No secret handshakes

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE

Standing at the podium, out-going Potentate Richard Sardeson told the more than 300 Shriners and guests gathered Jan. 9 at the Nile Center that local Shriners finished 2007 in the black, and lost fewer members than the year before.

“To my knowledge, that’s the best it’s been in years,” said Sardeson, who stepped aside as head of the Nile Shriners to make way for incoming Potentate Richard Kovak during the annual ceremony to install new officers.

The news was a welcome change for the Shriners. The group, known for its Fez hats, parade appearances and hospitals for crippled and burned children, are facing some of the most challenging years since they built a “temple” building in the late 1920s near the King-Snohomish County line. Today, the sprawling 97-acre facility boasts an 18-hole golf course and its center (formerly referred to as a temple) provides meeting spaces for Shriners and other groups.

As with many fraternal organizations – like Lions, Elks and Kiwanis clubs – the Shriners, a branch of the Fraternal Order of Freemasonry, have seen their numbers dwindle as fewer people join clubs of virtually any kind. That’s true nationally and regionally, from Nile’s local counterparts such as Tacoma’s Afifi temple, to Spokane’s El Katif.

Nile Shrine membership has dropped by between 2,000 and 3,000 members since about 2001, said Reg Armfield, Nile Center’s public relations director.

Carl Alexander, a past potentate, attributes the membership drop to the increase in the number of working couples who just don’t have extra time to spare.

“A lot of them wait until the kids are grown” before getting involved, he said.

The drop in membership rolls hit Seattle’s Scottish Rite Temple so hard that that organization, another Masonic offshoot, closed its Capitol Hill temple, Alexander said.

“We don’t have as many units in the parades as we used to have,” Alexander said. “It’s just a sign of the times.”

Incoming Potentate Richard Kovak laments the drop in membership from a high of about 12,000 in the 1960s to 2,500 today for the local chapter. Still, Kovak said, there’s reason for hope.

“I believe there’s going to be a moral reawakening in America and we’re going to be at the forefront of that,” he said.

A new generation is emerging, he said. That generation, comprised of today’s teens and young adults, will be at the vanguard of a resurgence in fraternal organization membership.

“Basically, our folks are the WWII generation,” he said. “What’s happened is we’ve missed two generations between the 70s and the 90s. Those folks became the ‘me’ generation, the ‘me, me, me’ generation and the ‘guy who dies with the most toys wins,’ generation.”

The new crop of adults “are going to be looking for a moral perspective in which to put their lives together,” he said. “That’s where our membership is heading.”

In the meantime, Shriners like Mountlake Terrace Mayor Jerry Smith and former Lynnwood City Councilman Ned Daniels are having a blast while they work hard to support the Shriner’s biggest reason for being: supporting the nation’s 22 Shriner’s hospitals. There’s one in Spokane and another in Portland.

At the meeting Jan. 9, Daniels hid the Fez of a visiting British Columbia Shriner and didn’t give it up until he and his friends had a good laugh – and received a “ransom” payment from the victim.

He said he started his service as a boy with Boy Scouts of America and other groups.

“We learned a lot about community involvement – about involvement outside ourselves,” Daniels said.

Bob Wilson, a Nile Shriners board trustee, said Shriners may look strange in their velvet hats. But boil down all the pomp and circumstance, the rituals and pageantry to their essence and you’re left with a singular purpose, he said: “to have fun and support the hospitals.”