Frank A. Hamer

by Midnight Freemason Contributor

WB Darin A. Lahners

Francis A. Hamer was born on March 17, 1884, in Fairview, Texas. His parents were Frank and Lou Emma (Francis). He grew up on the Welch Ranch in San Saba County, Texas. The family moved to Oxford in Llano County in 1894, where Hamer worked at his father's blacksmith shop. In 1901 he and his brother became wranglers on the Pecos County ranch of Barry Ketchum. Ketchum's brother was the outlaw Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum. In 1905, Hamer was a cowboy on the Carr Ranch, where after capturing a horse thief, he was recommended by Sheriff D. S. Barker to join with the Texas Rangers.

Frank Hamer enlisted in the Ranger service on April 21, 1906, joining Company C. Company C was commanded by Capt. John H. Rogers. As a private, Hamer worked the country along the Rio Grande from horseback. In those days, a Ranger company traveled around its assigned area which was usually hundreds of square miles. They investigated reports of cattle rustling, smuggling from south of the border, and were continually on the lookout for wanted outlaws. It was still very much the wild west. 

Being a Texas Ranger was not the glorious job that it has been romanticized to be.  Rangers lived a very rugged life. They usually lived off the land, ranging where ever they were ordered to go, forgoing any romantic or familial attachments. Hamer was a commissioned Ranger from 1906 to 1933, however, there were periods of time where he had resigned for various reasons and sometimes better paying positions.  During this time, aside from being a Ranger, He was the city marshall of Navasota, Texas, a special officer for the city of Houston, Texas, and a Prohibition Officer.  Another reason he resigned was due to Ranger commissions being given out by the governor of Texas and the corruption of some of these officials. However, he was discharged in 1933 with the rest of the Rangers when Miriam Ferguson took the Governor's office for the second time.

Although he had resigned several times, Hamer had become a Ranger captain by the early 1920s. He had been involved in more than 50 gun battles and had been wounded 17 times.  Hamer would not discuss his gunfights throughout his life and refused to talk about how many men he had killed. After Frank Hamer was discharged as a Captain from the Texas Rangers, he was sought after as a peace officer. He participated in several manhunts, the most famous of which occurred in 1934. It was during this year, he was commissioned as a special investigator for the prison system and tasked with ending the crime spree of  Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and their gang.  

At 9:15 AM on May 23, 1934, Frank Hamer had set up a ruse to have Bonnie and Clyde stop their car on a rural road near Gibsland Louisiana. Hamer and other deputies called for the pair's surrender, but with a car load of weapons at the ready, Bonnie and Clyde moved toward those weapons. Hamer was armed with a Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle with a special 15-round magazine (although some accounts have him firing a Browning Automatic Rifle) and along with his entire posse opened fire putting more than 100 rounds into the suspects and their vehicle.

Frank Hamer retired from all police work in 1949.  He died in 1955 at the age of 71 of natural causes. He was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Austin, Texas next to one of his sons, Billy, a Marine killed in Iwo Jima.

Hamer's Master Mason Ring 

Brother Frank Hamer was a Master Mason, receiving his degree in 1909 at Navasota Lodge #299, Texas.

~DAL

WB Darin A. Lahners is our co-managing Editor.  He is a Past Master of St. Joseph Lodge No.970 in St. Joseph. He is also a plural member of Homer Lodge No. 199 (IL), where he is also a Past Master. He’s a member of the Scottish Rite Valley of Danville, a charter member of Illinois Royal Arch Chapter, Admiration Chapter No. 282 and is the current Secretary of the Illini High Twelve Club No. 768 in Champaign – Urbana (IL). You can reach him by email at darin.lahners@gmail.com. 

Famous American Freemason: Brother Harry Houdini - Revisit

by Midnight Freemasons Contributor

Todd E. Creason

“My brain is the key that sets my mind free.”

Every day, the boy’s boss, the local locksmith, went to get a few beers over the lunch hour.  Most days, he didn’t leave the boy alone with a hulking, surly giant, but one day he did.  There was no question that the boy was afraid.  The man was the ugliest, most terrifying looking character the boy had ever seen, with a bristly beard, a mean disposition, and an jagged scar that ran down the side of his face.  And this man—a criminal and prisoner—was wearing heavy handcuffs.  The sheriff had brought his prisoner, handcuffs and all, into the shop because he’d broken his key off in the lock, and there was no way to get the handcuffs off. 

Because the sheriff and his prisoner had arrived near the lunch hour, the locksmith instructed the boy to get a hacksaw and cut the handcuffs off while he and the sheriff went out for a drink.  The boy frantically sawed away at the hardened metal cuffs, breaking several saw blades in the process.  The last broken blade had very nearly cut the man’s hand, earning the boy a sharp, ominous threat from the man.  In nearly an hour, the boy hadn’t made even a dent in the cuffs, and his boss was due back in a few minutes.  The boy didn’t like the idea of setting this man loose in a store that sold, among other things, pistols and derringers, but times were hard then.   He was lucky to have a job, and his desire to please his employer was stronger than his fear of the man.

There had been a good reason his father had arranged the apprenticeship for the boy with the locksmith and a good reason the locksmith had taken the boy on—he was good with locks.  As a youngster, he used to lock and unlock all the cabinets and cupboards in his house using a small common tool—a buttonhook.  In fact, he was notorious for being the little boy who’d unlocked the doors of all the shops in his hometown one evening.  That day when he failed to saw off the handcuffs, he decided that if he couldn’t defeat the cuffs by hacking them off, maybe he could pick the locks.  That was not what his employer had asked him to do, but it was the only alternative he knew. 

He clipped off a piece of piano wire and fashioned it into an appropriately sized tool.  Then he paused.  The last thing he wanted was for this criminal to see what he was about to do. 

“Do you mind looking the other way?” he asked gently. 

“Like hell I can,” the man responded. 

After the boy worked on the first cuff for about a minute, it suddenly clicked open.  It took him half that time to open the second cuff. 

The locksmith and the sheriff returned just as he was finishing.  The prisoner was still sitting there, stunned at what the boy had done.  He picked up the cuffs and looked them over carefully.  When the locksmith suddenly realized the boy hadn’t cut the cuffs off, he took them from the giant and looked at them in amazement. 

“That is good work, Ehrich.  That is damned good work.”

Ehrich would go on to become a great locksmith, the best the world has ever seen.  There wasn’t any kind of lock that he couldn’t defeat, but he specialized in handcuffs.  He opened locks and handcuffs all over the world.  He escaped from many unusual situations—he was locked in prison cells, mailbags, straight-jackets, and coffins.  He could even escape being locked in a large milk can filled to the top with water.  And nobody ever knew his secret. 

Well, that’s not exactly correct.  Ehrich was forced to reveal something to the prisoner that day.  He’d seen a great secret which made that young boy into a world famous man and an iconic figure.  Ehrich said of the prisoner years later, “He is the only person in the world besides my wife who knows how I open locks, and I have never heard from him since.”

That  boy would grow into the man known the world over by a single name—Houdini.

Ehrich Weisz was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary, to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and Cecilia Steiner Weisz.  Hoping to secure a better life for his family, Mayer immigrated to America and changed his last name to Weiss.

Through a friend, Weiss gained a job serving as a rabbi to a small Jewish congregation in Appleton, Wisconsin. His family followed him to America in 1876.  Because Mayer Weiss’s religious views were considered old-fashioned by the Appleton congregation, he was dismissed from his position. The family moved to Milwaukee when Ehrich was about eight.   The times were difficult. From a young age, Ehrich helped out by working.  He sold newspapers and shined shoes to help support the family. When he was not working, Ehrich practiced acrobatic stunts.  His first public performance was when he was nine years old.  He hung on a trapeze suspended from a tree while wearing red socks made by his mother. He billed himself as “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air.”

At age twelve, Ehrich ran away from home, hopping a freight car to Kansas City. A year later, he re-joined his family, who were by then living in New York City but still struggling to survive.  In New York, Ehrich and his younger brother, Theo, began to pursue their interest in magic. Ehrich’s idol was the great French magician Robert Houdin. When Ehrich started performing magic, he added an “i” to the end and began billing himself as “Houdini.” He undoubtedly got the “Harry” because it sounded much like his childhood nickname Ehrie.

Harry Houdini began his professional career at age seventeen, doing magic shows in music halls, at sideshows, and at the amusement park on New York’s Coney Island.  It wasn’t unusual for him to perform twenty shows each day. For a short time, he worked with Theo, billed as the Houdini Brothers.  But when Harry met Beatrice “Bess” Raymond, a teenager who was also attempting a career in show business, she joined the act as Harry’s new partner, and Theo started a solo career as a magician under the name “Hardeen.”  Harry and Bess married in 1894, remaining devoted companions and partners for the rest of their lives.

In 1895, the Houdinis joined the Welsh Brothers Circus. Harry did magic while Bess sang and danced.  Together they performed a trick called “Metamorphosis,” where Harry and Bess switched places in a locked trunk. Harry wasn’t satisfied with his small act.  He continued to work on new tricks and to develop his showmanship. He also became an expert at escaping handcuffs. Arriving in a new town, Houdini would claim he could escape from any handcuffs the local police had—and he did.  These publicity stunts were excellent advertising for his shows.  Houdini offered $100 to anyone who could provide handcuffs he couldn’t get out of, but he never had to pay that reward.

As his name and reputation spread, Houdini decided to take his show on the road to Europe.  In 1900, Harry and Bess sailed to England with no bookings and only enough money to survive a week, but Houdini was able to get an engagement at a London theater.  After one particularly successful stunt, he found himself booked solid.  Sold-out shows followed all over Europe.  Wherever he went, he repeated the stunt.  He called upon local police to restrain him in any way they could think up, but he escaped from all of them.

By the time Houdini returned to the United States in 1905, he was an international celebrity. Among the stunts performed in America were escaping from prison cells, squirming from straitjackets while suspended upside-down, and jumping into rivers from bridges while chained and handcuffed. 

His death-defying stunts and showmanship also extended to his famous milk can escape.  Houdini was cuffed and shackled, lowered into an oversized milk can that was filled to overflowing with water, and then hidden by a curtain.  Before he submerged himself and the can was sealed, he would ask the audience members to take a deep breath and hold it as long as they could.  As the members of the audience, red-faced, could hold their breath no longer, they realized that if they were in the milk can, they would be drowning, and yet Houdini remained trapped.  Hidden behind his curtain, Houdini was able to escape in three minutes, but he frequently stayed behind the curtain for much longer to make his re-appearance all the more dramatic.

Harry and Bess lived in a large house they purchased in New York when they weren’t traveling. They never had children, but Harry’s mother lived with them until she died in 1913.  Her death was the greatest tragedy of his life.  For weeks afterward, he made almost daily visits to the cemetery.  He said in a speech to the Magician’s Club, “It seemed the end of the world when she was taken from me.” Eventually, Houdini was able to return to work, but he continued to mourn his mother for the rest of his life.

Partly as a result of his mother’s death, Houdini renewed an early interest in spiritualism, the ability to communicate with the dead. Houdini wanted to believe that such communication was possible, but after many years of tricking people, he knew a trick when he saw one.  He went on a crusade against phony spiritualists.  He felt they were profiting by preying on people who, in their mourning, wished for nothing more than to talk again with their departed relatives.  He often passed up better-paying opportunities to lecture on the subject, and he unmasked many frauds in the cities he visited.  In his own act, Houdini often recreated many of the tricks the charlatans used to trick people at a séance into believing they were making contact with spirits from beyond the grave.   Houdini had a standing offer of $10,000 to anyone who could produce a result in a séance that he couldn’t reproduce himself using magic and trickery.  No one ever collected that reward either.

Houdini did believe contact with the dead was possible, but he didn’t believe that most of the mediums claiming to be able to make that contact were legitimate.  Because of his interest in spiritualism, Houdini developed a close friendship with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a true believer in spiritualism.  In fact, Doyle was convinced that Houdini employed psychic powers to perform his remarkable escapes.  Houdini denied that he had such powers.  He even tried to explain to Doyle how he actually did some of the things he was able to do, but Doyle didn’t believe him.  Eventually, this rift over spiritualism and psychic ability ended their friendship.

When America entered the First World War, Houdini attempted to enlist in the army, but at forty-three, he was rejected as being too old. Unable to fight, Houdini found other ways to serve.  He entertained the troops by performing free shows and organized Liberty Bond shows to help finance the war.

In the fall of 1926, Houdini put together a new show and took it on the road. It was an elaborate, two-and-a-half-hour show that required Houdini to be on stage almost the entire time. The highlight of the show was the Chinese water torture escape, which had become one of Houdini’s most famous stunts.  In that escape, Houdini’s hands and feet were bound while he was lowered, upside down, into a glass tank filled with water.  The tour seemed plagued by bad luck from the beginning.  The first bad luck was when Bess contracted food poisoning. Houdini stayed awake all night by her side. By the time they reached the next town, Houdini had gone three nights in a row without sleep. Then, during another show, he broke his ankle during the Chinese water torture escape.  Houdini was used to working with injuries and completed the show, but the pain from his ankle was excruciating, and he was awake all night.  Even so, the show must go on, and the tour proceeded.

Houdini stuck to his schedule, which included giving a lecture at McGill University.  The next day, several students from the lecture were chatting with Houdini in his dressing room.  One of the students, an amateur boxer, asked if it was true that Houdini could withstand any blow to his body above the waist. Houdini admitted that it was true and, despite his weakened condition, gave the student permission to test him.  As Houdini began to rise from the couch where he was sitting, the student dealt him several sharp punches in the stomach before he had time to tighten his abdomen.  The blows caused Houdini a great deal of pain, which persisted until his show that afternoon.

The next day, he was no better.   By then, he was also suffering from chills and sweating.  Houdini performed two shows, and the company moved on to Detroit, Michigan.  Still in pain and feeling worse all the time, Houdini finally saw a doctor, who urged him to go immediately to the hospital, but he refused.  Only after completing the show did Houdini finally agree to go to the hospital.  He was in bad shape.  When the doctors operated on him, they found that his appendix had burst, causing peritonitis, a usually fatal disease in the age before antibiotics.

Houdini was given little hope of surviving even after a second operation. Realizing he was near death, Houdini shared a secret message with Bess to be used as proof of his identity in the event that he was able to communicate with her from beyond the grave. Harry Houdini died on Halloween, 1926.  Despite annual séances on the anniversary of his death, Bess was never able to contact him.  She died in 1943. 

Without question, Houdini was one of the greatest magicians and showmen in history.  He continues to fascinate magic aficionados.   His famous tricks have been done over and over by many of the talented magicians that followed.  Some of the tricks have been updated and modernized over time, but by their death defying nature alone, they are still very much identifiable as belonging to Houdini.  The great magicians who have kept Houdini’s spirit alive by continuing to bring these illusions and tricks to new audiences do so not to outdo Houdini but to honor his great mastery of the craft.

Brother Harry Houdini became a Mason in St. Cecile Lodge No. 568, New York, New York, in 1923.  He received his Entered Apprentice Degrees on July 17 and his Fellow Craft Degree on July 31.  He was raised a Master Mason on August 21, 1923.  He became a life member on October 30, 1923.   He was also a member of the Shrine Temple.

~Excerpt from Todd E. Creason's award winning book Famous American Freemasons Volume II. 

Todd E. Creason, 33° is the founder of the Midnight Freemasons blog and continues to be a regular contributor. He is the author of several books and novels, including the Famous American Freemasons series. He is member of Homer Lodge No. 199, and a Past Master of Ogden Lodge No. 754 (IL). He is a member the Scottish Rite Valley of Danville, the York Rite Bodies of Champaign/Urbana (IL), the Ansar Shrine (IL), Eastern Illinois Council No. 356 Allied Masonic Degrees, and Charter President of the Illini High Twelve in Champaign-Urbana (IL). You can contact him at: webmaster@toddcreason.org

Brother John Wayne On Political Discourse

by Midnight Freemasons Founder

Todd E. Creason, 33°

“This is a good country. With good people in it. Good people don’t always agree with one another. Maybe the best thing we can do in this country is agree to disagree every once in a while.”

~John Wayne

Marion McDaniel Lodge No. 56, Tucson, Arizona 

John Wayne was never shy about expressing his opinions when it came to politics. He was a conservative, and a life-long Republican. He supported candidates that shared his great love of America, and those values that make America great. He was a patriot at heart, and developed friendships with many American Presidents, starting when he campaigned for Eisenhower. Then  Nixon. Ford. Reagan. 

His friendship with Richard Nixon was probably the closest. They exchanged letters frequently, and got together on many occasions. Shortly after Nixon won the election in 1968, the Duke wrote to him and said he better watch himself, because he was thinking about running for President himself. Nixon responded, “Duke is a better title than President!” 

However, even though he was a Republican, he respected every President that was elected by the people and sat in the Oval Office. He sent a telegram to John F. Kennedy after he was elected saying, “Congratulations, sir, from one of the loyal opposition.” He did the same with Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter replied to his telegram, “I trust the only area in which we will find ourselves in opposition is that of Party loyalty. I will need your help in the coming years, and hope to have your support.” Carter invited the Duke to Washington, DC to participate in his inauguration ceremonies, and John Wayne accepted. 

When John Wayne died in 1979, it was none other than Jimmy Carter that put what the nation was feeling over the loss of the famous actor into words. He said to the nation, “John Wayne was bigger than life . . . He was a symbol of so many of the qualities that make America great.” 

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten something that John Wayne understood so well. We are all Americans, and we should always show respect to each other. And we should always put our Country before our politics. 

 ~TEC 

Todd E. Creason, 33° is the Founder of the Midnight Freemasons blog and is a regular contributor.  He is the award winning author of several books and novels, including the Famous American Freemasons series. He is the author of the From Labor to Refreshment blog.  He is the Worshipful Master of Homer Lodge No. 199 and a Past Master of Ogden Lodge No. 754.  He is a Past Sovereign Master of the Eastern Illinois Council No. 356 Allied Masonic Degrees.  He is a Fellow at the Missouri Lodge of Research. (FMLR) and a charter member of a new Illinois Royal Arch Chapter, Admiration Chapter No. 282.  You can contact him at: webmaster@toddcreason.org

Famous American Freemasons: The Veteran Senator

by Midnight Freemasons Founder

Todd E. Creason°

“If you're hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed,

 come over to the Senate. You'll get the same kind of feeling

and you won't have to pay.”

~Bob Dole

He never forgot where he’d come from nor what he’d been through during the war. Both of those made him into the man he later became.

            He came from simple, Midwestern, small-town beginnings during the Great Depression. He knew all about poverty because he’d lived it. But he escaped and made his way in the world. Years later, in his plush Senate offices in Washington, D.C., he kept a picture of his father in Key brand bib overalls to remind him of his humble beginnings. His father had worn bibs to work everyday as he toiled countless hours in the creamery and in the grain elevator, making barely enough to support his family. His father’s words never left him: “There are doers, and there are stewers.” His father was a doer, and so was he.

He also carried the reminders of his World War II experiences. His right arm, withered from the wounds he’d received so many years before, wouldn’t allow him to forget. He’d received the wounds in the flash of a second, hit in the back and the arm with a burst of machine-gun fire. He’d waited for nine hours on the battlefield before receiving medical attention. Even as strong as he’d grown during his hardscrabble youth, he wasn’t prepared for the battle he’d go through to survive his horrendous injuries—with infection and complications threatening his life at every turn. In the end, his right arm was paralyzed—he never regained the use of it. His two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star were little compensation.

He was wounded as a young lieutenant in the 10^th Mountain Division during an assault against a Nazi fortified position in the Italian Alps. The assault was scheduled, then delayed a day because of the death of the President of the United States—Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As sad as he was at the loss of such a great President, he couldn’t help but wonder, during his long recovery—What if Roosevelt hadn’t died on that day? What if the assault had been launched on time? Would I still have been wounded? 

            His recovery was hard, both mentally and physically. He was in an army hospital for three years and three months. There were times he felt bitterness about what had happened and times he felt sorry for himself. But eventually, he was able to take that long, painful, mentally challenging experience and turn it into something positive because one of the things he learned was that he wasn’t the only one who’d been badly injured—war created many casualties. He was one of tens of thousands who came home from the war disabled and scarred for life. 

He ran for public office and was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He spent eight years there before moving to the United States Senate in 1969. He gave his maiden speech before the Senate on April 14, 1969, twenty-four years to the day from when he was wounded during World War II. The first thing he did as a senator from Kansas was to call for a Presidential commission on people with disabilities—using personal experience to explain that the disabled form a group that nobody joins by choice, but “It’s an exceptional group I joined on another April 14, 1945.” It took more than twenty years, but his persistence paid off. In 1990, Congress passed his bill—the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was only one accomplishment in his long career, but it was one with deep personal meaning for him in his decades in Washington, D.C. 

His name is Senator Bob Dole. 

Dole was born in Russell, Kansas, on July 22, 1923, to Bina and Doran Dole. His father worked hard to support his family, but they lived in dire poverty during the Great Depression. He ran a small creamery and later worked long hard hours at a grain elevator. In order to survive the tough economic times, the Dole family moved into the basement of their home so they could rent out the rest of the house. 

Dole was a star athlete at Russell High School, graduating in the spring of 1941. He enrolled at the University of Kansas, where he studied law and earned a spot on the Kansas basketball team under the legendary Jayhawks coach, Phog Allen. But Dole's study of law at Kansas was interrupted by the onset of World War II. He would continue his education after his long recovery from the wounds he’d received during the war. 

Dole ran for office for the first time even before he finished his college degree. In 1950, he was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. After serving a two-year term, he returned to school, earning his law degree from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. In 1952, Dole was admitted to the Kansas bar and began a law practice in his hometown of Russell.

During the time he practiced law, he also served as the county attorney of Russell County for eight years. Dole was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Kansas' 6th Congressional District in 1960. In 1962, his district in central Kansas merged with the 3rd District in western Kansas to form a sixty-county district, the 1st Congressional District that soon became known as the “Big First.” Dole was reelected, without serious opposition, for three terms as representative for the “Big First.” 

In 1968, Dole moved to the United States Senate. He’d defeated Kansas Governor William H. Avery for the nomination. He remained in that position for five terms, resigning his seat on June 11, 1996, so that he could focus his attention on his Presidential campaign. As senator, he’d faced only one serious challenge to his reelection. In 1974, Congressman Bill Roy launched a well-financed campaign against Dole. Roy’s popularity was in response to post-Watergate fallout. In a very close and hard fought campaign, Dole emerged victorious but only by a few thousand votes. 

When the Republicans took control of the Senate after the 1980 elections, Dole became chairman of the Finance Committee, serving from 1981 to 1985. When Howard Baker of Tennessee retired, Dole served as leader of the Senate Republicans as both the majority leader and the minority leader until he retired in 1996. 

Dole had a moderate voting record, often being able to bridge the gap between the moderate and conservative wings of the Kansas Republican Party. He appealed to moderates by supporting several major civil rights bills. He appealed to conservatives by voting against several of President Johnson’s “Great Society” bills, but he joined liberal Senator George McGovern in a bill to lower eligibility requirements for federal food stamps, a bill that appealed to Kansas farmers.

In 1976, Dole ran unsuccessfully as a vice presidential candidate with President Gerald Ford. He was chosen to replace incumbent Vice President Nelson Rockefeller who’d decided to withdraw from consideration the previous fall. An unfortunate remark Dole made during the vice presidential debate torpedoed his candidacy: “I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans — enough to fill the city of Detroit.” The backlash from the remark hounded him for decades. In 2004, Dole admitted that he regretted making the statement.

He made an unsuccessful run for the 1980 Republican Presidential nomination, unable to overcome the popularity of the leading candidate from California. After a loss in the New Hampshire primary, where he received only 597 votes, he knew he was beaten and immediately withdrew. Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the Presidency. 

But Dole wasn’t done with Presidential politics yet. He made a more serious and better organized bid in 1988. He solidly defeated Reagan’s vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush, in the Iowa caucus. Bush finished last in the three-man race, behind television evangelist Pat Robertson. However, Bush came back strong to beat Dole in the New Hampshire primary. Dole and Bush differed very little on the major issues, but the New Hampshire contest came out in Bush’s favor, partly due to Bush’s television ad campaign that accused Dole of “straddling the fence” on taxes. The New Hampshire primary hurt Dole, not only because he lost it but because during a television interview with Tom Brokaw after the returns had come in, Dole appeared to lose his temper on national television. Dole was in New Hampshire, and Tom Brokaw and George Bush were in the NBC studio in New York. During the interview, Brokaw asked Bush if he had anything to say to Dole. Bush said, “No, just wish him well and we’ll meet again in the south.” Dole, apparently taken off guard by being interviewed with Bush, responded harshly to the same question, “Yeah, stop lying about my record.” The angry remark slowed the momentum of his campaign. Bush defeated him again in South Carolina, gaining the nomination and eventually the Presidency.

But the always persistent Dole wasn’t done yet. He came out strong in the 1996 race, the early front runner for the nomination with at least eight candidates running for the nomination. He was heavily favored to win the nomination against the more conservative candidates, but New Hampshire would prove a difficult challenge for Dole yet again. The populist candidate, Pat Buchanan, beat Dole in the early New Hampshire primary. 

But Dole eventually won the nomination, becoming the oldest first-time Presidential nominee at the age of seventy-three—about the same age Ronald Reagan was during his second bid for the White House. The win was a long time in coming. In his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, he said, “Let me be the bridge to an America that only the unknowing call myth. Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith, and confidence in action.” In the months that followed, the remark would be turned around by his adversary, Bill Clinton, whose response to Dole’s remark was, “We do not need to build a bridge to the past, we need to build a bridge to the future.” It was Dole’s toughest fought battle. He resigned his Senate seat to focus on the campaign, saying he was heading for either “the White House or home.” It was home.

The incumbent, Bill Clinton, had no serious primary opposition from the Democratic Party. Clinton won the election in a 379-159 Electoral College landslide. He received 49.2 percent of the vote against Dole's 40.7 percent. Dole is the only person in the history of the two major U.S. political parties who was his party's nominee for both President and vice president but who was never elected to either office.

            But, unlike the comment Bill Clinton made during the election, Bob Dole was never about building a bridge to the past. Throughout his long career, he built bridges to the future. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act, a major civil rights victory, outlawed discrimination in the hiring of qualified people with disabilities. It required all public buildings to become accessible by providing such things as wheelchair ramps and automatic doors. It made public transportation available for people with disabilities. It protected not only those with injuries but also those who were blind or deaf or who had debilitating diseases. Because of the passage of the bill, disabled Americans, for the first time, had rights—rights to employment opportunities, communication, education, and the same public access most Americans take for granted.

            Another of Dole’s pet projects was the building of a memorial dedicated to World War II veterans on the National Mall. The Vietnam Memorial had been finished in 1982, but there was no memorial on the Mall for the veterans of World War II. After his loss to Bill Clinton in 1996, Bob Dole threw his support into raising the $100 million dollars needed to build the memorial, becoming the leader and spokesperson for the national campaign. The funds were raised in part by veterans and veterans groups, including the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Funds were also raised at small community fundraisers, sponsored by groups such as the PTA, the Cub Scouts, and the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. The money came from big cities and small towns, a nickel and a dime at a time from collecting aluminum cans and from countless pancake breakfasts, chili dinners, fish fries, and bake sales. Slowly, the efforts from all over America paid off—five million, ten million, twenty million, fifty million . . . 

President Clinton, who obviously respected his former adversary a great deal, appreciated the fact that Dole’s new cause was a worthy one. Clinton believed that Washington, D. C., did need to have a national memorial for the valiant men who’d fought in World War II. President Clinton awarded Bob Dole the highest civilian award—the Presidential Medal of Freedom. On the same day he awarded Dole that medal, he unveiled the plans for the World War II National Memorial on the Washington Mall. Bob Dole, who was there to receive the medal, quipped, in typical fashion, that he’d hoped that he’d been called to Washington to accept the key to the front door of the White House. 

            Later, the elder statesman, in an emotional speech at the White House said, “I’ve seen American soldiers bring hope and leave graves in every corner of the world. I’ve seen this nation overcome Depression and segregation and communism, turning back mortal threats to human freedom.” In many respects, he was speaking from his own experience. 

            Because of Bob Dole’s leadership, the efforts of many supporters in Washington, D.C., and the contributions of millions of Americans, the nation has a World War II memorial on the National Mall, located at the end of the reflecting pond at the base of the Washington Monument. It opened to the public on April 24, 2004—twenty-two years after the Vietnam Memorial Wall was completed in 1982. The World War II Memorial features fifty-six pillars, representing the forty-eight states in 1945 where American youth were drafted and the provinces where Americans lost their lives during the war. The Freedom Wall is a long wall studded with 4,048 stars, each representing one hundred American lives lost during the war.

            Bob Dole has remained busy in his retirement. He has written several books, including a memoir and two collections of Washington humor—one featuring funny remarks and jokes told by politicians and the other a similar collection featuring United States Presidents. 

            Dole appears often as a popular political commentator on shows such as Larry King Live. He is also never afraid to poke fun at himself as when he appeared on Saturday Night Live and the satirical news program on Comedy Central, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics opened in July 2003 on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas. The institute, which was established to bring bipartisanship back to politics, was opened on Dole's 80th birthday. The opening festivities included appearances by such notables as former President Bill Clinton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

            Bob Dole’s great strength as an American leader is his dedication to the things he believes in and his tenaciousness in getting things done, no matter how great the challenges, no matter how long the road, or no matter how impossible the goal may seem. Even in his retirement, he has continued to lend his leadership and his good name to those things that mean something to him.

The Illustrious Robert J. Dole, 33° became a member of Russell Lodge No. 177 in Russell, Kansas, in 1955. He was a member of the Scottish Rite and was honored as Supreme Temple Architect in 1997.

Brother Dole, a survivor of prostate cancer, has been a long standing financial supporter of the Kansas Masonic Foundation. Senator Dole notified the Kansas Masonic Foundation of his desire to create a Partnership for Life Campaign. He donated $150,000 to create a prostate cancer research fund at the University of Kansas Cancer Center. To date, the Masons, through the Kansas Masonic Foundation, have given more than $13.5 million to the important cause.  

This is an excerpt from Todd E. Creason's award winning book Famous American Freemasons: Volume II. 

~TEC 

Todd E. Creason, 33° is the Founder of the Midnight Freemasons blog and is a regular contributor.  He is the award winning author of several books and novels, including the Famous American Freemasons series. He is the author of the From Labor to Refreshment blog.  He is the Worshipful Master of Homer Lodge No. 199 and a Past Master of Ogden Lodge No. 754.  He is a Past Sovereign Master of the Eastern Illinois Council No. 356 Allied Masonic Degrees.  He is a Fellow at the Missouri Lodge of Research. (FMLR) and a charter member of a new Illinois Royal Arch Chapter, Admiration Chapter U.D.  You can contact him at: webmaster@toddcreason.org