necessarily been remade, the core essence of what it means to be involved has stayed the same.
Steadily approaching two-hundred years, Mountain Lodge No. 529 is still a mere babe in the lore and legend of Freemasonry.
“What is a Mason,” asks a timeworn document hanging on one wall of the temple. “A Mason is a man and brother whose trust is in God.
“He meets you on the level and acts upon the square. Truth is his compass and he is ever plumb. He has a true grip on all that is right.
“From his initiation as an entered apprentice, he travels ever east toward the light of wisdom until he receives the final - the divine password that admits him into the ineffable presence of the eternal supreme grand master of the universe. God,” the document states.
Mountain Lodge 529 does not guide travelers safely to the Holy Land, as their brethren did in days of lore, but they are a part of The Shriners children's hospital network and similar nearby good causes.
Two seniors each from WAJ, Hunter-Tannersville, Greenville and Gilboa-Conesville schools receive stipends to foster ongoing education.
Masons host neighborhood Thanksgiving suppers and summer picnics, quietly donating a defibrillator to little league baseball.
Mountaintop Lodge No. 529 is famous for its Halloween House of Horrors, delightfully “scaring the wits out of the kids,” Rhoades said, laughing.
And the Masons strongly support The Battle Within, a group devoted to “the tired, the wounded, those haunted by traumatic experiences lived while in service to others.”
They include veterans and active duty military, police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, frontline health-care workers, “anyone whose job does not allow them to say no when called upon.”