Episode 81. “Charity, Our Guiding Star” (ft. Paul Hodnefield)

Minnesota Masonic Charities was formed in 2006, but how did we get here? Author Paul Hodnefield breaks down the timeline of the three distinct stages of “Charity” in Minnesota and how it has guided us since our inception in the 1850s. 

“The advances that Minnesota Masonry has funded over the years are known not just here locally, they’re known across the world. It's something that has benefitted mankind at large.” 

Learn about our rich history and the pivotal influence of A.T.C. Pierson, Gideon Ives, Marian Savage, the Order of the Eastern Star, and more. 

“Masonry is a tool to be used, not a form to be served.” -PGM Leroy Mattson

Paul Hodnefield's latest book is titled “Our Guiding Star” and will be released in spring 2026. 

Transcript

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Hello again, everyone. Welcome back. It's another episode of Minnesota Masonic Histories and Mysteries. Happy to be joined in studio today. It's been a little over a year since you were last with us, Paul Denfield. Thanks for having me, Reid. You are the author of Sherman's Wood Ticks. We talked about that in our previous conversation, A non-fiction work about the extraordinary story of the eighth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. I powered through that book shortly after our conversation last year. excellent work. you are an attorney serving as Associate General Counsel for a public records legal services provider. also a frequent speaker on public record filing, recording, and search issues. A Also a proud and active Freemason housemaster of Cataract Lodge number two in Minneapolis. And currently you are working on the history of Masonic charity in Minnesota. A project that I would have to imagine is well vast to say the least. Where do we even start on a project like this? Tell us more. Well, the, the place to start, I guess, is at the beginning. So I, I was taking a look at, uh, some of the histories of the earliest lodges in Minnesota, the proceedings of the first Grand Lodge of Minnesota, just to see where charity was in their mind. And I, I can tell you that charity was first and foremost, uh, during the early stages of Masonry in Minnesota. In fact, the working title for the book. Came from the Grand Master's address at the first annual communication of the Grand Lodge of Minnesota. the full quote is, uh, let Charity be our guiding star. So from, from Masonry's inception in Minnesota, charity has been, uh, a very important part of the Masonic experience. we're grateful to have you in studio to talk about this project. What have you discovered on this journey of research so far? It's gotta be a lot to tell. There is a lot to tell and there's been, uh, a lot of, a lot of challenges for, for Masons and providing charity over the years and, uh. And, uh, a very much a change in focus. It's evolved quite a bit over time. Masonic charity in Minnesota has gone through three distinct stages. Right now we're in the third stage where you could call it an era or uh, whatever. But, I found it interesting that the number three popped up because of course. Three is a very important number to Mason's three degrees. There's, uh, the, the number three has many different, uh, symbolic meanings in masonry. A lot of prominence. Yeah. Yeah. And it, and, and, uh, it, it does in many areas as well, like alchemy, for example, the, the, the three stages of alchemy and, uh. The three eras of masonry can be likened to, I guess, maybe three degrees in masonry or the three stages of alchemy. The first stage, which lasted almost a hundred years, was, I guess the rough equivalent of youth or, uh, the first stage of, uh, alchemy making things better. Uh, what it really boiled down to was masonry. Was in a growth stage. It was discovering itself. Uh, it was determining what it was and who we are as Masons in Minnesota. And during that growth where we went from, uh, approximately 60 Masons in Minnesota when the Grand Lodge was formed to 60,000 by the early 1950s. Over that time, uh, the Grand Lodge was focused on. Chartering new lodges going through the process of, uh, building the, the, the lodge buildings, dealing with new members, performing rituals, very inward focused. And while Masonic charity was important during that time, it also tended to be inward focused. It was focused on, uh, you know, providing, or helping aiding and assisting brother Masons and their families. Uh, the good news is with such a, at the very beginning anyway, with such a small number of masons, there wasn't a lot of need. And as the number grew over time, um, it, it was an important part of, and, and is an important part of who we are as Masons to, uh, help Aidan assist our, our brethren and their families. But the need there was not that great. Still as the population aged, uh, the population of Masons in Minnesota aged, there was a need to deal with the elderly masons and, and destitute masons who. Uh, became that way over time. So, uh, again, the Masonic charity was inward focused, but it was focused on some big things. And one of those big things was the building of a home where, uh, masons that, uh, were destitute or, or needed special care where they could live and, and for their families as well. And actually the first talk of a, of a home in the sense of a a, a home for this purpose was way back in 1857. And that was, uh, at a grand lodge, uh, communication. An a TC Pearson, who was the, uh, master at the time, talked about building a Masonic home in St. Paul, but. He was not talking about a home in the sense of a nursing home facility or something like that. It was a home for the lodges where multiple lodges could, uh, meet. I. think of it as a, a Masonic temple, and then as kind of an afterthought, he said, oh yes, and it'll be big enough. We can have a couple of rooms on the first floor for, uh, destitute masons and their families to, to stay if need be. And that was in 1857. 1857, huh? And, uh, again, you, you think, well, that's not a whole lot of. Thought about Masonic charity for, to help Aidan assist other Masons. But again, remember how few Masons there were in Minnesota at the time, and how few of them needed assistance at the time, but it planted the seed and that seed was discussed over and over and over again for the next 50 years. Twofold, generations passed. Before action was taken on it. Now there, there have been a lot of talk in the 1880s and into the 1890s about, well, we got a growing need for this type of facility someplace where, uh, you know, uh, elderly masons or otherwise destitute masons and their families can, uh, can spend the rest of their years. And nothing much happened. There was a lot of talk, there were a couple of committees formed to kind of explore it. Discussion To a fault. Yes. Yeah. In 1906, Gideon Ives, past Master of or pa, past Grand of Masons of Minnesota, pushed through a resolution to form a committee and begin gathering funds for the erection of a. Home. And, uh, that passed and the committees were appointed and a, uh, entity was formed with the state of Minnesota so that they had a corporation that could accept and manage the funds that came in as donations. Now they set some parameters on this. I said, we, we aren't gonna do anything with the home until we have a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. That's big money. Back then it was. Remember this is 1906, a hundred thousand dollars goes an awful long way. So they began collecting the money in 1906. Now, Gideon Ives was an ideal leader for this project, and this is something we see, uh, throughout the history of Masonic charity, where we move from one era into another. It typically is because there's one driving force behind it. And in this case, back in, uh, 1906, it was, it was Gideon Ives. Now, I've, as, as I said, Ives was, uh, ideally suited for this because He had already been through this and he had been Grand Master of Masons in Minnesota. So he was well positioned to take on this project. And, uh, beginning in 1906 that he did, he, he was able to rally, uh, enough, uh, people within Masonry. He got, uh, and one of his big, um, accomplishments was he got the Eastern Star on board. I cannot emphasize enough how important the order of the Eastern Star was in raising the funds for the Masonic home and for keeping, uh, uh, for keeping the fundraising going after the initial, part of the home was built What I have read about that, a crucial collaboration Indeed, they, uh, they raised money for the home. in 1920 when the home was opened, they continued that work and we're instrumental in expanding to, uh, at, at, when the home opened, it was just the old Savage Estate. But that wasn't enough to satisfy the demand for rooms. And as a result, the, the decision was made very quickly to go ahead and build the main guest lodge, which is the defining architecture of the Masonic home today. It's what, uh, comes to mind when people think of the Masonic home. Do you anticipate having some photos of this in the book to see the, how it rolled out? I do. Excellent. Uh, it's a matter of, uh, where to get the photos. Uh, I'm sure there's plenty in our archives at the, uh, uh, heritage Center. There's, uh, certainly some at the Minnesota Historical Society that we can we'll get permission to use, but we'll get those in the book. Yes. It's still hard to imagine a time when we didn't have. The professional amenities we have today when a loved one, a family member, parent needs more care than we can provide for them, either them home and independent or living with us. And at that time, there was nothing of the sort safe to say, this was pretty groundbreaking at the time. it was there. I mean, there were institutions for people that were destitute, uh, but they weren't necessarily very nice. Uh, think of the county poor farms, uh, that were, uh, many, many states had poor farms, uh, uh, for this purpose. And, um. The Masonic home was really different. the, uh, Gideon Ives after he retired when the home first opened, he passed the torch to, uh, Stewart Gamble, another, uh, another prominent Minnesota Mason, who, uh, had a lot of energy and worked to raise funds to, uh, expand the Masonic home. But he, he insisted that everyone refer to the residents here. Not as inmates or residents, but as guests. The idea was this is, our masonic home for our masons and their families. They are guests, even if they're destitute, they're guests. That was an important distinction, and that's why the, the building in which we now sit was referred to as the main guest lodge, uh, at the time. And I, I don't know if it still is, but uh, it referred to our guests. Love that. So you talked about how we've gone through these three distinct eras, the first of which culminated then with the building of the home in 1920. What was the next. Phase, like, well, it didn't culminate with that. It continued the, the Masonic home, uh, was in demand and it needed to be expanded. So we did that first in 1927 with the, uh, main guest lodge, uh, the farm across the street, uh, from where we sit now. Was expanded and, and upgraded, and various other improvements were made up until the 1950s when the, the original, the old home, the Savage Mansion had reached the end of its useful life and they tore that down. Can you give a little more intel on that for someone that wasn't familiar with. The grounds at that time. Mm-hmm. And historically speaking, so it, it was Bloomington Township, correct? Yeah. Bloomington was not a, a city yet. It was a township. And, and there was like this mansion that was owned by Marian Savage. Uh, Marian Savage. For those that don't know, uh, was the owner of a horse so famous that it, it. Rivaled any celebrity athlete today? The, the horse was none other than the great Dan Patch and, um, Dan Patch, uh, set all sorts of records. He's a harness horse, right? He was a harness horse. Yeah. A harness racer. Well, Marian Savage, the owner. Had about 700 acres of land between the south side of the Minnesota River where he had the farm, where dam patch was kept in the training facilities. And then he had about 270 acres on the north side of the river in Bloomington, from the river up, uh, to about where Old Shakopee Road is now or portions of that. And on the top of the bluff, he built a very expensive mansion. That looked out to the south over the river to the, to his, uh, to his holdings in the what is now Savage, of course. And it was that mansion that was the original Masonic home because when it opened in 1920, there was no, there were no other buildings here. They put the, the first residence in that mansion and, uh, took care of them in there. the only problem with that mansion was it was not designed. As a care facility of any type or a residential facility. It was a home. Talk about stairs. Yeah. Yeah. So it, it, uh, it served its purpose until the main guest lodge opened. It was, uh, later when demand rose to, to a point they had to reopen it and, and use it for, for some space, for, for guests. But, uh, eventually, you know, it was a wood frame structure. It was not designed for this purpose. So by 1950, they, they did have to tear it down. It had, uh, pretty well worn out. For our listeners who are history buffs, by the way, there are images of all of these things on display at the Masonic Heritage Center if you're interested. It's really cool. Yeah. That, uh, uh, it's a shame that that mansion isn't still there because it was really a grandiose structure. Yeah. And, and would be very beautiful. But, it just, uh, it sadly it wasn't worth saving. So when, uh, in any event when, uh, Savage passed away, he and his horse passed away within a day of each other. Uh, the horse went first and then, uh, he, he had been ailing and, uh, just pushed him over the edge. That was, he died a couple days later? Yeah. Wow. And that was, uh, in, uh, I think in late 1916. Well, his estate, uh, was deeply in debt and, I, I haven't been able to find a will. There may be one out there, but he, he had a lot of creditors for the estate and, uh, there was provision made for his surviving spouse, but they needed to sell the land to pay off the debts'cause the creditors are banging on the door of the, at the, uh, in the probate court. And it was ma uh, for it worked to the, uh, favor of the Masonic home because they were able to buy the Porsche north of the river. Where the mansion was and where the Masonic home is today, about 200 and roughly 270 acres. And they got it at a fire sale price. And that's what made the Masonic home possible here, is they were able to buy it cheap enough. They still had to raise additional money because after buying it, they didn't have enough to build on it and, and to, uh, operate at the level that they wanted, but at least they had the, they had the, the. Land that they needed in order to erect the Masonic home. Was Marian Savage a Mason? I don't think so. I haven't found any record of it. Um, he may have had ties to Masonry. Uh, one of our colleagues, uh, uh, historian, believes there was some sort of connection, but he, he can't prove it. No solid evidence of a right lodge or something. Okay. Just curious about that. Yeah. So, once, uh, once we reached the 1950s, the Masonic home had been expanding. Things are going well, but Masonry was still focused internally. There were some external things that Masonry did for charity. For example, uh, many Masonic Lodges when they were first formed in Minnesota. Would do something for their community. And one popular thing was to establish cemeteries. And if you look at the lodges, the earliest lodges of Minnesota that formed, they, they formed along the rivers because that was the main form of transportation back in the day. I. You, for example, follow Mississippi River up north you have, uh, uh, Monticello Lodge, and then you have Clearwater Lodge, and then you have, a North Star Lodge all, uh, in St. Cloud all along the Mississippi River. Every one of those lodges established a cemetery in their early days outside of town because at the time. People needed a place to, to bury and to memorialize their, their loved ones. So would the lodge own that? The, the lodge would, uh, the lodge typically owned it, But, and the same thing, if you go south, for example, Mankato had a Masonic Cemetery. It didn't last real long as a Masonic cemetery, but they established it and got it, got it going. I'm not mistaken. Corinthian and Farmington still does, or they still have a connection to that local cemetery. They may very well. A lot of lodges, uh, uh, did that type of work early on. So it's no surprise that you'll see cemeteries known as, uh, old Masonic Cemetery or Acacia Cemetery or North Star Cemetery, all named after a. Either the lodge or something, uh, symbolic to masonry. There's a actually, uh, uh, at least two Acacia Cemeteries of Minnesota. One being in, uh, Clearwater, which that was established I think in the 1857. 1858, right after the lodge was. But you've also got Acacia Cemetery over, uh, uh, across the river from St. Paul, which was established in the 20th century. And that was, uh, a big project of a lot of lodges that came together. To design and build that. And, uh, that, again, that was primarily is a Masonic cemetery. It's, I believe, since been opened up to a, a, a broader spectrum. Sure. But, um, all of these things were again, primarily, focused on the local community charitable acts, uh, the Masonic home. Did take in non masons. If they were indigent, it was set up that it could do that. I don't know, I dunno how many they actually took in, but they would do that for the community. They had to abide by all the rules to be admitted to the Masonic home. And there were plenty of those, uh, people might, people would be surprised. Learn that to get entrance into the Masonic home, you had to turn over all your assets. To the Masonic home, and that would cover your care and everything during the time you were there. And often it, well, typically it wasn't anywhere near enough to cover the expenses of being in the home, especially if you were indigent. But, uh, you would turn that over and, um, that's one of the ways that the home was funded. Although it was not a majority of the funding, it covered only a, a. It was a substantial portion, but it was certainly far less than half of the cost of, of running the home came from the, the residents themselves. How did they handle that then, as far as funding and budgets and needing operating? Well, uh, the Masons of Minnesota came through Grand Lodge back in the twenties and posed a per capita, um, on, uh, annual per capita on top of the, as part of the dues. And so that money, uh, was the primary funding source for the Masonic home for many, many years. But by the, by the 1950s, the Masonic home, you know, it, it had, it was more mature. Masonry had really found its niche and, and found itself. In 1954, Leroy Matson, an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, became Grand Master of Masons of Minnesota. And at that time he came up, with the idea that Masonry needed to do. More than just look after its own. And what he did is he, he came up with the thought that we should be doing a grand gesture that will benefit the world at large. He wanted something, uh, visible that would benefit everyone to beyond Minnesota and beyond. Mm-hmm. And in fact, he, um, he said that masonry. Is a tool to be used, not a form to be served. And that's a quote I've heard multiple gram masters use since, and maybe he borrowed that too. But, he, he, he considered it a vital force to be used. so in the summer of 1954. Leroy Matson invited, uh, a number of prominent masons up to a cabin that he owned on Leach Lake, and he brought'em up one at a time. He's included the grand line and, and others that he considered influential, and he sat down with them one-on-one and asked, what can we do as masons, as a, as a big project, uh, a big charitable effort that will benefit humanity as a whole? And, uh, the various, uh, people that were up there put in their 2 cents worth and thought about it. but one thing, it, it kept coming back to one idea and that was, uh, something in the medical field. And as it progressed, uh, uh, doctors who he had brought up there emphasized the need for a cancer hospital At the time, uh, cancer was, cancer was pretty much a death sentence. And the, uh, hospitals were not really interested in treating it because the, I guess the attitude was what, you know, we're a hospital, we treat people and make them better. We can't do that with cancer patients. Moreover, cancer cancer was considered, uh, it had a bit of a stigma to it at the time. Really? So there was, there really wasn't anything available for the victims of cancer and their families, and it was a devastating disease then, as it is now. it was, uh, expensive. It was, uh, uh, it cost a lot of money to treat if you could find a place where, where you could get good treatment. And, uh, it imposed just a terrible burden on, on families, both financially and, and mentally. There was one place in the Twin Cities, there was a charity hospital, uh, in St. Paul that took in indigent cancer patients, but that was about it. And they, they had a long waiting list, so the. Decision was, uh, that Minnesota Masonry would take it upon itself to build a cancer hospital. And so they approached the University of Minnesota. The University of Minnesota was thrilled at the idea they need, they needed something like that, and they were willing to support it. Uh, as part of the exploration, uh, masons, uh, in Minnesota realized that they had no ability whatsoever to run a hospital. they needed the, the buy-in from the University of Minnesota, university of Minnesota was thrilled. They really wanted to take on this project, create a cancer hospital and use it as a research hospital as well. So, the grandma Master Matson appointed a, a committee to go out and come up with a plan and, uh, a fundraising plan as well. it was called the committee of a hundred. They met at the Scottish Rite in Minneapolis, uh, for the first time, uh, late in 18 or 1954. Sorry, I'm sitting here in the nine 19th century at times. Uh, but, uh, they met at the Scottish Rite, uh, in late 1954. came up with a plan. And after that they appointed an executive committee that would, uh, focus on the fundraising. this was led, they brought in a fellow named Donald Cowling, who was a very interesting character. He had been the president of Carlton College. He had been born in England. Come to the United States, obtain several degrees from Ivy League colleges at a very young age, and then, uh, come to Minnesota and taken over as president of Carlton College. When he took over at Carlton in 1909, he. I think the fundraising was in the thousands of dollars per year. He boosted that up to, uh, uh, you know, many magnitudes more than that, and, uh, you know, to tens of thousands than hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was a master fundraiser. So he was at Carlton until his retirement, uh uh, uh, sometime around 1950, I believe, or maybe in the 1940s. Then he used those skills to help raise money for the University of Minnesota Medical Program. He was a perfect fit. For this very project because, uh, what they did is they decided we're gonna build this cancer hospital. It's gonna cost a million dollars. Masons pledged half of that$500,000. And the rest, the U of M uh, planned to get through federal, uh, funding sources. Well. Cowling was a master fundraiser and it didn't take long to get the ball rolling. They actually had a division of labor when it came to that. They, uh, Donald Cowling and Leroy Matson worked on the large donors, the uh, the wealthy individuals, foundations and things like that. But there were two other, uh, masons who were assigned to work. the smaller level, which was the lodge level. And these were Clyde Heman and Frank Emrich. And what they did during that, during 1955 is they visited every lodge in the state to sell the concept of that cancer hospital. To, uh, get each lodge to appoint a, um, an administrator for this project. Wow. And by the time they were done, uh, they had, approximately 3,500 Masons who were working across the state on this fundraising project. And collecting money from virtually every Mason and member of the Eastern Star. And again, it's important to understand the Eastern Star played a critical role, if not a lead role in many cases. the, um, uh, worthy matron at the time was, uh, Mildred Dietz, and, uh, she dedicated her year to raising money. For the, the cancer hospital. And very effectively, you know, again, traveling the state, visiting the, uh, the Eastern Star chapters probably also, yeah. Visiting every chapter on Eastern Star side too. in fact, it, it was so successful that it di before, before Long the Minnesota Masons pledged the whole million. Took the federal funding outta the picture. Wow. And of course, U of M was probably quite happy with that because even back in the 1950s, federal funding entailed, uh, all sorts of, uh, paperwork and red tape. Yeah. Red tape that goes with it. So what a, what a massive success it was. And, and the cancer hospital opened in 1958. And it was a very quick project. It opened with three levels, basement and two, two other levels above ground. and that quickly filled, they needed more room and, um. Minnesota Masonry came through again and pledged, uh, uh, the cost of adding two more stories to the hospital. And those were opened in the early 1960s. well between the Grand Lodge of Minnesota and the Eastern Star, uh, funding has been just about continual ever since that time. So over 70 years of a partnership? Exactly. The Grand Lodge expanded kind of the, the concepts. By this point, we really have two major. charities. We've got the, um, Masonic Home, which was incorporated, uh, on its own, and we've got the Cancer Center Fund, which was also incorporated on its own. They were under the control of the Grand Lodge largely, but they were separate legal entities, so that kind of mitigated the, the direct control of the Grand Lodge and gave them some independence. By 1970, uh, the Grand Lodge also formed the Minnesota Masonic Foundation, which was, uh, another charitable entity, which was, which was formed to manage scholarships and, uh, some other projects. for example, they, uh, at one time they had a project to distribute glucose monitors to schools all around the, the state and train the school nurses 1970. Uh, in the 1970s. Yeah. That had to be somewhat rare at that time. Yeah. there was a real need for it because, uh, diabetic children really didn't get treatment at school and the schools didn't know how to deal with it. I. What would happen is, uh, kids would wind up, uh, having, uh, a crisis before they knew what was, that there was something wrong and they would haul'em off in an ambulance. once the glucose monitors started getting out there and the training, uh. For school personnel, they would be, they would be able to monitor glucose levels throughout the day and avoid getting to the crisis point by, uh, uh, taking whatever action was necessary to ensure that the children's blood sugar didn't get outta whack. So that was, uh. A success, although it, it, it wasn't a long lived effort. Uh, I think state programs took over eventually and, and, uh, Had to be the catalyst though for wider awareness of how to treat that. Imagine now a poor kid having to take an ambulance ride to the hospital. Yeah. Simply because of a lack of knowledge or ability to handle a blood sugar situation. Yeah, that, that was exactly it. There were, the schools weren't trained to deal with it at the time, and this was a way of helping raise that awareness and getting the training out there. Other projects. The foundation was responsible for scholarships. They had a scholarship program and they developed some of the things that we use in scholarships today through Minnesota Masonic Charities, for example, matching funds. Yes. That was something that that began with the foundation and there were other things that they did, but As we got into the 1990s, we have the Minnesota Masonic Foundation, we have the Cancer Center fund, we have the the Minnesota Masonic Home Fund, and all of these are out raising money, and they're all operating somewhat independently, and they began to step on each other's toes and they were chasing the same donors. They weren't always investing money. That they raised the most efficient way. For example, typically they were putting it into CDs and treasury bills. The return on those very little, it's a very safe investment. Yes, it's a very safe investment, but no return. Right. people began to realize that there, there were some issues with the way charity was being delivered in Minnesota. Each of these funds, uh, had its own administration. They had an office somewhere, they had, uh, uh, employees and, and, uh, so they were really duplicating efforts naturally became siloed. Yeah. And again, with stepping on each other's toes, chasing the same donors, they even have events that conflicted with each other. No kidding. Yeah. So. there was a need out there to take some sort of action to make it more efficient. things began to happen in the nineties. Along that route, uh, uh, the decision was made to invest the funds uh, under professional management to maximize the returns, and that paid off immediately and continues to pay off. But by the early two thousands, it was clear that more action needed to be taken. And that's again, when we have another visionary who steps up and makes things happen. There have been some talk about maybe consolidating these charities into one group and then uh, uh, making it more efficient along that line. But it's just like the Masonic Home in the 19th century. There was a lot of talk about it, right? And maybe some talk kinda casual, but nobody ever made it happen. And then past Grand Master, Eric Ton beak. Stepped up and had the idea or, or, or took the action to consolidate all this. He was uniquely positioned to do it again, just like the other changes from one era to another. I mean, you could say that, Minnesota Masonry found itself in its first hundred years, and then in the next 50 years it found its soul with the, uh. The cancer hospital and things. But now, uh, in the two, in the two thousands, it began to find its spirit and that's where Eric Niton beak, who was positioned because of his experience with the, uh, running different charities and, uh, his financial background in, in, at nor West Bank, bank, um, his past experiences, grandma Master came up with the, I. The idea of forming Minnesota Masonic charities and, and making it happen, getting everyone under the same umbrella, so to speak. Yes. And that, that was no easy task. Sure. Because yeah, you've got these different charitable, the foundation, the cancer center, and the uh, and the home. All of which are operating somewhat independently, and there's always a resistance to giving up that independence change. We just can't handle, we, yeah. And Masons are not notorious for their, their ability to, to, to change. But I think enough people realized it, and some of the early opponents of this came around very quickly when they discovered the benefits. And, uh, as a result, Minnesota Mosan Charities was formed in 2006. That eliminated the, the duplicate offices and, and duplicate costs. So it made it much more efficient with the, uh, the, planned investments I. Made it much more, uh, efficient as far as the managing its funds and being able to make the most of it. they were able to consolidate and actually pay off some of the pledges that these independent organizations had made, but were having trouble fundraising to, uh, follow through. So the result was, it turned the, kind of the independent, uh, uh, fundraising and charitable activities into one consolidated powerhouse that would still work through the lodges, through matching funds. Uh. But could also do some of the big things, uh, pledges to the cancer center at the U of M, but that, it didn't stop there. In the last, uh, I don't know, the last 10 years, I think we've donated about a hundred million dollars or at least pledged a hundred million to I. Cancer Center, the Center for the Developing Brain, the Masonic Children's Hospital. And uh, uh, I think the, the, the most recent one is the Masonic, uh, center on Healthy Aging. Healthy Aging, yeah. The Masonic Institute on Biology and Metabolism. Mm-hmm. Which now the full spectrum is covered from children's health, cancer, the healthy aging components, all in, it's around$195 million in that 70 plus year partnership. Yeah. and it, it just continues to look great into the future. It's a great way to maximize the, and leverage the, the fundraising ability of Minnesota Masonry and, uh, focus it in such a way that it, uh, obtains, um, maximum results. And what a special thing for us as Minnesota Masons to have this story. Not every state shares this type of legacy that we've been fortunate enough to be a part of. Giving back to those in need, giving back to the greater good. That whole building community piece is truly, truly amazing. It's, it's so special and, and we throw out some big numbers over the years. This is, this is a lot of money. Mm-hmm. But our members are also Masons in Minnesota and even in this region. Are also seeing the value of whatever they can give is going to that greater good. Mm-hmm. Dr. Douglas Yee said it and I quote him all the time, none of us knows who's$5$50 or$500 will be that amount that pushes research into a new breakthrough level that could be part of cures. It's a wonderful thing to give back in that regard to that greater good to Minnesota Masonic Charities, and especially for us as Masons here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The, uh, the, the advances that Minnesota Masonry has funded over the years are known, not just here locally. They're, they're known across the world. Part of that is Minnesota has always had a good reputation as far as the, the medical school, medical research that it conducts. Uh, we're also home to the Mayo Clinic, which actually, believe it or not, at one time the Mayo Clinic was housed in the, uh, Rochester Masonic Temple. That's right, because the Mayos were Masons. Masons, yeah. But, uh, It is world, world renowned now and, and truly going back to, uh, Leroy Matson's vision. It is something that has benefited mankind at large through Minnesota Masonic Charities and these professionals, the physicians and the researchers are collaborating with other specialists in their same. Capacity all over the world. Mm-hmm. Man, that that really, it gave me shivers when you said that the work that has been done here over this kind of this, it's really been fascinating too, to hear about these three phases, these three eras, but all of the work that has been done, his vision came true. It has impacted the world. Mm-hmm. You can look at the history of Minnesota Masonic charity, as I said, in three stages. You've got the, its youth, it's uh, maybe it's teen years, and then it's adulthood and it's still got a long way to go. And, uh, or you could look at it as a, you know, the entered apprentice, the fellow craft. Yes. And we're now in the Master Mason stage. And that, that will go on for a long time. I'm, I'm sure. It, it's something we're proud to be a part of. And, uh, we'll continue for, for as far as the eye can see forever. That infinite perspective makes it even more special. Now, the working title of the book is our Guiding Star. I. I won't hold you to this, but what's the anticipated release as you're, you're working on this very diligently, what are we looking at as far as a publish and a release? Well, I hope to have the, the first draft done by the end of July. I. Have it, uh, ready for, uh, editing by the end of, uh, August. if all goes according to plan, we'll have it out before Grand Lodge next year. Excellent. So ideally by April of 2026 we can dive into this. That's correct. Paul Denfield, thank you for being in studio today and for the diligent work and the research you're doing that really brings our story to life. And Reed, thank you for having me. I love telling this story. This has been another episode of Minnesota Masonic Histories and Mysteries. We appreciate you listening.