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How did it all start? How does it work? What is a Shrine Mason? What kind of organization attracts physicians, lawyers, truck drivers, dentists, contractors, heads of state, movie stars, generals, clergymen and accountants? Someone might answer, “Oh yeah, Shrine Masons are those guys who always have those parades with the wild costumes and funny little cars.” Another might think of circuses and clowns. The fellow next to him might interject, “No, Shrine Masons are the guys who wear those funny hats–like flowerpots–and have those big conventions.”
“I don’t know about all that,” a passerby might add, “But I do know my little girl was born with clubfeet and now they are straight, and she can walk like anyone else, thanks to Shriners Hospitals for Children.”
“She can walk?” questions still another. “I thought the Shrine Masons ran those fantastic burn hospitals. I’ve read stories about them saving kids with burns on 90 percent of their bodies.”
All those people are right. Each has experienced an aspect of Shrinedom. What they cannot experience, unless they are Shrine Masons, is the camaraderie, deep friendships, good fellowship and great times shared by all Shrine Masons. What they may not know is that all Shrine Masons share a Masonic heritage; each is a Master Mason in the Freemasonry Fraternity.
There are more than 411,000 Shrine Masons now. They gather in Temples, or chapters, throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Republic of Panama. There are 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children providing care for orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate. These hospitals have helped more than 800,000 children — at no cost to the parent or child — since the first Shriners Hospitals for Children opened in 1922.
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The Shrine Was unstoppable in the early 1900s. Membership grew rapidly, and the geographical range of Temples widened. Between 1900 and 1918, eight new Temples were created in Canada. and one each in Honalulu, Mexico City and the Republic of Panama. The organization became, in fact, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America. New flourishes were added to a growing tradition of colorful pageantry. More Shrine bands were formed. The first Shrine Circus is said to have opened in 1906 in Detroit.
During the same period, there was growing member support for establishing an official Shrine charity. Most Ternples had individual philanthropies. and sometimes the Shrine as an organization gave aid. After the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the Shrine sent $25,000 to help the stricken city, and in 1915 the Shrine contributed $10,000 for the relief of European war victims. But neither the individual projects nor the special one-time contributions satisfied the membership, who wanted to do more. In 1919, Freeland Kendrick (Lu Lu Temple, Philadelphia) was the Imperial Potentate-elect for the 363,744 Shrine Masons. He had long been searching for a cause for the thriving group to support. In a visit to the Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children in Atlanta, he became aware of the overwhelming needs of crippled children in North America. At the June 1919 Imperial Session, Kendrick proposed establishing “The Mystic Shrine Mason Peace Memorial for Friendless, Orphaned and Crippled Children.” His resolution never came to a vote. As Imperial Potentate in 1919 and 1920, he traveled more than 150,000 miles, visiting a majority of the 146 Temples and campaigning for an official Shrine philanthropy.
The climax came at the June 1920 Imperial Session in Portland, Oregon. Kendrick changed his resolution to one establishing the “Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children,” to be supported by a $2 yearly assessment from each Shrine Mason.
Conservative Shrine Masons expressed doubts about the Shrine assuming this kind of responsibility. Prospects for approval were dimming when Noble Forrest Adair (Yaarab Temple, Atlanta) rose to speak:
“I was lying in bed yesterday morning, about four o’clock … and some poor fellow who had strayed from the rest of the band … stood down there under the window for 25 Minutes playing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.\’”
He said that when he awoke later, “I thought of the wandering minstrel, and I wondered if there were not a deep significance in the tune that he was playing for Shrine Masons, ‘I’m Forcver Blowing Bubbles.’
He noted, “While we have spent money for songs and spent money for bands, it’s time for the Shrine to spend money for humanity.
“I want to see this thing started. Let’s get rid of all the technical objections. And if there is a Shrine Mason in North America,” he continued, “who objects to having paid the two dollars after he has seen the first crippled child helped, I will give him a check back for it myself.
When he was through, Noble Adair sat down to thunderous applause. The whole tone of the session had changed. There were other speakers, but the decision had already been reached. The resolution was passed unanimously.
A committee was chosen to determine the site and personnel for the Shriners Hospitals for Children. After months of work, research and debate, the committee concluded that there should be not just one hospital but a network of hospitals throughout North America. It was an idea that appealed to Shrine Masons, who liked to do things in a big and colorful way. When the committee brought the proposal to the 1921 Imperial Session in Des Moines, Iowa, it too was passed.
Before the June 1922 Session, the cornerstone was in place for the first Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children in Shreveport, La. The rules for this hospital, and all the other Shriners Hospitals for Children which would follow, were simple: To be admitted, a child must be from a family unable to pay for the orthopaedic treatment he would receive, be under 14 years of age (later increased to 18) and be, in the opinion of the chief of staff, someone whose condition could be helped.
The work of the great Shriners Hospitals for Children network is supervised by the members of the Board of Trustees, who are elected at the annual meeting of the hospital corporation. Each hospital operates under the supervision of a local Board of Governors, a chief of staff and an administrator. Members of the boards are Shrine Masons, who serve without pay.
The network of orthopaedic hospitals grew as follows: Shreveport, Sept. 16, 1922; Honolulu, Jan. 2, 1923; Twin Cities, March 12, 1923; San Francisco, June 16, 1923 (relocated to Sacramento in 1997); Portland, Jan. 15, 1924; St. Louis, April 8, 1924; Spokane, Nov. 15, 1924; Salt Lake City, Jan. 22, 1925; Montreal, Feb. 18, 1925; Springfield, Feb. 21, 1925; Chicago, March 20, 1926; Philadelphia, June 24, 1926; Lexington, Nov. 1, 1926; Greenville, Sept. 1, 1927; Mexico City, March 10, 1945; Houston, Feb. 1, 1952; Los Angeles, Feb. 25, 1952; Winnipeg, March 16, 1952 (closed Aug. 12, 1977); Erie, April 1, 1967; Tampa, Oct. 16, 1985, and Sacramento, Calif., April 14, 1997. This newest Shriners Hospitals for Children is the only one in the Shrine system that provides orthopaedic, burn and spinal cord injury care, and conducts research, all in a single facility.
The first patient to be admitted in 1922 was a little girl from the red clay country south of Shreveport, La., a tot with a club foot who had learned to walk on the top of her foot rather than the sole. The first child to be admitted in Minneapolis was a Blackfoot Indian boy suffering from the deformities of polio. Since that time, more than 575,000 children have been treated at the 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children. Surgical techniques developed in Shriners Hospitals for Children have become standard in the orthopaedic world. Thousands of children have been fitted with arm and leg braces and artificial limbs, most of them made in special labs in the hospitals by expert technicians.Orthopaedic ResearchFrom 1950 to 1960, the Shrine’s funds for helping children increased rapidly. At the same time, the waiting lists of new patients for admission to Shriners Hospitals for Children began to decline, due to the polio vaccine and new antibiotics. Thus, Shrine Masons found themselves able to provide additional services, and Shrine leaders began to look for other ways they could help the children of North America.
One result was the collating of the medical records of patients of Shriners Hospitals for Children. By placing the records of each patient and treatment on computer and microfilm, valuable information was made available to all Shrine surgeons and the medical world as a whole. This process, begun in 1959, also made it easier to initiate clinical research in Shrine orthopaedic hospitals.
Shriners Hospitals for Children had always engaged in clinical research, and in the early ’60s, the Shrine aggressively entered the structured research field and began earmarking funds for research projects. By 1967, Shrine Masons were spending $20,000 on orthopaedic research. Today, the annual research budget totals approximately $24 million. Shrine researchers are working on a vast variety of projects, including studies of bone and joint diseases, such as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis; increasing basic knowledge of the structure and function of connective tissue; and refining functional electrical stimulation, which is enabling children with spinal cord injuries to have limited use of their arms and legs.
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