Local Elks Lodge spawned song "We're From York"
When York Elks Lodge No. 213 formed in 1891, a lot was going on in York, Pa.
York had just become a city, and improvements were in the air – and on the ground. The prime example of change came right in the heart of the city, in Continental Square.
Old market sheds were impeding the movement of growing numbers of people and amounts of made-in-York stuff, courtesy of the Industrial Revolution. Those sheds had to come down, some people thought, so the newly branded city could realize its industrial might. When preservationists sought to keep them up, members of the opposition tied ropes to their wooden supports and pulled them down.
In the middle of the night.
The city's park system was developing, too. Farquhar Park was established in the 1890s. Albemarle and Salem Square Park would follow.
But first, Penn Park, left on its own after the Civil War military hospital moved out in 1865, had to be shaped up.
The towering Soldiers and Sailors monument was constructed on the old military hospital's footprint.
And the Elks Lodge, then meeting at several places around town, financed a rockery with an elk standing tall atop it.
That elk would serve as a proud symbol of the city's might in the Industrial Revolution, and its demolition after an act of vandalism lopped off its head in 1987 was a sign of York's struggle 100 years after it became a city.
READ MORE: Elks celebrate 125th anniversary.
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The Elks settled in the improved North George Street mansion of deceased York attorney Vincent Keesey in 1905. The lodge became a staple in the downtown.
Its fundraising gatherings were so large that the lodge booked events in the old York Opera House on North Beaver Street.
It fielded a 400-strong delegation for the 1930 Elks Convention in Atlantic City, where Spring Garden Band Director's Lester K. Loucks' "We're from York" debuted.
In a thoughtful act of inclusion in the early 1940s, York's Rabbi Alexander D. Goode became a member at a time that those in the Jewish community were excluded from membership in fraternal and other private organizations. It took another 70 years for such inclusiveness to reach other such organizations in York.
A plaque was prominently placed in the front hallway of the Elks Lodge commemorating Goode's act of heroism in giving up a place on a lifeboat when the World War II military chaplain's transport ship was torpedoed in 1943.
The lodge became a place to gather and receive visitors.
Visiting Elks could secure a room in the lodge's upper floors for $1 a night. They could do business in the wonderfully furnished front parlor.
A newspaper reported this about Vincent Keesey's former mansion in 1904: "It is finished from basement to attic in solid black walnut with hardwood floors, and is, perhaps, the only mansion in state of Pennsylvania, the woodwork of which is entirely 'knotless.' "
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One hundred twenty-five years after its founding, the Elks remain in the middle of things, strategically standing with its unusual decorative metalwork in the Stadium District and across from several of York's finest restaurants.
Like its home city, the lodge has struggled with the times. A fire from cleaning rags in the mid-1980s damaged the lodge's parlor area.
But just as the city has attracted new energetic residents in recent years, the club has gained new blood.
In 1998, for example, three women – Colleen Koller, Joleen Seiffert and Mary Ellen Dahlheimer – became pioneers as the first female lodge members. It didn't take long for one of them, Mary Ellen Dahlheimer, to become Exalted Ruler.
"She served our Lodge for 2 years and to her credit was largely responsible for getting our Lodge back on track and keeping it open," present Exalted Ruler Rick Weidner wrote in an email.
The lodge prides itself in community outreach, providing assistance in York's Northeast Neighborhood.
And in-reach.
When a fire erupted at the nearby Rodeway Inn several years ago, the lodge took in guests displaced by motel blaze.
The lodge's dining room is frequently used for community events, particularly those honoring military veterans. A table remains permanently set in commemoration of POW-MIAs.
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In reflecting on the parallels between the fortunes of Elks Lodge No. 213 and the City of York, one's mind goes back to that old Elk atop its rockery in Penn Park.
A postcard showing the Elk, before its 1987 beheading, made its way to my Facebook page and evoked a comment from Yorker Joe Shane.
It seems that the Elk was stored in his father's garage for a decade.
"It was broken into many parts," he wrote.
City workers paid a visit and picked up the pieces. He understands the city has the damaged statue in storage.
If so, there awaits another parallel between the the lodge and the city.
A rehabilitation of the Elk and its rockery would be a fitting metaphor to capture all the building going on in the longtime home of Elks Lodge No. 213: Downtown York, Pa.