Great Freemasons: Audie Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971)

"Seems to me that if you're afraid or living with some big fear, you're not really living. You're only half alive. I don't care if it’s the boss you're scared of or a lot of people in a room or diving off of a dinky little board, you gotta get rid of it. You owe it to yourself. Makes sort of a zombie out of you being afraid. I mean you want to be free, don't you? And how can you if you are scared? That's prison. Fear's a jailer. Mind now, I'm not a professor on the subject. I just found it out for myself. But that's what I think."
Audie Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971)

Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of World War II, receiving every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. The 19-year-old Murphy received the Medal of Honor after single-handedly holding off an entire company of Germans for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy


(Audie received his first degree in Masonry when he was regularly initiated, February 14, 1955, in North Hollywood [California] Lodge No. 542, Free and Accept Masons of California. He was passed to the Fellowcraft degree on April 4, 1955. On June 27, 1955, he was raised to the degree of a Master Mason. Later, he became a dual member with Heritage Lodge No. 764, North Hollywood, [now Magnolia Park No. 618] on May 14, 1956.

Audie took his degree work in the Scottish Rite Temple in Dallas on November 11-14, 1957, according to records located at the temple. After receiving his 32nd degree, Audie was elected vice president of the Thomas B. Hunter Memorial Class.
Audie became a Shriner [Hella Temple, Dallas] on November 15, 1957. Audie was made a "Master of the Royal Secret" in the Valley of Dallas, Orient of Texas, on November 14, 1965. Audie was also decorated a Knight Commander of the Court of Honor KCCH) on December 11, 1965. Audie affiliated with the Long Beach Scottish Rite Bodies on April 2, 1971. Two weeks previously, on March 19, 1971, Shriner Murphy affiliated with the Al Malaikah Temple in Los Angeles.)

http://www.muratshrine.org/bios/murphy.php

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978)

Great Freemasons: H. Roe Bartle (June 25, 1901 – May 9, 1974)

There are three Bartles: The Bartle who makes money, the Bartle who gives it away, and the Bartle who works for free.
~Harold Roe Bartle

Harold Roe Bennett Sturdevant Bartle (June 25, 1901 – May 9, 1974) was a businessman, philanthropist, Boy Scout executive, and professional public speaker who served two terms as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. After Bartle helped lure the Dallas Texans American Football League team to Kansas City in 1962, owner Lamar Hunt renamed the franchise the Kansas City Chiefs after Bartle's nickname, "The Chief."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Roe_Bartle


http://usscouts.org/honorsociety/lonebear.asp


Selected speeches:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6TScdeMBrA

(Member of Lebanon Lodge No. 87 in Kentucky plus the Ararat Shriners of Kansas City, Missouri)

Great Freemasons: Stuart Symington (June 26, 1901 – December 14, 1988)

There are four categories of voting on the floor of the Senate. The first are those who have been described as ones who can hear the farthest drum before the cry of a single hungry child. Then there is the group who can hear every child, whether he is hungry or not, before they can hear a single drum. Then you have a third group, who say, “Nothing can happen to the almighty dollar, so we will vote for all the children and all the drums.” The time has come when we must have some priorities with respect to the way we are allocating our steadily decreasing resources, else it should be clear to everybody—that the economy of the United States could well be destroyed.
Stuart Symington (June 26, 1901 – December 14, 1988), remarks in the Senate, November 23, 1971.—Congressional Record, vol. 117, p. 2896
William Stuart Symington, Jr. (June 26, 1901 – December 14, 1988) was an American businessman and politician from Missouri. He served as the first Secretary of the Air Force from 1947 to 1950 and was a Democratic United States Senator from Missouri from 1953 to 1976.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Symington
(Frank R. Lawrence Lodge 797, Rochester, NY)

Great Freemasons: William Whipple (January 14, 1730 – November 28, 1785)

I am sorry to say that sometimes matters of very small importance waste a good deal of precious time, by the long and repeated speeches and chicanery of gentlemen who will not wholly throw off the lawyer even in Congress.
William Whipple (January 14, 1730 – November 28, 1785)

William Whipple, Jr. (January 14, 1730 – November 28, 1785) was a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Hampshire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whipple
(St. John's Lodge, Portsmouth NH)

Great Freemasons: William Hooper (June 28, 1742 – October 14, 1790)

“I am weary of politics. It is a study that corrupts the human heart, degrades the idea of human nature, and drives men to the expedients that morality must condemn."
William Hooper (June 28, 1742 – October 14, 1790)

William Hooper (June 28, 1742 – October 14, 1790) was an American lawyer, physician, politician, and a member of the Continental Congress representing North Carolina from 1774 through 1777. Hooper was also a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, along with fellow North Carolinians Joseph Hewes and John Penn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hooper


(Member of Hanover Lodge in Masonborough, N.C.)

Great Freemasons: Joseph Hewes (January 23, 1730 – November 10, 1779)

Dear Sir: -
. . . . On Monday the great question of independency and total separation from all political intercourse with Great Britain will come on. It will be carried, I expect, by a great majority, and then, I suppose we shall take upon us a new name. . . . .
Joseph Hewes (January 23, 1730 – November 10, 1779). in a letter to James Iredell Philadelphia, June 28th, 1776.

Joseph Hewes (January 23, 1730 – November 10, 1779) was a native of Princeton, New Jersey, where he was born in 1730. Hewes’s parents were members of the Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. Immediately after their marriage, they moved to New Jersey, which became Joseph Hewes’s home state. Hewes attended Princeton but there isn't any evidence that he actually graduated. What is known is that he became an apprentice of a merchant and in fact became a very successful merchant. After finishing his apprenticeship he earned himself a good name and a strong reputation, which would serve him well in becoming one of the most famous signers of the Declaration of Independence for North Carolina, along with William Hooper and John Penn. Hewes moved to Edenton, North Carolina at the age of 30 and won over the people of the colony with his charm and honorable businesslike character. Hewes was elected to the North Carolina legislature in 1763, only three years after he moved to the colony. After being re-elected numerous times in the legislature, Hewes was now focused on a new and more ambitious job as a continental congressman.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hewes



(Lodge unknown, but was recorded as a Masonic visitor to Unanimity Lodge No. 7, Edenton, North Carolina, in December 1776, and was also buried with Masonic honors)

Great Freemasons: John Hancock (January 23, 1737 – October 8, 1793)

"I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act."
John Hancock (January 23, 1737 – October 8, 1793)

John Hancock (January 23, 1737 [O.S. January 12, 1736] – October 8, 1793) was a merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term "John Hancock" became, in the United States, a synonym for signature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hancock


(Became a Mason in Merchants Lodge No. 277 in Quebec, affiliated with Saint Andrew's Lodge in Boston, 1762)

Great Freemasons: William Ellery (December 2, 1727- February 15, 1820)

”… the door is shut … We have been driven into a Declaration of Independency & must forget our former love of our British brethren. The Sword must determine our quarrel.”
William Ellery (December 2, 1727- February 15, 1820)

William Ellery (1727-1820) was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Rhode Island.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellery


(St. John's Lodge/First Lodge of Boston, Boston, MA, 1748)

Great Freemasons: Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794)

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
~Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794), known as the Lee Resolution, or the Resolution of Independence, voted and agreed upon by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, 1776
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Resolution

Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794) was an American statesman from Virginia best known for the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain. He was a signatory to the Articles of Confederation and his famous resolution of June 1776 led to the United States Declaration of Independence, which Lee signed. He also served a one-year term as the President of the Continental Congress, and was a United States Senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792, serving during part of that time as one of the first Presidents pro tempore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Lee

(It is not definite he was a Freemason, but it is likely. Hiram Lodge No. 59, Westmoreland County, Virginia)

Great Freemasons: Phil Collins (born January 30, 1951)

The world is in your hands, now use it.
Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO (born January 30, 1951)

(SOHO Lodge No. 3)

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013)

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 - 5 December 2013)

Great Freemasons: Richard Dreyfuss (born October 29, 1947)

"I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance."
Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Stephen Dreyfuss (born October 29, 1947) is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Goodbye Girl.
Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1977 for The Goodbye Girl, and was nominated in 1995 for Mr. Holland's Opus. He has also won a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and was nominated in 2002 for Screen Actors Guild Awards in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries categories.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dreyfuss



On June 10, 2011, Dreyfuss was made a Master Mason by the Grand Master of Masons of the District of Columbia at the Washington DC Scottish Rite building, as well as a 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Mason and is a member of the Valley of the District of Columbia, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite

C.S. Lewis

Great Freemasons: Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975)

“Get a good education. Decide what you want to do. Whatever you like to do best is exactly the thing you are fitted for . . . be diligent and decent . . . don’t begrudge the fact that you have to work for what you get. The greatest rewards in living come from living outside and beyond one’s self . . . the greatest qualities a man can have are simplicity and humility.”
Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975)


Alfred Paul Murrah (October 27, 1904 – October 30, 1975) was an American attorney and judge, best known for being the namesake of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Murrah


Capital City Lodge 518, OK

Great Freemasons: Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919)

You ask that Mr. Taft shall "let the world know what his religious belief is." This is purely his own private concern; it is a matter between him and his Maker, a matter for his own conscience; and to require it to be made public under penalty of political discrimination is to negative the first principles of our Government, which guarantee complete religious liberty, and the right to each to act in religious affairs as his own conscience dictates. Mr. Taft never asked my advice in the matter, but if he had asked it, I should have emphatically advised him against thus stating publicly his religious belief.

The demand for a statement of a candidate’s religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization.

To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life. You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker. If it is proper or legitimate to oppose a man for being a Unitarian, as was John Quincy Adams, for instance, as is the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, at the present moment Chaplain of the Senate, and an American of whose life all good Americans are proud then it would be equally proper to support or oppose a man because of his views on justification by faith, or the method of administering the sacrament, or the gospel of salvation by works. If you once enter on such a career there is absolutely no limit at which you can legitimately stop.
Theodore Roosevelt,

LETTER TO MR. J. C. MARTIN CONCERNING RELIGION AND POLITICS 
November 6, 1908

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/307.txt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt ( October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt


Matinecock Lodge No. 806, Oyster Bay, New York

Great Freemasons: Manly P. Hall

Great Freemasons: Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914)

Laws are never as effective as habits.
Adlai Stevenson I


Adlai Ewing Stevenson I (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) served as the 23rd Vice President of the United States (1893–1897). Previously, he served as a Congressman from Illinois in the late 1870s and early 1880s. After his subsequent appointment as Assistant Postmaster General of the United States during Grover Cleveland's first administration (1885–1889), he fired many Republican postal workers and replaced them with Southern Democrats. This earned him the enmity of the Republican-controlled Congress, but made him a favorite as Grover Cleveland's running mate in 1892, and he duly became 23rd Vice President of the United States.

In office, he supported the free-silver lobby against the gold-standard men like Cleveland, but was praised for ruling in a dignified, non-partisan manner.

In 1900, he ran for Vice President with William Jennings Bryan. Although unsuccessful, he was the first ex-Vice President ever to win re-nomination for that post with a different Presidential candidate. Stevenson was the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson II, a Governor of Illinois and twice Democratic Presidential candidate.



(Bloomington Lodge 43, Illinois)


Photo by Napoleon Sarony (1821–1896)

Great Freemasons: Trent Lott

We cannot forget the little things we take for granted in America that remain the disdain of dictators and terrorists throughout the world.
Trent Lott

Chester Trent Lott, Sr. (born October 9, 1941) is a former United States Senator from Mississippi, who served in numerous leadership positions in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. He entered Congress as one of the first of a wave of Republicans winning seats in Southern states that had been solidly Democratic. He became Senate Majority Leader, then fell from power after praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist Dixiecrat presidential bid.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_Lott


(Masonic Life: Shortly after completing law school and returning to the Gulf Coast, he had petitioned, been accepted and initiated an Entered Apprentice in Pascagoula Lodge No. 419 on September 18, 1967. However, the busy schedule of a congressional aide and freshman House member made advancement a challenge. Nonetheless, he was finally passed to the Degree of Fellowcraft on August 23, 1975, and raised a Master Mason on August 29, 1975. That October, Brother Lott took most of his Scottish Rite Degrees in the Valley of Gulfport, but did not receive his 32nd Degree until October 23, 1976. He subsequently received the K.C.C.H. in 1983 and was coroneted a 33° Inspector General Honorary on December 12, 1987. )

Albert Einstein quote

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Albert Einstein


(Art: The Question by Eddie Newell)