Northern Light Lodge is located in Maumee, Ohio, near Toledo and on the Maumee River next to Waterville, site of the Browning Campus of the Ohio Masonic Home. It is the home Lodge of MWB Robert C. Rill, Jr., Grand Master in 2015-2016. The Lodge is the oldest Masonic Lodge in Northwest Ohio, yet it is fully engaged in today’s community and looks to the future. The members take great pride in helping their neighbors and keeping things local.
One example of this is the Lodge’s annual pancake breakfast to help the Kidney Foundation of Northwest Ohio. Over the past 21 years, the Lodge has held a breakfast with a silent auction and raised over $170,000 for the Foundation, with all the money staying in Northwest Ohio. Because the emphasis is on the local community, area businesses have been very generous with donations of food. Bob Evans donates 160 pounds of sausage, for example. Other donors include McDonald's, Uncle John’s Pancake House, and the Mayberry Diner.
This year’s breakfast was held on April 6th. It was attended by approximately 500 people and raised over $10,000. It is a well-oiled operation after twenty-one years, but it still represents a tremendous effort by Lodge volunteers. The men begin showing up around 2:00 am to prepare sausage, pancakes, scrambled eggs, and grits. The silent auction items need to be set out with everything in place when the doors open at 7:00. And don’t forget the clean-up! When the doors close at 12:30, the Lodge spends the rest of the weekend putting everything back together for the next meeting.
Each year, the Grand Lodge officers try to attend an annual breakfast and do their part to help. Some years they eat more pancakes than others, and somebody always writes the grand master’s name on the silent auction sheets – with or without the grand master’s permission. But it is a great time and an event that unites the men and women of the Maumee Masonic Center in a common purpose. This spirit continues through the rest of the year with the Lodge participating in community parades and events. Many of its members belong to the local Royal Arch chapter and help with its annual car show to raise money for Adopt America.
Northern Light Lodge celebrated its 200th Anniversary in 2018. It traces its history to the War of 1812 and Army Lodge No. 24 at Fort Meigs, just across the Maumee River. During that war, Masons in William Henry Harrison’s army fought the British and their Indian allies, turning them back and preserving Ohio for the United States. After the war, the military Lodge dissolved, but the Brethren who stayed in the area wanted a Lodge of their own and formed Northern Light, No. 40. The rest is history.
