The Manawatu Freemason

  Bro Sir Malcolm Campbell. 1885 - 1948 Bro Sir Malcolm Campbell was born in Chislehurst, London on the 11th March 1885, and is a famed British motor racing driver and motoring journalist.  He is famous for being the first to break the land speed record in 1924 at 146.16 mph at Pendine Sands near Carmarthen Bay on the South Coast of Wales, driving a 350 horsepower V12 Sunbeam (now on display at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu).  Between 1924 and 1935 he broke nine land speed records.  He set his final record at the Bonneville Salt Flats on Utah USA on the 3rd September 1935 and was the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph.  Bro Campbell also set the water speed record four times, his highest speed being 141.740 mph in the Blue Bird K4 on the 19th August 1939.  Bro Campbell was initiated into Freemasonry on the 15th October 1924 into Old Uppinghamian Lodge No.4227, passed on the 9th December 1924 and raised on the 14th January 1925....

  Rowland Hussey Macy (1822–1877) is remembered as the man who changed retail forever. Fewer people know that he was also a Freemason. Macy was a member of Merrimack Lodge in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where he opened his first dry goods store in 1851. Those early years were rough—between 1843 and 1855 he opened four stores in Massachusetts and one in California during the Gold Rush. All of them failed. But instead of quitting, he studied what went wrong and kept going. Born on Nantucket into a Quaker family, Macy went to sea at 15 on a whaling ship called the Emily Morgan.  During that voyage he got a red star tattoo on his forearm—a symbol that later became the famous Macy’s star logo. In 1858, he moved to New York City and opened “R. H. Macy Dry Goods” at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street.  His first day made only $11.08. By the end of that first year, the store had done over $85,000 in sales. That shop became the foundation of the modern department store. Macy introduced id...

Sir Alexander Fleming was born in East Ayrshire, Scotland, on 6 August 1881 and he is best known for having discovered penicillin, which is still used to treat bacterial infections today. He moved to London at the age of 13 and later trained as a doctor. He qualified with distinction in 1906 and began research at St Mary's Hospital Medical School at the University of London under Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy. In 1928, while studying the influenza virus, Fleming noticed that mould had developed accidentally on a set of dishes being used to grow the staphylococci germ.  The mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. Fleming experimented further and named the active substance penicillin.  This discovery would change the world of medicine forever and cement Fleming's place as one of the world's most famous scientists.  In 1944, Fleming was knighted by King George VI and won the Nobel Prize a year later. In 1909 at the age of 27, Fleming was in...

  Bro Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) Bro Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) was an American writer, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker, known as a world traveler. He authored more than fifty non-fiction books, mostly travel narratives and popular biographies of explorers and military men. Between 1930 and the mid-1970s.  Lowell Thomas in Arabia, 1918 He was a member of St. John's Lodge in Boston, Massachusetts, which is one of the oldest Masonic lodges in North America. Thomas is listed among other notable Masons such as Paul Revere, Henry Ford, and George Washington.  Thomas was especially known for the writings and documentary films that turned T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) into an international celebrity.  Thomas shot dramatic footage of Lawrence in Arab dress, then returned to America and began giving public lectures in 1919 on the war in Palestine, "supported by moving pictures of veiled women, Arabs in the...

  Bro Melvin Jerome Blanc, born Blank on the 30th May 1908 in San Francisco, California USA, was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over 60 years. During the Golden Age of Radio, he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs. Bro Blanc was referred to as “The Man with a Thousand Voices” was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons.  Blanc also voiced the Looney Tunes characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd along with the voice of Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, including Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones, Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons, Secret Squirrel on The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show, the title character of Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman on Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels and The Flintstone Kids. Bro Blanc joined Mid-Day Lodge No.188 in Port...

  Bro Joseph Rudyard Kipling 30th December 1865 - 18th January 1936 Bro Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay India on the 30th December 1865, and was known to the family as Ruddy.  At the age of five he was brought over to England and spent five years living with a foster family in Southsea where he was miserable due to mistreatment, beatings and being victimised.   As a result of this he suffered from insomnia and poor health for the rest of his life.  At the age of 17 Rudyard returned to India and began his career as a writer beginning as the sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer in Lahore.   According to Lodge records he was Initiated on 5th April 1886.  Passed to the Degree of a Fellowcraft the following month on 3rd May 1886 and Raised to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason on 6th December the same year into Lodge Hope and Perseverance No.782.  He also went on to become a joining member of Independence with ...

Is Father Christmas a Freemason? I have a very serious question to put to you all. I would like to raise it with you and then do some detective work, examining the evidence that might lead us to answering it. It is a most important question that I am sure you have often asked yourself, and relates our Craft to the wider society in which we live and concerns several major issues of this season. This very serious question is "Is Father Christmas a Freemason?" Let us consider the facts of this case: Of whom does this remind you? A worthy gentleman, who is (we must admit) getting on a bit in years and is perhaps a little overweight,  who wears a very distinctive costume as the badge of his activities,  who provides the opportunity for friends and visitors to meet in fellowship,  who is surrounded by secrecy and mystery, dispenses goodwill and the charity of gifts all over the world (avoiding ostentatious public display while doing so) and is there doing it year after year! We...