They buried Andy Sunday.
I sat with Lana. (Michael had the aisle and was busy greeting people). As the chapel filled with old friends in older faces, memories flooded ….
“Bogie,” shrieked the voice through the phone, “There’s a blizzard in Sandusky and it’s heading here!”
December 8, 1977—hours before the most important election of our lifetime. Months of campaigning would culminate that evening when, at Diamond’s Restaurant (Severance Center), The Lodge would elect its new officer.
Secret ballot: me against Andy.
There I was, the fresh young face; there he was, the veteran—the one whose “turn it was”. To some I was “new blood, just what we need”; to others I was an upstart, “not willing to wait his turn”. They were all right.
Lodge elections were serious business back then. Seven-hundred men strong, we were an order requiring physical attendance to vote. No mailing it in, no proxies. Indeed, if a brother couldn’t find his way to lodge that Thursday, he just didn’t get to vote.
Which was why I head uptown…immediately!.
We weren’t supposed to win, you see. Those who’d been around—most of them anyway—had warned us. Though weekly attendance was fifty, two-hundred people would come out to vote, they said. “Don’t be discouraged,” they urged. “Make a good showing and you’ll be a shoe-in next year.” So they said.
It was a curious race that fall. There were committee meetings, and phone calls to get votes. Sixteen of us bunched in the Wrenford basement to read through the roster. Name-by name.
“Who’ll take him?” or “Who can we get to call him?” or “Don’t waste your time—he hasn’t been to lodge in years” or, more than once: “He’s dead. They need to update the directory.”
When the conclave ended I called Columbus.
“Bill Walters showed up” I boasted in optimism
“Forget him,” my Dad urged. “He’s probably a spy.”
I was the underdog, of course. Had been all year. Someone, however, forgot to tell me, forgot to tell my father, and clearly forgot to tell my friends.
I was remembering it all.
My votes back then, were to come from two sources. First, there was a small cadre of pals my age, most of whom had been dragged into the lodge through family. Second, there were the relics of my father’s day, (which in LodgeTime ended in the 60’s). All others, conventional wisdom dictated, “Would go the other way.”
“You get your people there,” said Al Bogart. “Don’t you worry about mine.”
Sitting at Berkowitz, as they eulogized Andy, it kept coming back…
How at the very beginning two Borsteins and Rogoff met me for lunch in the bar at the Rockside Ramada. Past Chancellors all, they gave me “street cred”.
“Sit in a different seat each week,” one told me. “Speak every meeting,” said another. And in leaving, the piece de resistance: “Figure out who you’re going to be with at the dinner dance. You need a good table.”
And more: how the night of Andy’s meeting, Stuart trekked up and down the street recording license plates of Andy’s supporters.
Most of all, though, I recalled what happened on December 8 some thirty-five years ago as I hung up the phone:
Snow fell. Four inches in four hours.
The alta-cockers stayed home that night, trying to no avail to postpone an election. Delays they got, “due to traffic”. The game, however, went on.
As the town turned white, the troops came out. All the young dudes— the renegades that couldn’t care less about our lodge—they answered the bell of friendship, and came to vote.
From Ermine and Cutler to Fenton and Mr. Fenton and so many others who may never have been there again. (Indeed, Stuart’s Dad had actually brought a friend into the lodge just the month prior ONLY to muster a vote).
They came in their boots; they came with their smiles; and they came as a lark—but they came. There was Feldheim and Freedman and Linick and Starkoff. There was Simmerson, Walter, Courtney and even Irv Arnell, the old softball scorer….There was my father’s crew, from Mitchell to Elsner to Al Roth, the guy that’d printed my Bar Mitzvah invitations. From the woodwork they came.
I got 43 votes that night—to Andy’s 31. I don’t think he quite knew what hit him. On an evening when smart people stayed home, as inmates overtook the asylym, I broke a heart.
We rose to leave Sunday– Michael, followed by Lana, followed by me. Somehow, as they carried out our fallen brother, the final tally on a little vote in a snowstorm didn’t seem to mean so much.