Masons adopt an open door policy
Search is on for young members
With his mop of black hair, silver nose ring and double pierced ear, Nikki Stone, a 31-year-old rock guitarist, looked a bit out of place Saturday afternoon as he stood surrounded by serious-looking men in dark suits beneath baronial, 50-foot ceilings at the Masonic Lodge on Tremont Street in Boston.
But Stone, and the dozens of other non-Masons milling about, was a much sought - after guest. With their aging membership at a 50-year-ebb and the vitality of their future in doubt, the Masons are trying something new in their august 275-year history: They have started recruiting.
``We're trying to bring the Masons into the 21st century," Jeffrey Hodgdon, grand master of the Masons in Massachusetts said at an open house in Lexington, the same day that Stone visited the Boston lodge. ``If we don't do something, we're going down the tubes."
From the 18th century through the 1990s the Masons , surrounded by an aura of secrecy and prestige, did not recruit. They didn't need to -- new members came to them. But when the Baby Boomers started to snub the Masons en masse -- along with nearly every other fraternal organization -- membership dwindled. In Massachusetts, the number of Masons dropped from 130,441 in 1960 to 42,045 last year.
So two years ago, the Masons nationwide broke with long-standing tradition and went public.
In Massachusetts, the recruitment drive has been unique in scope and intensity, said Hodgdon, who has played a key role in the membership drive. The Massachusetts campaign has included open houses and a $800,000 radio and television sales pitch. The spots characterize the fraternity as a cornerstone of civility and heritage in an increasingly uncivil and unstable world.
The result: So far, so good.
``There's definitely a mystique here," said Stone. ``As a guy with a rock 'n' roll back ground, it seems cooler than the Knights of Columbus."
In the past two years, about 3,000 men have joined the Masons in Massachusetts, said Hodgdon, of Lexington, who attended four of the 240 open houses held across the state Oct. 7. It is the most interest shown in the organization in decades. And at a time when most of the members are in their 50s and 60s, 62 percent of the new members are between 18 and 39, said Robert Huke, a spokesman for the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts.
At the Harvard University lodge in Cambridge, membership has jumped from 125 to about 320 in two years. The average age of new members there is 22.5.
``There's a connection that's being made," said Ryan Johnson, the 31-year-old master of the Harvard lodge. ``People are saying, `You know that organization has been around for a long time. There must be something to it.' "
Masons and sociologists attribute the bubbling resurgence to a confluence of factors. Exposure, for starters. But also timing. Fraternal organizations have traditionally expanded during times of war and their immediate aftermath when veterans, used to the camaraderie of other men, look for organizations to bring them together.
There may also be a generational shift at play. For a group raised in cyberspace , a hunger for connectedness has begun driving younger people back toward fraternities -- especially in the post 9/11 world.
Indeed, the Masons are aiming their sales pitch at young people who came of age around the time of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 .
``September 11 was a real shaking point," said Johnson, who lives in New York and flies to Boston for monthly meetings. ``That event killed the `me generation' and you had this feeling that you need your friends, you need your family, you need your community, you couldn't do it all alone."
The Massachusetts strategy to recruit originated with Hodgdon, who owns a GM dealership in Arlington and has a keen appreciation for marketing. He organized the effort around the GM sales model. He standardized open houses around the state, had 10,000 askafreemason.org rubber bracelets made and brought on the Boston Light marketing firm to come up with a pitch.
Last summer, the firm interviewed hundreds of men, ages 21 to 40, in bars across Boston. Among the questions they asked: ``Is there greatness in you?" said Robert Heruska, a partner and the firms creative director.
``We thought maybe half the people we spoke to would say yes, but it was about 99 percent," Heruska said. ``The question really hit a nerve."
The line became the campaign's tag. The commercial presents a Benjamin Franklin impersonator whose voice sounds dipped in earnestness and wisdom.
The pitch plays on the fraternity's long history, stability, and ability to ``make good men great." Franklin's summation: ``Free masonry has been preparing great men since our country's founding."
The Masons evolved in England in the early 18th century from a guild of builders. The first lodge was chartered in America in Boston in 1733 . 