150 years and counting for masonic lodge

The Green Grove Masonic Lodge's 150th anniversary celebration was well-attended Saturday, with guest speakers including Green Grove Lodge member Dickey Fortner, a past Grand Master of Arkansas, current Grand Master of Arkansas R.L. Sheffield and University of Central Arkansas Archivist Jimmy Bryant.

In Bryant's presentation, photographs from the mid-to-late 1800s through the mid-20th Century depicting life in Conway were presented alongside the history of the Green Grove Lodge.

Bryant told his audience to prepare for "a strong dose" of Conway and Green Grove Lodge history. Though political views traditionally aren't discussed inside Masonic lodges, Bryant explained how the Civil War divided a few within the Green Grove Lodge's brotherhood. In one instance, Bryant said, two members of the lodge were commissioned officers for each of the war's opposing sides.

Bryant also told how Conway went from a saloon-heavy community to a city of tee-totallers. Conway's renouncing the bottle, he said, was one of the main reasons Arkansas State Normal School (now UCA) chose the city.

Booze had a brief resurgence in the years following prohibition, but was again voted out in the mid-40s, he said.

Several of the photos depicted scenes from Conway's days when cotton was king. One showed Front Street choked with mule-drawn carriages laden with Cotton headed to or from local gins. Near where the toad is painted at Oak and Front streets was a well, used to water the animals.

By 1918, the horseless carriage had made its appearance in Conway, as one photo illustrated.

World War II's impact on the county, and the lodge, was profound, Bryant said.

The President of State Normal School held a special meeting soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bryant Said, urging students to take a "business as usual" attitude.

Two students took issue with the president's advice, Bryant Said. It wasn't business as usual for them. Both were killed in Combat before the war's end.

In total, 46 students from the school were killed during World War II, he said. So many students were fighting overseas that the largely empty school was used as a barracks for Army and Navy reservists, Women's Army Corps, and Army Air Corps.

Through it all, Bryant said, Green Grove Lodge members were a part of the city's history. Whether teaching at or leading local schools, colleges and universities, fighting and sometimes dying overseas or in the Civil War, or establishing a lodge rule prohibiting the distribution of pro-alcohol propaganda, local Masons had their influence on local history over the last 150 years.

Green Grove Lodge Past Master Art Montgomery said Thursday the lodge recently commissioned six identical black picture frames to house photos of past and future lodge Masters. They've got enough frames to easily last them another 150 years.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)