2025 President’s Message
GWMSC Annual Meeting - Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025
Members' annual chance to receive the Master of Philately for free.
The annual meeting of the GWMSC was held on Sunday, February 23th. 2025
Greetings to everyone. This year’s meeting took place on February 26, 2023. The brothers that were in attendance were very enthusiastic about the George
Washington Masonic Stamp Club (GWMSC). Many ideas were discussed as to how to revitalize our Club.
Over the course of many years, we have lost contact with many of our brothers. This has resulted in the GWMSC not knowing whether a brother has passed on to the Great Celestial Universe or whether they are still living. I have begun working on attempting to clean up our membership rosters. This is a several fold process, first I search obituary records as well as a couple of other resources. Next, I have enlisted the help of a Grand Lodge who has been very helpful and enthusiastic about helping us revitalize our Club. They have in turn contacted other Grand Lodges on our behalf in helping us restore contact with those brothers who are still living and/or inform us of the passing of a brother. In the jurisdictions that have been completed so far about half of our members have passed away. Over time, we will work to determine if the living members are still active in philately as well as in collecting masonic stamps.
We talked about becoming study units of both the American Topical Association (ATA) and the American Philatelic Society (APS). We need 10 GWMSC members to also be members in each of these organizations. If you are please let your president know so we can move forward with this endeavor. This effort will bring us exposure to more individuals who might like to join us or could create interest eventually in individuals wanting to join our fraternity.
Along those same lines there already is a Masonic Study Unit of the American Topical Association. I have been in contact with them and they have agreed to help us out on a couple of our efforts. We are going to do the same. What better way to assist each other in our shared interest in philately as well as Masonically.
One of the requirements of the ATA and the APS is that we need to have a newsletter/journal/publication of some kind. After some discussion, Rocky and Walt agreed that they have enough material to begin such a publication. Look for a future announcement as we get this endeavor up and going. This will take a bit of experimentation to begin but will probably be on a quarterly basis.
Under the capable hands of Jeffrey Coney, we learned that not only does he maintain the GWMSC website, but he also takes care of maintaining the back issues of the now defunct Masonic Stamp Club of New York as well as the Masonic Study Unit of the ATA. He discussed some of the technical issues he has been having and his efforts to fix broken links. He is in need of a few missing issues of the MSCNY publication and is enlisting the help of anybody that happens to have the missing issues. If they are able to scan them for him or make arrangements with him such that he could scan them he would greatly appreciate it.
Brother Jeffrey discussed many of the changes that he recently made to our website as well as some exciting plans he has for providing further enhancements. I am looking forward to these and I know you will be delighted as he rolls these out in the coming weeks as well.
We also discussed having a quarterly Zoom meeting of about an hour duration. We will let you know the date of our very first virtual meeting.
We talked about some of the various Masonic Stamp Clubs that have existed in the United States and the efforts that are being made to attempt to discover when they started, how long they lasted, and if they had any publications. We are trying to learn what happened to their collections, if they had any and whether we could acquire some of their periodicals/newsletters. So far, we have been stymied about learning much of anything about these other Masonic Stamp Clubs. If anybody does have any information we would love to have it. One of the very first articles in our new publication will be about these various Masonic Stamp Clubs. You will be given credit for any information that you are able to supply us.
I talked about the efforts that I am making to speak about Masonry and Philately. I gave a presentation at my home lodge in April of 2022 which although didn’t result in any new members, did result in interest in some of our covers. If you would like me to speak at your lodge, this can be arranged.
Additionally, I have begun working on a couple of Masonic Stamp Exhibits. I recently joined my local stamp club (the Dayton Stamp Club). They have embraced this effort wholeheartedly and have been mentoring me. They are helping me learn the ropes of the exhibiting world. As I inch closer to being able to put together my first exhibit, I am excited to enter this whole new world to me. I am hoping that this generates interest among brothers who would then like to join the GWMSC. As I will be entering these competitions, I am also hoping that it generates interest among the public to ask questions about Masonry and how one would become a Mason. I plan to partner with local lodges and after an interested individual becomes a Master Mason, then they can become a member of our Club.
We did discuss a few other ideas that we had about how we will continue to improve our Club for the membership as a whole. For $20 lifetime membership who can beat all these benefits—the opportunity to meet in such a historic Temple, to receive the Masonic Philatelic Degree, to attend a virtual meeting, to read our new periodical. If you have any additional ideas that you would like to discuss with us please feel free to reach out. You can always contact me first via email, and after that we can continue our discussion either via email, texting, through messenger, or even over the phone if you would like.
Your President, Robert “Rocky” Jackson (Robert “Rocky” Jackson
Robert R. “Rocky” Jackson
Our Schedule:
The Club now meets once a year; In February.
At our Annual Meeting in February we confir the Master of Philately Degree on awaiting candidates.
Our Semi-Annual Meetings in September have been called off at this time.