Category: Trestleboard

Greetings from the East!

I’m sure most of you are in the same mindset I am this time of year.  If I’m not at work or a Lodge event, I’ve been outside raking leaves.  The weather has made this annual chore much more tolerable this year.  I’m still struggling with it still being dark at 7am, but we only have one more week of that and then it’ll be dark at 4:30pm.  Not sure which is worse.

Denver 5 has been very busy over the last few weeks! On October 21st, we Raised Brothers Vincent Naranjo and Mitchell Jouse to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason.  The degree teams did excellent work and they were great degrees.  Congratulations to the Brothers!

Denver 5 opened a Lodge on October 27th to hear some proficiencies and practice for receiving the Grand Lodge Officers.  When we arrived, there were different Lodges using every Lodge room in the Welton Temple.  There were degrees being put on in the 4th floor Lodge room, another Lodge was practicing degree work and then we had the last 5th floor Lodge room.  It was so great to see so many Lodges and Brothers doing their work.  It is so great to see that Masonry is alive and well in Denver!

November is a special month for Denver 5.  Our Lodge was established in November of 1859 and November is the month that we celebrate our annual Heritage Night.  This year Heritage Night is being held on November 4th.  We will be receiving the Grand Master of all Masons in Colorado along with members of the Grand Line.  This is an open meeting, which means you are welcome to bring your significant other and your kids.  It’s a great opportunity for them to see the Welton Temple and meet your Brothers and their families.  It is very important that you RSVP for this event to ensure that we have enough food for dinner.  Dinner will be served at 6:30pm with the open Lodge starting at 7:30pm. You can RSVP here.

Another tradition at Denver 5 is our Heritage Raising.  The Heritage Raising differs from our normal Raising as we attempt to recreate what it might have been like to be Raised in 1859.  The Heritage Raising will take place on Thursday, November 11th.  Dinner will be served at 6:30pm, with the Lodge opening at 7:30pm to Raise two Brothers.  I have personally been looking forward to this all year.  This event is only open to Master Masons.  Again, it is important that you RSVP for this event.  You can RSVP here. 

Our last meeting in November is on Thursday, November 18th.  This is going to be a quick meeting as it coincides with the Scottish Rite Reunion.  A number of us who help with the Reunion or are taking part in the Reunion will be at the Consistory all day long and I’ve worked the Brothers of the Officer Line hard enough the last couple of months, so we’ll just have a quick business meeting and head over to a local bar to enjoy a beer and some fellowship. Dinner will be served at 6:30pm with the open Lodge starting at 7:30pm. You can RSVP here.

I look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming events and hope everyone has an excellent Thanksgiving holiday!

Michael Rotert W.M.

Greetings from the East!

The leaves aren’t quite falling yet, but you can feel it in the air that Autumn is just around the corner. I am looking forward to some cooler weather, but not to it being dark at 4:30 pm. Enjoy the sun while you can!

September continued to be a very busy month for Denver Lodge No. 5. We passed eight Brothers to the degree of Fellowcraft. This is amazing progress for the Lodge and the Craft! I have challenged our newly passed Brothers to become proficient in October so that we can work on getting them Raised by the end of the year. I want to congratulate all of them and the dedicated D5 Brothers that helped to put on all of these degrees to the high standards that our Lodge is known for!

We have several upcoming events that you should put on your calendar. On October 7th, Brother Bryan Cummings J.W. will be holding the gavel in the East for this meeting. Along with opening and stepping up and down the degrees, we will be hearing some proficiencies. Please make sure to attend this meeting to support your Brothers. As always, you must RSVP here.

Our second Stated Communication of the month is October 21st. We will be performing Master Mason degrees The degree cast is being put together now, so if you would like to be a part of this, please let me know. Please RSVP here.

On November 4th, the Grand Lodge of Colorado will be making an official visit. This will be an open meeting, so please bring your significant other to the event. More details to come. Please RSVP here.

The deadline for putting in your petition for the Scottish Rite Fall Reunion is quickly approaching. The Denver Consistory is excited because this reunion will be the first in-person reunion since the Fall of 2019! The degree teams are working hard to polish their presentations. If you are a proficient Master Mason and are interested in joining the Consistory, please get your petitions submitted. You can now submit a petition online via the form here.

There is a very interesting event that is being put together by the Brothers of Lupton Lodge No. 119 titled, “A Journey through the Stars: The Secrets of Polynesian Navigation”. It will take place on October 17th, 2021, at the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder. If you are interested in attending, you can reserve your seats here.

The events of the world have affected all of us either at work, school, or at home. It is no different for our Lodge. I want to thank every single Brother who has taken time away from their lives to help get things back to “normal” at Lodge. You are all a major asset to your Lodge and your efforts are greatly appreciated!

I hope everyone is ready for Fall and I look forward to seeing you all this month!

Michael Rotert WM

Greetings Brothers and Friends!

I want to thank all of you who attended the first annual Masonica event this past weekend!  We had excellent workshops and presentations given by many different Brothers.  I know I learned a few things this weekend and hope you did as well!  One of the highlights of the evening was receiving an original painting of W.B. Henry P.H. Bromwell.  W.B. Bromwell was a prominent Mason and played a big role in the early days of Denver as well as Denver Lodge 5.  I have in turn donated this painting to the Welton Temple Association so that this historical piece can be properly displayed in the Temple.  The after-dinner entertainment was amazing as W.B. Michael Rossi and Bro. Dan Lamorie presented the play “Defense of the Ruffians”.  I want to thank everyone who helped put on this event and joined us on Saturday!

It is now time to get back to work!  September is almost here and that means that it’s time to put down the sunscreen and dust off your suit and tie.  Lodge meetings are back!  We are going to start our September meetings with a step-up night for Bro. James Bechtel S.W.  He will be opening, stepping up and down, and closing the Lodge.  We will have a handful of proficiencies throughout the night.  Please come join us and support Bro. James while he runs the show this Thursday.  Please RSVP for dinner with Bryan Cummings J.W.

After this meeting, we will have seven proficient EA’s who are excited to be passed to the Fellowcraft degree!  We are going to need to break the degrees up over two nights.  The first night of degrees will be during our September 16th meeting.  We will hold a special on September 18th to complete the rest.   Again, we ask that you RSVP with the Junior Warden for both events.  We hope you can join us and help us in bringing these Brothers more light.

I look forward to seeing you all in Lodge!

Here are some shots from Masonica:

Greetings from the East!

I hope Summer has been treating everyone well.  I can tell that Fall is approaching as my Masonic calendar is starting to fill up.  

First off, I would like to thank all the Brothers that attended Brother Richard Trabert’s funeral and Celebration of Life on Friday, July 30th.  It was great to see everyone there and to be able to pay a final farewell to our Brother.

Our plans for the Masonica event on August 28th are all coming together.   The speakers, dinner and play are all taken care of, but I know that there will be some last-minute details that we will need help with.  If you are available, please reach out to me directly and I’ll put you to work.  Also, please reach out to Brothers from other Lodges to let them know about the event.  There is a link on the website to RSVP ( http://www.denver5.org/masonica/ ).  There is no cost to attend the event and with the attendance capped at 100 people, you will want to make sure that you get signed up!

I’m happy to announce that the Denver Consistory is going to be having a Fall Reunion.  This Reunion will take place from November 18-20.  If you don’t know what a Reunion is, this is the event that takes place twice each year to confer the Scottish Rite degrees.  It is open to all Master Masons in good standing.  There hasn’t been an in-person Reunion since the Fall of 2019 due to the pandemic, so it is exciting that this event will be moving forward.  If you have any questions about this, you can reach out to me directly.

As I have been laying out the calendar for the remainder of the year, we are going to be doing a lot of degree and proficiency work, so grab your clear text, go sit in the hammock and get to studying.  We have a large group of proficient EA’s that are all eager to get passed and raised before the end of the year.

Fraternally yours,

Michael Rotert, WM

While we are officially dark for the Summer, there is still a lot going on in the Lodge.

Last weekend on June 26th, we raised Brothers Joshua Fraedrich and Connor Gould to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason at Central City 6.  These were great degrees conferred in a very historical Lodge room.  WB Danny Tomlinson and the other Brothers of Central City 6 were excellent hosts and they fed us well.  I hope that Denver 5 can continue this tradition!

We will be having one meeting this Summer.  On Thursday, July 15, we will be opening on the EA degree to hear proficiencies from our large group of Brothers who have been posting and working hard to become proficient.  This will be an informal meeting, no suits required.  We are all proud of the work you all have put in and look forward to hearing your proficiencies.

Lastly, spots are filling up quickly for our Masonica event on August 28th.  This is going to be a great day for Masonry and for fellowship.  For details about this event and to RSVP, please click here.

This event is open to all Masons, with the post-dinner play being a Master Mason-only event.  Come join us for education and fellowship and get your mind back on the Craft before your Lodge opens back up in the Fall.

On the horizon, the Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree will be held at the Denver Consistory on October 9. Tickets are available here.

I hope you all are enjoying the weather and working on your tans!

Michael Rotert, WM

Some shots from the central 6 Raising:

Brothers,

I hope this message finds you well! We are in the midst of the lost week between the holidays and the New Year. I’m really not sure what day it is, but I do know that I have been eating plenty. I hope you find yourself in the same situation!

Like almost everything that has happened in 2020, we have had to get creative in how we approached installation this year. Normally, on a Saturday after our last December meeting and before the holidays, we would all gather for a nice meal with our families and friends and then do our annual installation of officers. This wasn’t possible this year, so instead of trying to do an installation on a Zoom meeting, we took the opportunity to bring the installation to you in the form of a movie. I am no Scorsese, so we are using the term “movie” lightly, but I invite you to join us on January 7th at 7:00 pm via Zoom to watch the installation. I will be opening the Zoom call at 6:30 to give the opportunity for prospects to ask any questions and so I can find out what Santa brought you.

To RSVP and receive the Zoom meeting link please contact WB Pablo Colomban

For our second “meeting” in January, Right Worshipful Brother Ray Dunn, who is currently the Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge is going to join us virtually to give us a talk on leadership. The details for this meeting will also be sent out at a later date.

The current status of things in our Country and State are not very conducive to having our normal meetings, but hopefully, things will continue to improve. In the meantime, I will be working to try to create opportunities for us to enjoy fellowship. Whether virtually or being together in person. This is definitely not the way I wanted to start my year in the East, but we’ll be working to make the best of it.

As always, I greatly appreciate all of you and look forward to seeing you soon!

WM Michael Rotert

Revised October 30th, 2020

October has been a great month for Denver Freemasonry!  At our first stated communication, we initiated three new brothers in our fraternity.  Many thanks go out to the brethren that participated in the degree work that made the evening a success!  On October 10th we held a charity 5K Run/Walk and Food Drive at Sloan’s Lake in the beautiful fall weather.  Almost 20 brethren, prospects, and family participated and we collected 430 pounds of non-perishable food that we donated to Soldier’s Angels, a non-profit organization that distributes food to needy veterans.  The bulk of Soldier’s Angels work comes around the holidays, so stay tuned for another volunteer opportunity for us to donate our time to help this worthy cause.  I want to recognize Brother Tim McDowell for his efforts putting together the event and finding the veterans charities for us to support this year!  At our second stated communication, we voted on amendments to the Denver #5 by-laws.  Five amendments passed and one was withdrawn so that the Scholarship and Education Committee could refine the amendment and resubmit it to the lodge.

We continue to have an average of 10 prospective members at each of our dinners, which means we’ll have several more initiations to perform over the next 6 months.  That also means we have a great need for brethren to volunteer additional time to be mentors for these new members as they journey through the degrees.  Our posting program continues to be one of the best Denver; however, it takes a lot of time to teach and mentor and the more seasoned Masons we have that can volunteer some time on Wednesday nights, or even to do phone posting, the more we can take off the shoulders of the Posting Committee.  Please contact James Bechtel if you’re interested in helping out with posting.

Due to the increased Covid-19 restrictions, we must wistfully transition our meetings to virtual format for the month of November. We will continue to monitor the situation and transition back to in-person meetings as soon as possible.

Our next virtual communication is on November 5, 2020 at 7:30 pm via Zoom.  This lodge meeting is our annual Heritage Night celebrating the first lodge meeting held in Denver on November 3, 1858.  We will have a guest speaker, WB Patrick Dey, who will be giving a presentation on MW Lawrence N. Greenleaf who was Worshipful Master of Denver #5 in 1866, 1868, and 1869, and Grand Master of Colorado in 1880.  Please RSVP to receive the Zoom meeting information.

Our second virtual communication is on November 19, 2020 at 7:30 pm via Zoom.  Stay tuned for more information.  Please RSVP to receive the Zoom meeting information.

Posting in person will be on a limited basis in order to comply with current restrictions.  Please contact James Bechtel for scheduling.

I pray the Grand Architect of the Universe will guide us through these uncertain times and return us to normal in the near future.

Fraternally,

Kevin Trabert
Worshipful Master
Denver Lodge #5 A.F. & A.M