The new Masons

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 last weekend 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 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 in an increasingly atomized society, 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. A group now between 18 and 27.

``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 and became closely associated with the ideals of Enlightenment and then the American Revolution through men like George Washington, Paul Revere, and Franklin.

Between 1870 and 1920 -- when 300 fraternal organizations were started in the United States -- the Masons' popularity soared, dipped during the Great Depression, then grew again after World War II, eventually hitting a high point in 1963 with more than 4 million members, said historian Steven C. Bullock, a professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the author of ``Revolutionary Brotherhood," that examines the historical significance of the group.

The decline among the Masons parallels the drop in most service clubs and civic organizations. In Robert Putnam's 2000 book ``Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community," he writes that the number of Americans attending club meetings has fallen off by 58 percent in a generation. Two-parent working families and a wider array of ways to spend free time fueled the decline.

Indeed, by 2005, membership in the Masons nationwide had fallen from more than 4 million in 1963 to about 1.6 million and the average age had climbed to 62, said Bullock.

To reverse the trend, the Masons lowered the age of membership from 21 to 18 and began to dip into the realm of recruitment.

``More than anything this is an awareness campaign," said Huke. ``Our standards remain the same."

Johnson, whose great-grandfather was a Mason, answered an ad in a college newspaper to join the group when he was in graduate school and began to ask his friends.

Word spread quickly. Meetings that used to attract eight or 10 Masons to the Harvard lodge now regularly pull in 150, Johnson said. The sense that the Masons offer a principled cornerstone in an age of slipping standards hit a nerve.

``We never had to endure hunger or a Great Depression or disease or anything like that so we're comfortable with life materially," said Robert Bolcone, of Gloucester, a 23-year-old student at Harvard Medical School who joined last year. ``I think my generation is searching for something more, something greater,"

Harvard-affiliated Masons like Bolcone said they appreciated the formality of the ritual in an age when the rest of their lives is so informal. The lodge is one of the few places where young men can actively seek out older mentors. And the teachings, through centuries old parables and metaphors, resonate.

Tom Sander, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who studies civic engagement, said the uptick fits a larger pattern. Twenty-somethings who came of age around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks are searching for something larger than themselves.

``They see their fate as intertwined with the fate of others in a way the generation before them did not," he said. ``The generation before them believed that if you earned enough money you could insulate yourself from the fears of society. . . . This generation is much more likely to seek out community."

Stone, the rock 'n' roller, offered a less idealistic reason for joining, as old as any other. This fall he hopes to open a bar in Malden. ``It never hurts to network," he said. ``It could be good for business."

Douglas Belkin can be reached at dbelkin@globe.com