Brothers,
Thank you, Brethren of Amelia Lodge, for once again electing me your Worshipful Master for Masonic Year 2012. It will
be a challenging task to follow the leadership of Worshipful Brother John Wigger these past two years. Brother John, it was a
pleasure to serve with you, and my officers and I are committed to following your excellent example and make this next year one of
the best in recent memory. Now it’s time to get started, and things will be moving quickly in January.
The annual Installation of Officers ceremony will be on Saturday afternoon, January 7th. Brother George Faucher will
prepare one of his special dinners for us, and we will begin serving at 4:00 P.M. Immediately after dinner, we will all move into
the lodge room where the program will begin as close to 5:00 P.M. as is possible. Please come out and support your lodge and
your new officers. This will be an open meeting, and your family and friends are cordially invited to join us.
The first stated communication of the new year will be on January 10th, and we have a lot of work to do that evening. We
must consider and adopt a budget for next year. The 2012 budget proposal is published in this issue of The Trestleboard for your
review and consideration before the meeting. If you have any questions or comments about the budget and/or our finances, please
bring them up at this meeting.
We also have three candidates for the degrees to consider and ballot that evening: Mr. David Grant
Morris, Mr. Gary Michael Orlando, and Mr. Joseph Alan Stockton. If they are approved by the Craft, they will join Mr. John Thomas
Goad in an Entered Apprentice degree scheduled for January 24th. And, undoubtedly, there will be other important business
facing us at the beginning of another Masonic year. Please plan to be at the meeting; we’d like to see you there, and we need your
participation.
Improving Lodge attendance is one of my goals for this year. There are a number of Brothers who I instructed in their
degree work in the past few years, a number that I labored with in various projects in times past, and many that I had fellowship
with in the past who I haven’t seen in Lodge for quite a while. Brothers, I encourage you to come back and experience Masonry
again. There was a time when I didn’t darken the doors of the Lodge for a spell, but I soon realized what I was missing and I returned,
just as I’m sure that you will if you give it a chance. You will always get more out of Masonry than you are required to put
into it, but you must put a little in first. Come back for a while; I know that you’ll get hooked, just as I did.
As some of you know, during my last term as Worshipful Master in 1995 we had our first Fort Clinch Outdoor Degree
with the Civil War theme. That has become an annual event and seen today by many of us as the premier event of the Amelia
Lodge year. This year we’re going to try something new, not to replace the Fort Clinch Outdoor Degree, but in addition to it. Brother Clyde Davis will be spearheading a committee to establish St. John the Baptist Day as an annual family event. More information
about this will be coming to you in the near future.
Once again, Brothers, thank you for your confidence in me and your continued support, and I hope to see you in Lodge soon.
Jesse R. Tiner
Worshipful Master
