R W Provincial Grand Master's Address
to
Provincial Grand Lodge
2008
Brethren, it is now my privilege to address you for the first time as Provincial Grand Master.
This has been a momentous but enjoyable day for me and I hope for all of you, but it has been a long day and I am sure we are all anxious to return to our homes and families.
Today is a day for celebration and thanks and I want to start by recognising the great contribution made to this Province by my predecessor, RW Bro Keith Emmerson. He has bequeathed a strong and vibrant but happy Province and I want to place on record the thanks of all us and to wish him and Jean a long and happy retirement.
I congratulate all those Officers I have had the pleasure of appointing to or promoting in Provincial Grand rank today. You have earned these ranks through the work you have done for your respective Lodges, but that work does not stop today. Your appointment is also an earnest of the work we expect you to do in the future not only within your Lodges but also throughout the Province to further the interests of Mark Masonry.
Charity in all its forms is one of the cornerstones of Masonry and I am delighted that the initiative to raise £25,000 to endow permanently a Hertfordshire Mark Masons scholarship at the University of Hertfordshire has been embraced with such enthusiasm. I am grateful to you all and I hope that you will keep up the good work.
I am also very happy to have been able to present today a cheque for £7,000 to our Craft Provincial Grand Master in support of the 2009 Festival for the Grand Charity. Part of this amount is in respect of the year just completed, but because we shall not meet again until after the Festival has been completed, I wanted to show the support of the new Mark Provincial administration for the Craft Festival. Our total contribution to the Festival now stands at £25,000.
All the different Orders in Masonry have a warm and friendly relationship in “Happy Hertfordshire” as witnessed by the attendance of virtually every Head of Order at our meeting today. However the bedrock of all our work is the Craft; without a continuing flow of well qualified candidates into our Craft Lodges we must all be destined to fail. I urge you all to support your Craft Lodges, talk about your Masonry to your families, friends and work colleagues and encourage those you think will make good Masons to consider initiation, but always maintain high standards.
Brethren, meetings such as this take a considerable amount of planning and organisation in both the administrative and the ceremonial functions and I thank the Provincial Grand Director of Ceremonies, his Deputies and Assistants for everything they have done to ensure that this meeting has run smoothly. I would also like to thank the outgoing Provincial Deputy Grand Secretary, W Bro Albert Waite, who is retiring today. He has shouldered a greater amount of the burden than is usual because of the translation of the previous Provincial Grand Secretary to another role.
There are many other brethren, too numerous to mention, who have performed their allotted tasks superbly and contributed to the success of this wonderful day. I thank them all.
It is unusual in such an address to mention wives and families and I extend my thanks to your wives and families for all their support and encouragement, but in particular to a small group of ladies who volunteered to help our hard pressed Provincial Deputy Grand Secretary in the dining room today.
God bless you all.
[Given at Rickmansworth on Tuesday 15th July 2008]
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