Abstract
In this 2005 interview, Charles Berry, a 33rd degree Scottish Rite Mason, discusses his life growing up in Cleveland in the 1930s and his involvement with the Scottish Rite Masons with whom he had been a member a the time of this interview for 48 years. Berry is a volunteer worker at the Masonic Library in Cleveland, and has acquired a wealth of knowledge of Masonic history by reading many of the books at the Library. Along the way, Mr. Berry has also met many famous Clevelanders who were members of the Scottish Rite Masons and is knowledgable of the history of the Masonic Lodge in downtown Cleveland. Mr. Berry puts together slide shows of Mason history, and makes presentations of the history of the Masons, a society of free thinkers, to Masonic lodges around Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Berry, Charles (interviewee)
Interviewer
McCafferty, David (interviewer)
Project
History 400
Date
11-10-2005
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
80 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Charles Berry Interview, 2005" (2005). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 400007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/55
Transcript
David McCafferty [00:00:00] Hi, I am the interviewer. My name is David William McCafferty of Cleveland State University. Today is the 10 November 2005. I am interviewing Mister Charles Berry of the Masonic Library, the Masonic Performing Arts center downtown on Euclid Avenue. He is a 33rd degree Scottish Rites Mason. Mister Berry, thank you.
Charles Berry [00:00:20] Good afternoon.
David McCafferty [00:00:21] I just had a couple questions for you. I have a list of questions here for you. For this oral history. Let’s start off with just the basic. Where and when were you born?
Charles Berry [00:00:30] I was born in South Bend, Indiana. And my father left the city of South Bend to work for Westinghouse Electric in Cleveland. I was three years old when I came to Cleveland in a model T Ford and it took 20 hours. [laughter]
David McCafferty [00:00:47] What year were you born?
Charles Berry [00:00:49] I was born 12/27/28.
David McCafferty [00:00:51] 1928.
Charles Berry [00:00:52] 1928, right.
David McCafferty [00:00:53] So before the depression.
Charles Berry [00:00:54] Oh my, I was almost a depression boy. [laughter]
David McCafferty [00:00:58] So what was it like when you got to Cleveland? What was the neighborhood that you were living in like?
Charles Berry [00:01:02] Well, they rented properties. One had some bed animals and they had no way of fighting that sort of thing. So they simply moved away and left everything. And in those days it was quite different. My father, I don’t think he ever owned a house. He didn’t make much money when he started working and he always claimed until World War Two came along. They got overtime at Westinghouse and then he started to be able to put together some money. I have a younger brother, a year and a half younger and a sister who was a year and a half older and she’s already passed away in 1995. My brother has moved to Texas.
David McCafferty [00:01:52] So he always rented.
Charles Berry [00:01:54] He always rented, right. He always had secondhand cars. And times were extremely tough. Extremely tough. From time to time we would get a ride back to the folks in Indiana. Generally, if somebody was going that way, we couldn’t afford to train. And of course they didn’t believe in airplanes. So that’s how we got to go back to see Grandma and Grandpa and the folks there.
David McCafferty [00:02:26] Now, when you said life was particularly hard, as you mentioned, in addition to, like taking the train and hopping a ride, what other things, you know, were very difficult about life? Like we were discussing on the way here.
Charles Berry [00:02:38] Well, we had mostly boiled foods. My mother was always at home. I had an intact family. My father worked hard. He put in as much hours as he could. Then he always had a little part time job doing something around the neighborhood they didn’t have. We didn’t have very. We didn’t know we were poor, really because we had a lot of love and we had a lot of things we wanted, was on our wish list, but they were out of reach. As I grew up, they were fairly disciplined people. I mean, mother would hug you when you needed it and smack you if she didn’t need it, you know, and my father was the same way, you know, so we grew up loved, and, but they were strict disciplinarians. You didn’t talk back and you didn’t say anything to them, and you didn’t even say darn or heck or something, because he’d call you back and look you right in the face and tell you, I don’t want to hear out of you. You know, when we would walk to visit the neighbor, he would indoctrinate us going up the sidewalk. He’d say, now, you know what the rules are. I don’t expect to have to discipline you in this house, and so behave yourself. You know, that was all indoctrination. As we went up the sidewalk, he didn’t own a car. They had no antifreeze, permanent antifreeze. They used alcohol if they could run the car. But that boiled over, and it was unsatisfactory. So they put the car up on blocks, if he had one, and didn’t use it all winter long. He wrote public transportation.
David McCafferty [00:04:29] What kind of schooling did you have growing up? Did you attend? Did you attend [inaudible] high school, college?
Charles Berry [00:04:33] Oh, yes. I didn’t go to college. I served an apprenticeship in the floor business. My mother left home when I was fourteen. She ran off and decided she didn’t love my father anymore. And my brother stayed. My father, my brother, and myself stayed in an apartment which was 116th and Detroit street, and we lived there. It was a six room apartment with heat, and it was clean and comfortable and neat. My sister went to live with my grandmother because my father and her kind of were at loggerheads about certain things that he told her she was going to do, and she wasn’t going to do them. So she went back to Indiana to live with my grandmother, which was fine because grandma was a disciplinarian, too. So I lived above a linolium store, and I did a lot of work around this apartment, helping out with the cleaning of stoker and the furnaces. And if you know anything about a boiler, you have to, they have a bunch of tubes up above that the heat goes through. They fill up full of soot, and you have to take a long brush and push them through and what have you. And I was able to do that and make a few extra dollars when I was in Wilbur Wright Junior High. Then I went on to West Tech, which was 93rd and Lorain street. And I graduated from there. The man said to me, if you’re not going to school, come down and serve an apprenticeship. So that’s what I did. And I learned the floor covering trade.
David McCafferty [00:06:10] Were apprenticeships common at that time?
Charles Berry [00:06:12] Not too much, no. You needed a contractor who would accept you. And then you went to school one day a week at Max Hay’s School, which is 45th of Detroit. And then you worked with the journeyman, and they showed you what you needed. But, of course, you started out with the bullwork. You cleaned and you scraped and you chiseled up floors, and what have you. And you learned to do that first, and you delivered materials, and then pretty soon, they would let you do a few things on the job. Those days, they were pretty much of a… closed group. They didn’t really want to tell anybody anything.
David McCafferty [00:06:57] [inaudible]
Charles Berry [00:06:58] Yes, right. But once you came into the group, then they were helpful.
David McCafferty [00:07:02] You mentioned you lived on West 116th in Detroit. What was the neighborhood like?
Charles Berry [00:07:07] Well, it was the old Granada theater, if you remember. There was a beautiful theater. The neighborhood was. We had a lot of. There was saloons there, a lot of riff raff in the neighborhood, but most of it was pretty good. They didn’t bother us kids at all, you know, I had a bicycle. We rode around all over. I had a paper route. I carried the Cleveland News, and I also carried a Cleveland Press. They found out I was carrying two papers, and they stopped one of them on me because I didn’t tell the other one about what I was doing, you know. So they stopped one. So then I carried the Cleveland News, and, of course, I guess that went out of business first, and then the Cleveland Press went out of business. And then by that time, I had been working in a small drugstore. No, a small grocery store, stocking shelves, and I drove their delivery truck. I got a new driver’s license, and I got a job driving a delivery truck. And I thought, boy, that’s like winning the lottery, you know? And we were very careful. And I stocked groceries, put up orders, loaded the truck, and went out and delivered them. And it was just a little. A little grocery store.
David McCafferty [00:08:18] Have you gone back to that neighborhood since then?
Charles Berry [00:08:20] Oh, yes. It’s all changed.
David McCafferty [00:08:22] What’s the biggest change that really struck you?
Charles Berry [00:08:25] Oh, they built new things, tore down things. On the corner was a Fannie Farmer’s chocolate place, and that’s gone. And, of course, across the street was a chinese restaurant, which was quite unique and quite well liked, and that’s gone. The Cleveland Trust bank was on the corner. And of course, Cleveland Trust is no longer with us. They tore the theater down, and the Granada theater was really kind of a nice plush place, and they tore that down and put up some other things, buildings and what have you. One of them, they put up a gas station, so I don’t think it improved any. And going back there, it looks a little schlocky to me now, but then that might be a natural thing, you know, once you leave, it was the inner city.
David McCafferty [00:09:23] Now you’re with the Masonic Temple, the Masonic Library, specifically
Charles Berry [00:09:26] Yes.
David McCafferty [00:09:27] How did you come to get into that position? How’d you come by that?
Charles Berry [00:09:29] Well, I’ve been a Mason fourty-eight years. I joined in ’57, December of ’57, North Star Lodge, which is at the corner of Triscuit and Lorain and I joined that lodge and worked all the way through the chairs to become the master of the lodge. That takes about ten or twelve years in those days. And it was quite an accomplishment for a fellow who worked with his hands and on his knees all day, to get into the organization and get up off the floor and meet people that I never couldn’t have met, and learn the ritual and learning the rules and regulations and the. And we call it the ritual. It’s written in kind of a code. Now, some of it’s written in English, but some of it’s written kind of in a code, and you have to decipher it in your head and then put it, commit it to memory.
David McCafferty [00:10:32] You mentioned that. You just mentioned that it was something that you normally wouldn’t have done. Was people becoming Masons. They weren’t normally labor backgroundish?
Charles Berry [00:10:43] Oh, no, not at all. No. Masons come from all walks of life, policemen to professors, from doctors, and we have them all in the fraternity. That has nothing to do with it. I was only looking at it from my own personal standpoint as a laborer every day. To get into the mainstream of the lodge was a nice thing for me. I would suppose if I was doing something else, I might not have been. I also had an uncle that was a Mason. And during the school years, I was able to get back on the farms in Indiana. And when I was summer vacation, I would stay with him back in. This was around Rochester, Rackren, Indiana, in that neighborhood. And I would stay on the farm and help him all summer, then come back, go back to high school. And he was a Mason and kind of my idol, one of my idols. My father never was a Mason, but my father said if I wanted to join a fraternity, he’d pay my way in and at that time it was $125. And so it was a big chunk for him. I took him up on it, and later on I was able to give him back his money. But how did I get into Masonry? Well, I had friends and people, and I admired them, and they seemed to be the type that you would want to follow. They seem to be pillars of the community. They seem to be people that were pretty much of a… The kind of people that were role models for me. And I wanted to be like them.
David McCafferty [00:12:35] Going back to the library, where did you get your training to be a librarian?
Charles Berry [00:12:39] Okay, I’m not a librarian. I have no library training whatsoever. What happened was I had a boy who was a Cleveland policeman, and in fourty-four years he developed cancer and died. And I had been a Mason in my lodge and had done everything in my lodge. And I decided I would then change my Masonic comp set just a little bit. I come down to the library and they needed help there. And so I then began to help them. Did a lot of the cleaning and the sweeping and the work in that section. And I was reading books, and I’m an avid reader. I read everything I can get my hands on. And the books are so terribly interesting. And they’re tied up with early history of America, they’re tied up with early biblical history, and they’re intriguing. Some of them are just absolutely fantastic. I mean, by that, in order to understand some of this, you have to read the same book twice, and you also have to read a lot of books because you get a more rounded concept of what’s happening. One author has an opinion, and that’s what it is, an opinion. And then you must read a couple. They’re not textbooks as such, but they do have that type of Masonic text in some of them, and some of it’s accurate, some of it isn’t. So you read them all and read as many as you can. And there’s maybe fifteen or 20,000 things down there. So you’re going to spend a whole lifetime there.
David McCafferty [00:14:24] So you’ve been a Mason for fourty-eight years. How long have you been with the helping at the library?
Charles Berry [00:14:28] The last ten. Yes, I’ve been down there about ten years. It’s strictly voluntary. Nobody’s paid anything. Our fellow that manages gets a few dollars to offset his effort and his gasoline. He comes in from Mentor, you know, and also I have been able to put together talks and speeches and took photographs of the memorabilia and the things in the library and the men that are the history of the library. I put them together in slideshows, and I go to lodges and I show them. And I also have put together speeches on various subjects. For instance, the Morgan Affair or the Negro Masonry, or just all kinds of subjects.
David McCafferty [00:15:25] From just a brief question, because I know this is Freemasonry. This was a very big event. Describe very briefly, what was the Morgan Affair?
Charles Berry [00:15:35] Well, let’s see. I was trying to think in what town it was, I think was in New York, Bavaria in New York, or something like that. A man was going to expose Masonry, and he. He was rejected as an applicant for Masonry, and he was rejected. So he got together with another man and they were going to print an expose of Masonry. And, of course, that angered a lot of people. He was jailed for nonpayment of dues. This William Morgan was. And when he got out of jail, he disappeared. Now, there was a… And nobody knew where he went. He was married. They found a body that washed up on the shores of Lake Erie. They found a body that washed ashore? Not quite, exactly, I’d have to go back to the reference. Mrs. Morgan identified it as her husband, but another lady identified it as her husband, who was a Canadian, and his name was, I believe, Tom Williams or something to that nature. Well, anyway, they never knew what happened to Morgan. Catholicism has never liked Masonry because they were regimented towards Rome. And, of course, Masonry prides themselves on being pretty much free thinkers. The Methodist church didn’t like Masonry. I believe it was the Episcopalian church didn’t like Masonry. Thurlow Reed, who was a candidate for public office, and John Quincy Adams didn’t like Masonry. So politically, they beat him up very quickly, and Masonry crashed. Out of 600 lodges, they got down to sixty-five lodges. It had totally crashed, and it took about ten years for it to come back. And one of the reasons it came back was Andrew Jackson was a Mason. Stonewall Jackson was a Mason, and he fought and was considered a pretty good person. He got in. He was in Masonry. Then they lost their animosity. The people were out. We have Methodist ministers now that are Masonry. Mormonism had a terrible, if you read the history of Mormonism, it’s had a terrible history of persecution and polygamy, and they embraced Masonry and had their own lodges, and then they started dictating what the lodges should be, and they were taken away from them.
David McCafferty [00:18:39] Speaking of lodges, when did you start attending the Scottish Rites Lodge on Euclid Avenue?
Charles Berry [00:18:45] Well, I joined the Scottish Rite probably. Probably twenty, twenty some years ago, I would guess. I’m not quite sure of that. The Scottish Rite is an independent body. It’s family oriented to some extent. We can bring the family and they have organizations, they do things you can bring the family to, and they have the other degrees in Masonry, which are an appendent body. It would be like the first three degrees in Masonry is actually Masonry. And an apprentice fellow, craft and master Mason, that’s all there is to Masonry. But there are appendant bodies, and you can go on and work in those appendent bodies and they teach more a lesson. A degree in Masonry, basically, for lack of a better understanding, is a moral lesson based on some possibly biblical fact or some moral fact that’s obvious to most people. And the degrees, there’s thirty-two degrees in the Scottish Rite. So learning more and more, and it’s intriguing, and you meet more people. I’ve had an occasion to eat many times with the man who put the pipeline in Alaska, Charlie Spar, and we could talk just like perfectly old friends. If I met him on the street today, we would just stop and chat like old friends. Except Monday morning you’d go through four secretaries even to get in his office, if that was possible. You know, also Alfred Bonds, he was a man who did a tremendous thing for BW
Davis McCafferty [00:20:28] Baldwin Wallace
Charles Berry [00:20:29] Baldwin Wallace, yeah. And he ate dinner with him many, many times. In fact, we have a painting of George Washington in our hallway that he did. And it’s remarkably how nice that painting is.
David McCafferty [00:20:42] But the famous people have gone through the Masonic Lodge downtown.
Charles Berry [00:20:48] Famous people?
David McCafferty [00:20:48] Well, I mean, important people, famous people.
Charles Berry [00:20:51] Well, we don’t use that as a criterion. If you’re a doctor who probably [inaudible] oh, golly, it would be. I’d have to sit down and think about that because there’s just probably hundreds of them. One man was in the criminal courts building. His name was Bruce Butall, and he put together a little bit of the way the criminal system is down there in the Cleveland Criminal Division. Oh, an awful. Just an awful lot of men that have done some really great things. They come from all walks of life. Mayor of Cleveland, Brenton D. Babcock, a Lodge was formed after him. He was a Mason, and he was the very first commander in chief of Lake Erie consistory, which is the Scottish Rite, top of the Scottish Rite line. John W. Barclay was the mayor of Shaker Heights, and he was a principal in the Saunders Square Dempsey law firm. William R. Pringle was a representative of the legislature of Ohio. And you could go on and on and on, but we didn’t look at it from that standpoint. The man who comes off of the street is just as important, and we don’t use titles. In Masonry, if you’re a doctor, we don’t use the title. In fact, there’s a saying in Masonry. He was placed on the lowest spoke of fortunes. We all may be entitled to our regard. The time will come, the wise know not how soon, when all distinction except death will reduce us at the same state.
David McCafferty [00:22:49] How does one become a Mason?
Charles Berry [00:22:51] You must petition lodge. You have to find a Mason, a man you know, to be a Mason, and ask him for a petition for his lodge. Now, if he’s on the ball and you live in one part of town, he will then find your closest lodge for you and then ask for a petition. You sign a petition and turn it in. It takes a unanimous decision of the members of that lodge before they’ll accept your petition. In my lodge, it costs you $175. All of that money goes to charity. A little bit of it probably winds up in the funds of the lodge, but eventually it all goes to charity. A portion of that money goes to the George Washington Museum in Virginia. And a lot of it goes to different charities. The money is not kept at all.
David McCafferty [00:23:46] So you have to be a man in order to apply?
Charles Berry [00:23:49] Yes, to have to be a male, 18 years old. And if they accept you, then they will investigate you. They come out to the house to look and see where you live and what you do and talk to your family and talk to the wife, if she’s dead set against you getting into Masonry, you don’t make it. They don’t want to split families.
David McCafferty [00:24:10] When you joined the Scottish Rite in downtown, how many members were there? Was there. I mean, a great deal of Masons was there.
Charles Berry [00:24:17] I would suppose that there was probably 2000, possibly. I don’t know what it is today. I can’t tell you right off what it is today. It’s probably 15, maybe 1000, maybe 1500, something like that. I can’t tell you that. I don’t have the records of that.
David McCafferty [00:24:37] You believe it has declined over?
Charles Berry [00:24:39] Oh, I think yes, I think all things, except the looser things in our life has declined. I think churches suffered the same fate. I think places that we called, I don’t think young people are joining so much. There’s too much to grab their attention. They’re sitting hours and hours, look, staring into a computer screen. And every young person I know has a cell phone. My computer is not hooked up outside, nor do I intended to hook it up outside. I don’t have a cell phone because I don’t want people to know, really, where I’m at or what I’m doing. And the land phone was just fine for me. So it’s a difference in thinking, I believe, you know. And, of course, there’s much more in a young person’s life. He’s got schooling. It’s absolutely required at this point, although we seem to be coming back to. I’ve known several plumbers that make a tremendous amount of money, if money’s your goal. Men who install things, you know, or get your car fixed once and find out what that man’s making, you know, whether the apprenticeships still have their attraction. And, of course, you’re home and you’re not paying out huge fees to colleges in order to. So there are some things to say on both sides. Masonry declining. It probably is. I don’t believe young people know what Masonry has to offer. Masonry has to offer meeting people you normally wouldn’t, for instance, talking to you. Masonry has allowed me to come here and talk to you. Otherwise I would be over there on the Far West Side doing something else. You know, I have run into just a tremendous amount of people and continue to do. And, of course, there’s Masonic homes. Even if I run out of money and I still can go to the Masonic home and live out my life, and if I have no money at all, they’ll even see that I’m buried properly in their cemetery. And they look after my health. If I have Alzheimer’s, they’ll still look after that. And all I need is my little dues card in the back pocket. If you bought insurance to do this whole thing, what would it cost you?
David McCafferty [00:27:19] You know, so make up of the people that have, that are now Masons or applied, you know, in recent years. Does that change is like. [inaudible]
Charles Berry [00:27:29] Absolutely, Absolutely. It’s changed because I think morals have changed. Masonry has, You could say in six words, you could sum up Masonry. You could say, religious toleration. You could say political freedom and personal integrity. Religious toleration, we’re not concerned what your religion is. We do believe that your religion is how you live, not what you call yourself. You must believe in the supreme being and you must remain a good man. Political freedom, you pay your taxes, you’re patriotic and you obey the law, othewise, you can stand on a soapbox and preach all you want. We don’t tell you what to say. Personal integrity is just that. And I think society is losing these principles very rapidly. You pick up any newspaper and you’ll find people doing things that were absolutely, totally foreign to us. And teachers that are doing things to their students, criminals that are absolutely horrendous. I never remember that in my youth, you know, I never remember seeing those things, whether they happened or whether I was not smart enough to read about it. But not only that, don’t you think as this population increases, you know, I believe in 1850, there was a billion people, and today there’s six and a half billion. I think as we live closer and closer, we’re going to have more and more problems. You know, I just think that’s inevitable.
David McCafferty [00:29:16] What does Freemason mean to you personally and professionally? You yourself? How has it made you a better person?
Charles Berry [00:29:24] Well, obviously, there’s a peer group pressure. I don’t want to appear as a jerk in front of the people I know, and I’ve worked so hard in Masonry to teach young people the moral lessons of the degrees. And that’s what you do as you’re an officer coming up through the line as you join the Scottish Rite, those men down there are all upstanding citizens. You don’t want to be the oddball in the group by. Sure, it’s made a better man out of me, because the object of Masonry is probably to bring the light of God into the life of man. I think that’s. And we revere the light, because in the darkness, everything goes on. When you turn the lights on, everything hides. That’s not good, ya know. I think, in my own mind, I have been proud to be a Mason. I continue to be proud to be a Mason. The friendships I formed are lifelong friendships. This very evening, there’s a man who is ninety-one years old. His name was Virgil Legoring, and he’ll be laid out at the funeral parlor in Lakewood. And I intend to be there. Pay respects to that man, who was a hard working Mason all of his life. And we celebrate the victory that he’s achieved. I think, to some extent, one of the things about the fraternity is we still believe in a creator. We still believe, to some extent, in life hereafter. We don’t know what it is, and you couldn’t explain it if you wanted to, but I do believe that. But the country has to kind of becoming more and more atheistic. I believe, you know, whether whatever is true, I have no knowledge of what was really true. Maybe someday I’ll be able to figure that out. So Masonry means an awful lot to a man like me. I think I learned how to live and maybe how to die. Maybe that’s the lesson of Masonry, how to live, how to be a good man and live and get along in society and then how to die hoping for something.
David McCafferty [00:31:46] Let’s take a turn and actually, let’s discuss the building that houses the Scottish Rite downtown. What was the original purpose of the building itself?
Charles Berry [00:31:55] Okay. Masonry came into Ohio in 1811. There was fifty-seven souls in the city of. It wasn’t a city. It was just country. After Moses Cleveland was a Mason. He come from the Connecticut Land Corporation to survey the Cuyahoga Valley. Fifty-seven men, souls were in Cleveland, and they formed a lodge, Concord fifteen. They met in various taverns, various houses, any place where they could be private. They had no money. They used bushels of corn or a piece of ham or whatever to pay their dues. There was no hard money. They rented different places. And to make a long story short, they built a Temple at the corner of East 6th and Superior, where now stands the federal bank building. And that was the first Temple that the Masons owned in the city of Cleveland.
David McCafferty [00:32:55] Why there? Why east 6th?
Charles Berry [00:32:57] Well, there was, you know, lots in Cleveland would sell for $25, and nobody had the money. They just didn’t. There was no public square. There was nothing there, you know, and it was just on the corner of walk and don’t walk, really, you know. Well, anyway, that was the first building they owned, and it was somewhere around 1826, I believe. Masonry grew so with leaps and bounds, they needed another place to hold their decrees and hold their things, that they did. They built the auditorium first, and then it was 3515 Euclid, I believe Chester Avenue was called Russell street, and it was just two small lanes when they widened Chester. When they widened Russell street to Chester Avenue, they changed the address to 3615 Euclid. They found out that the building then had to go on 6th street, and they built the rest of the temple in 1921, I believe was dedicated in 1921, the rest of that big building there. And that’s basically how it came about, was the need for Masonry and its increase in membership. They needed larger quarters and everything. There was going to be a tower out in front, and it was going to be almost to the sidewalk. There was to be a restaurant in the bottom of it, and there was to be rooms for sojourning Masons or traveling Masons to house themselves there, but it never got built.
David McCafferty [00:34:45] Why?
Charles Berry [00:34:46] Well, I guess maybe by then, you know, the membership solidified, and then, of course, from then on, it was not feasible to do that. There was other hotels in the neighborhood, and people used those, and still do, you know, they generally use hotels downtown, or they use hotels out of, on the west side, Bagley Road. In those places. There normally they don’t come to the east side motels and then they’re a little afraid to come downtown to the motels, you know, at this point in time.
David McCafferty [00:35:22] Well, how was it different then? What was around the building at the time it was built, if you happen to know?
Charles Berry [00:35:29] Well, there was a travelogue motel there that was terribly notorious for everything that you can think of. And of course, I do know that my son was a policeman for eighteen years and the prostitutes for prospect and what have you were totally rampant. I mean, they would pick him up every day and book them and the city of Cleveland would slap their hands and send them back out again. And the policeman then decided it wasn’t hardly worthwhile do that. Since then things have been cleaned up and we’re going to get our new corridor in maybe. And so things are looking up and I think the building then will have much more attraction as we are now able to put together this corridor. If it works out.
David McCafferty [00:36:29] Why was Euclid Avenue or that plot of land on Euclid Avenue chosen to move from the east 6th and Superior location?
Charles Berry [00:36:37] It was the old. What was it? It was two properties, a Sterling Linder property. And there was another property that they purchased. And I guess they had the money. They sold stock. This is what the stock looked like. [noise of paper] Of course they sold the stock and to raise the capital. And there was an awful lot of Masons had some funds. There was very wealthy Masons. And of course, as you know, Euclid Avenue was the home of some very, very wealthy people. And a lot of them were Masons.
David McCafferty [00:37:17] Millionare’s Row.
Charles Berry [00:37:18] Pardon?
David McCafferty [00:37:18] Millionaires Row.
Charles Berry [00:37:19] Yes.
David McCafferty [00:37:21] Who were Masons that were among those Millionaires Row? I mean those. Those rich and wealthy.
Charles Berry [00:37:27] Oh, golly. Well, we know. I don’t know what we know Henry Ford was. And of course we know. I think just. I can’t tell you that right off. I haven’t gotten into that part of the history of the city. But I do believe that most of them were in a Masonic fraternity. As you know, most of our early forefathers were Masons. You know, the whole structure of the government was Masonic oriented from Washington on down to Revere and Hancock and Doctor Warren. And most of the men in the Revolution were. And they used their lodges as. Annapolis or a West Point because there was no Annapolis or West Point. And their lodges were secretive and they were places where we could discuss. We could discuss a lot of. They could discuss a lot of their war problems and things that they. To fight that revolution. They used it as you would today, you would use West Point or you would use Annapolis to grow up your men.
David McCafferty [00:38:45] But why was the auditorium built first? In fact, why was an auditorium built at all?
Charles Berry [00:38:50] Well, that’s where the degrees were put on. That’s then when they had the Masonic Temple at East 6th and Superior, the Mason’s population was increasing by leaps and bounds. They had enough room there. They didn’t have room to do anything in that building. The auditorium was there, but it was small when you put all the men that they wanted in there. So they built the auditorium with that whole thing. Now, remember, there was a shrine helped with that. Various lodges also helped with the finances of it. And they all used that facility. And then they rented that hotel out. They had boxing there. They had musicals. The Cleveland Orchestra was in there. When the building was new, they practiced. They still come and practice once in a while. But that was her home for a long time.
David McCafferty [00:39:48] Before Severene Hall?
Charles Berry [00:39:49] Yes. Yes. So it was well used, well represented, and it was a very much a shining star of Cleveland. And of course, that’s what it was used for. And today it’s still rented out to various groups. We just had James Leron. What’s the football guy’s name?
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [00:40:16] Basketball? LeBron James?
Charles Berry [00:40:18] Yeah, LeBron James. Yeah. They just made a great big commercial there. In one of the commandery rooms, they put down hardwood flooring blocks, and they made a big commercial in that room and had a ton of people there.
David McCafferty [00:40:40] I can imagine with LeBron James
Charles Berry [00:40:42] Yes, yes. So it’s still an attractive place for. For people. And we do rent out the. They rent out the auditorium at this time and place. We watch who it is. There’s not going to be any people of low character rent it. They can’t do that, you know. Also, some of the rooms upstairs are rented for weddings and for different organizations that would like to rent a large room and do what they want to do as long as it’s legitimate and no alcohol, period. So the rooms are still rented out. So the auditorium is a vibrant place, and it seems to be going right along. Made some really neat improvements in it, you know, brand new elevators. I did a lot of the work on the flooring in there. Remodeled. They remodeled all the men in ladies rooms and made them accessible for wheelchairs.
David McCafferty [00:41:40] When do these remodelings take place?
Charles Berry [00:41:42] Oh, they just go on along at a time. We’re going to be working on a little kitchen upstairs now for the commandery, the Commandery of Masonry, which is York Rite end. They’re going to have a little kitchen up there where they can put up their refreshments and what have you. Throw new cabinets and new flooring. And it’s going to be a pretty little kitchen for their refreshments after the meetings.
David McCafferty [00:42:06] Other than those periodic updates or refurbs of the building, what other major changes have taken place? Just that you have seen over your years?
Charles Berry [00:42:15] Oh, well, the boardroom is a beautiful place. I put all the carpet in there. It’s a purple carpet and it’s really beautiful. The heat and the air condition is above the ceiling, the suspended ceiling, all brand new. That used to be a great big open area. And there was pool tables in there. I have pictures in the library when it was canteen during World War Two. And the soldiers and sailors all came there. The Eastern Stars made the cakes and cookies and entertained the. Entertained the soldiers. They had dances, they had weddings. Some of the fellows got married there. The girls were Job’s Daughters and Rainbow Girls and the Eastern Star. They were only required to give their first name and nothing else. Which would be today that it would be. And there again, it’s a matter of discipline and morals at that time. We have books in there where these soldiers all signed their name, told what they thought of the place. They took pictures. They had a photographer room, which is in the back, and they could develop their own pictures, take pictures of each other and take pictures of the soldiers and sailors, and then they would go back in the room and develop the pictures. And it was a great place. There was a restaurant in the basement. The state then said that you have to tear out all the old equipment and put in all brand new equipment and be inspected each year. And the Masons thought, well, that’s just too much money to spend and too much of a problem for us. So they shut the restaurant down. They divided up part of the restaurant into a meeting room, and they have now divided the other port for offices, for the Grotto. And if you remember, the Grotto is another appendant body. And they used to run the Grotto Circus, if you remember, back away. Circus fell apart because people just don’t seem to pick up on circuses like they did at one time. One time when they come into town, the whole town stopped while the circus was in town. But that’s probably not so anymore.
David McCafferty [00:44:41] That’s the restaurant that was in the basement?
Charles Berry [00:44:43] Yes, yes, yes.
David McCafferty [00:44:44] Was the restaurant upstairs for the. But that was only during the war? The Canteen?
Charles Berry [00:44:48] Well, yeah, I’m not sure about that. There was a restaurant upstairs when the building was built, and I’m not sure how long it was there. That was quite a bit before I ever got there. It was gone. It’s now our learning center where we teach dyslexic children to read. The doctors have discovered it’s imbalanced in the brain. You’re born with it. And they can turn these kids around rather so that they can read what have you. Right now we have thirty, thirty-two or three children being taught. That’s about our capacity. They have twelve or more tutors in there. And it’s totally free to everybody. The Masons pick up the tab for it all. You know.
David McCafferty [00:45:35] It’s completely funded by Freemasons by the Masons?
Charles Berry [00:45:36] It’s completely funded by them. So is hospitals for the shrines. There are twenty-two across the. We completely. We almost completely funded the Special Olympics in Columbus. You know, there’s probably. Probably fifty or more charities that Masons completely fund. And it’s amazing what this fraternity does in the way of helping people, I would assume, and I haven’t seen anything contrary. It’s probably the greatest charity in the world, bar none. I don’t know anything. It even comes close. How do they do it? They do it with endowments. The shrine has put together a billion dollars in endowments by putting together a little of the funds that Masons come in. All of my dues and all of my stuff eventually goes to charities. They have to have something there. I pay a little more for a dinner. Maybe if a dinner costs a lodge five or six dollars to put on, I might pay ten dollars. The lodge can live on a couple of dollars at that. And then the rest of it goes out in charities and thinks that they do.
David McCafferty [00:46:50] What other groups are currently in the building that because you said you rent out to, ya know?
Charles Berry [00:46:55] Well, there is a credit union and they pay rent. They have a little office there. Well, I think there’s three rooms in the office. There would probably be two of the rooms as big as a bedroom would be. And then there’s a big hallway connects it. They pay rent. Singing Angels, of course, the group that’s gone all over the world with the kids singing. They have an office in the back and they pay rent upstairs. They have the wheelchairs, the dancing wheelchairs. Mary Verde Fletcher, I guess her name is. And she used to in her paper all the time. Yes. And they have dancing classes up there. They have the whole fourth floor and they pretty much. They pay rent. You know, the Grotto has to pay a little bit of rent for their space downstairs. Then, like I say, we rent out the auditorium for various people. We rent out some of the other rooms for, like I said, weddings and different get togethers that people want to come together for a meeting or something. The only stipulation is no alcohol. Right. Otherwise. And they’re generous. Scottish Rite also has. They’re extremely generous to the Masons. The Masons don’t have really pay anything. We have our meetings there. We have what we call a Cuyahoga County Memorial Lodge. And the memorial Lodge, if a Mason was from Cleveland and he moved to another part of the country, and then they wanted to bury him in Cleveland and his lodge is not in Cleveland. Memorial Lodge puts on the service for him and then, of course, they meet there free. All the officers who are. Are instructing the Grand Lodge officers instruct the officers of lodges in workshops and what have you. They meet free. So there’s an awful.
David McCafferty [00:49:07] In the early 1980s, I think it was 1982, there had been an offer to purchase the building itself from, obviously, the Scottish Rite Masons. Why was the offer? I mean, was the Scottish Rite Masons or were they looking to sell the building?
Charles Berry [00:49:25] Well, they’ve had some troubles through the years keeping it up. It’s an expensive building to keep up. It’s built for Masonry. The ceilings are high and what have you. They put in all brand new boilers just not too terribly long ago. So apparently they’re going to stay and they’ve done some really remarkable remodeling, if you remember, where across the street was the mosque which the Masons had built. And Mayor White forced them out of there on eminent domain, gave them $3,000, $3 million for their building. And it was a beautiful, more modern, much more modern with a huge restaurant in it. And for many years, the Mason simply went over to the restaurant and you could drink, or you could have a drink over there, too, because that was not. Yes, it wasn’t in the Lodge. And of course, the mayor then forced out them and they put what, bearings incorporated or whatever the name of that factory is there, or that place is there. And they went then out on State and Edgerton Road and they took over the figgy sprinkling corporation out there and they have a beautiful place out there. It was quite a ways out, I suppose, as they grew and as they were able to pick up their end of what they wanted to do, they let go of their hold of the Masonic 3615 building then. And then Scottish Rite simply paid them off for what they wanted and became the sole owners of it. And they are today. It’s run by a board of trustees, which periodically change, but they own the building lock, stock, and.
David McCafferty [00:51:13] And are they going to continue to own it? Are they looking to. I mean, is it going to be changing hands sometime soon?
Charles Berry [00:51:21] No, I do think that they’re going to stay there as much as they possibly can. I think it’s their home and they consider that a landmark for them. And of course, they are getting lodges to come back to meet there. You know, the commandery now came left Franklin, the Franklin Temple at Fulton and Franklin. They left the cranberry, left there and came down here. And of course, they have to pay a little rent for their meetings. And of course, the Cleveland lodge is there, and they pay a little rent for their meetings. But they have a building full of heat, full of light, full of beautiful building to hold their meetings in. So I do believe that it’ll be getting a little stronger as time goes on. I think Masonry will come back because people eventually figure out what it has to offer. I mean, to make a man better and to be a better person and to do things that you normally couldn’t possibly do.
David McCafferty [00:52:28] So you think Freemasonry in Cleveland is going to get better as time goes on?
Charles Berry [00:52:30] I really do. I’m optimistic. I believe it is. I believe it is. It’s hard to say, though, if I could predict the future, if I could predict the future, I would. But I, in my own mind, I think, yes, I think there’s a lot of good people there, and I do believe that it will come back. You know, just.
David McCafferty [00:52:49] Are there younger members coming into the lodge?
Charles Berry [00:52:51] Oh, my, yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Quite a few younger members. In fact, a lot of young men are into lodge. My son, policeman, he was fourty four. He joined. He’d been in there maybe eight years before he died. He died of cancer and he couldn’t control that. But, yes, an awful lot of young men are interested in the Masonry. A lot of it probably comes from being in the family or role model or somebody they admire. I think that their biggest advertisement is the fact that you’re a good man, and it radiates to some extent the people around you. You know, I mean, you could probably understand that if you were lived next to a neighbor from hell, you would say, man, that’s the last guy in the world I want to be near. But if he’s a good, helpful neighbor and a kind and understanding person, you say, you know, he’s just a great guy. What does he do and how does he do it? And maybe that’s the motivation for.
David McCafferty [00:53:57] Do you think the yield corridor project that’s going in now, that’s going to revitalize that strip or that is of its goal? Do you think that’s going to help bring some more attention back to the lodge?
Charles Berry [00:54:07] Well, I think it will upgrade the neighborhood. In that vein. It will. I think it would be able to bring the neighborhood back. I don’t even know if the city knows that, you know, the money they’re spending and what it’s costing, and you hear all of pros and cons, it’s going to be just a straight line back and forth, and with fancy buses in the middle of the street. I don’t know what it’ll do for parking. You know, we share parking with Red Cross. We reciprocate when they need space, they come over in our lot, and we give them the tokens so that they have a low overhead for them. And, of course, then when we have an overflow, we go there, and then we go over to the Barings Building across the street, across 36th, and they allow us in there after hours, you know, with an overflow crowd.
David McCafferty [00:55:05] So the mosque used to be across the street from where the lodge is now. The Red Cross behind it. Actually, if you’re going down, you know, Euclid Avenue, it’s next to it. And I noticed there’s a couple buildings that are, you know, for rents that aren’t. They don’t have any tenants anymore. What are the different buildings? What did the neighborhood used to look?
Charles Berry [00:55:20] Like, you know, well, you remember there was the arena there, where the Red Cross building is. There was the arena there, and maybe that’s probably a little before your time, but the arena was the greatest place in the world to be. That was like the Gund Arena, and probably that’s where they got its name. Gun put up the money for the arena, but that was called the arena, and everything went on there, and that was where the Red Cross building was. It was on Detroit, on Euclid. And how was the neighborhood changed?
David McCafferty [00:55:52] Well, did you ever go. We’ll go back to that in a second. Did you ever go to the arena?
Charles Berry [00:55:56] Oh, my, yes, sure, sure. Many times.
David McCafferty [00:55:58] What were some of the things you saw there?
Charles Berry [00:55:59] Oh, they had all kinds of things. The ice follies and a lot of beautiful, beautiful things. Oh, golly. Some big, big bands that played down there, you know, some old time music, Dorsey and that sort of music. What else did I see there? Oh, golly, I can’t hardly think back that far. But was it just a great place to be? You might find that out in, you know, in the looking in the Press to see what went on there. But, yes, when I was young, my father would take me some places when something great was happening.
David McCafferty [00:56:43] Is there any one thing that sticks out in your mind? Just any one event or any one concert or one memory that comes to the forethought?
Charles Berry [00:56:52] Well, they used to have some speed skating, and they had roller rinks down there and they skated. They skated. You know how they. The girls would skate and fight and fall down. And we thought that was probably a little. They had huge wrestling matches, too, down there. You know, I do believe that sometimes they had fights. No, at the arena, you know, and I don’t box. Yes, right. Well, they were just brutal. Beating each other to a pulp. But you couldn’t call it boxing anymore, you know, just trying to put each other in the grave. But that’s what went on this arena, and it was things to see. But we didn’t have a lot of money, so. And we rode to transportation. We used to ride the streetcar all the way to Euclid Beach. It was about an hour and a half ride. I could get on the streetcar in Lakewood for five cents. I could ride all the way downtown, go around the square, come back and get off at 117th. And it only cost me five cents. And us kids used to do that. And once in a while we go down at a Clifton boulevard when the streetcar was on the tree lawn, under the trees, and pull the trolleys off the track and run like crazy, you know, but the streetcar would coast and the lights would go out and the sparks would fly, and us kids knew the neighborhood and we were gone.
David McCafferty [00:58:19] Did you ever get caught?
Charles Berry [00:58:20] No, never did. Never did. Never got caught. But it was just something as ornery kids used to do.
David McCafferty [00:58:27] Going back to the neighborhood. How has it changed? What’s one thing that stands out in your mind that was different than when it was when you started going to that lodge twenty some years ago?
Charles Berry [00:58:39] Well, the remodeling is the main thing that I see. The remodeling of it? No, of the building itself, yeah.
David McCafferty [00:58:48] What about the neighborhood has changed?
Charles Berry [00:58:49] Well, we don’t fraternize too much with the neighborhood. You know, everything is contained in there. You know, they’ll go across the street to eat. They’ll go across to Hatten’s there and eat. A lot of them will. I don’t. I work too many floors and restaurants to appreciate that. I try not to eat out if I can, because if you want to do something, go in the kitchen and then see what the kitchen looks like. But we don’t. We normally don’t do anything. I donate blood every, what, six weeks to the Red Cross. And of course, they’re very nice and they’re very accommodating. And it’s across the street in the Warner Center, I guess they call it now. I don’t know. But I donate blood all the time. I’m surprised they still take it because I’ll be what they do and it works and I give them the blood and that’s probably the only thing we do. There’s a sub shop down the corner. And once in a while we’ll splurge and buy a sub sandwich and bring it in, split it, that sort of thing. I seldom go to across the street, the hotel there. They serve italian stuff and they serve chinese, sort of.
David McCafferty [01:00:04] Which hotel is that?
Charles Berry [01:00:05] It’s Hoonin’s, I guess it’s called. And it’s that big. Right straight across the street. Is that big hotel or. It’s a great. Right straight across the street from the lodge. From the Masonic Temple. Yeah. And it’s a big, big building.
David McCafferty [01:00:30] Those hotels always been there?
Charles Berry [01:00:31] Pardon?
David McCafferty [01:00:31] Have those hotels always been there?
Charles Berry [01:00:33] Yeah, it’s called best something.
David McCafferty [01:00:34] Best Western?
Charles Berry [01:00:36] Yeah. Yes, right. Best Western. And they remodeled it all. It’s very nice inside. It would be a good thing for Masons because when they have their reunions and things, people could come down there and stay, but some of them have too much money and call that, you know, but the rooms are clean and neat and I’ve inspected them and theyre nice and theyre somewhere around $50 or $60 a night. Whereas downtown its over $200.
David McCafferty [01:01:04] The reunions take place in Masonic Hall on Euclid Avenue. Right?
Charles Berry [01:01:10] The Scottish Rite reunion does. Right. Right. Now, the shrines reunions will be out at their place.
David McCafferty [01:01:16] What is involved in the reunions that come to.
Charles Berry [01:01:17] All the Masons from that belong to Scottish Rite all come in there and it’s like a school reunion. We know each other, we see each other and they’ll put on decrees for a whole class of new Masons. The grand master’s class was in there and you could become a Mason in one day, which was unusual. And we even had the mayor of Strongsville come Ernfeld. He since has died, but we had him down there and it was kind of nice to have the mayor. And my home is in Strongsville. And see my good friend now who’s a Mason is the mayor of Strongville. The mayor before him was David Finley. And he. David Finley’s a Mason and quite a personal friend. And he also was the, what do they call the convention center. The man who was the head of the convention saver, Wolstein, Wolfelton Wolfstein.
David McCafferty [01:02:17] The Wolstein Convention center?
Charles Berry [01:02:19] Well, he was before. Whoever is there now, it’s Finlay David Finley. He was in charge of all of that before getting people for the city of Cleveland. Enticing people to come to city. Concluding. Right.
David McCafferty [01:02:35] You mentioned it was unusual for somebody to become a master Mason in a day. How long did it take you when you first started?
Charles Berry [01:02:44] Well, it would take, you have three degrees and there’s a catechism you have to learn in between the degrees. So entered apprentice. And then you examined an open lodge of how much you know. And you have to satisfy the guys around you that you’ve learned what you’re supposed to learn. Well, since then, they’ve shortened that quite a bit because young people don’t want to seem to commit anything to memory. Then the fellow crafter degree is the same. The second degree is the same way you had to the lodge gave you the degree and the work that they do. Then they give you a booklet to study and learn and you come back. And then it was the same way. The Master Mason. So it would take me a year probably, to be a Mason. I might be able to do. If I start in the spring, I might finish by the one year, you know. Now the Grand Master, who is total head of Masonry in the state of Ohio. And each state is sovereign, by the way. Indiana has their Grand Lodge and we have our Grand Lodge. Each state is sovereign and there’s no national Grand Master. So things change a little bit between state and state. And it’s interesting to, to visit and see the changes.
David McCafferty [01:04:01] Where’s the head lodge of Ohio located?
Charles Berry [01:04:03] In Springfield? No, in Worthington, Ohio, which is right outside of Columbus. They have a nice museum there. If you get there, go in and look at that museum. That’s their headquarters. And you can call there and get pamphlets, get materials, get whatever you want.
David McCafferty [01:04:20] Is the Masonic Library at the lodge downtown? Is that open to the public? Can anybody go and see that or is that specifically for just Masons?
Charles Berry [01:04:28] No, no, we have people come in to visit, you know, it’s Masonic books. The public probably isn’t too interested in reading, you know, other things there other than books, right? Oh, yes. Memorabilia of Masons. What it is is memorabilia that men who have spent their life with Masonry have donated their jewels and their, and their watches and their things that they’ve collected through the years.
David McCafferty [01:04:57] And what are some, give me a couple of examples of some of the memorabilia in there that you find absolutely fascinating. What are the ones that you think are the most unique?
Charles Berry [01:05:05] Or we have a bible that was printed seven years before the pilgrims landed and there was probably only seven in the whole wide world. We have one. A guy by the name of Dudley, who was a Mason, made pocket watches. And the works were all made in the forms of squares and compasses and trowels and plums and the backs of the lodges. And there was a Masonic watch really? And he made 2600 of them. What beat him probably was a wristwatch technology beat him. But what’s other things? We do have? Gold jewels. Solid gold jewels. A jewel to a Mason has no intrinsic value. It could be made out of brass or tin or wood. And we have those. It’s a position in the lodge that the jewel represents. If it’s a square, you know, he’s the Master of the lodge. It could be made out of precious metals that could be made out of tin or wood. And we have all of those in there down through the years. So a jewel is a misnomer as far as the Mason’s concerned. But there are Masons who have spent a lot of money on a lot of things. You know, there’s a lot of Commandery swords down there that men spent a lot of money buying and getting their name engraved in them and what have you. And of course there’s rings. Men have died and the widow sent the rings to the lodge. And some of them have some jewels in them. And then of course, there’s the other kind, a man who has earned. I’ll soon be a fifty year Mason. I’ll get a nice pin. And of course, when I kick the bucket, we don’t throw the pin away. We don’t want it in a flea market. So it’ll probably wind up the library. And every Mason has a drawer full of things that he’s collected through the years. And normally they don’t want them in flea markets.
David McCafferty [01:06:59] Or you had mentioned the founding fathers. A good many of them were Masons. Do you have any kind of memorabilia from them or any prominence of Americans? Anything that’s in the museum and a library today?
Charles Berry [01:07:11] Well, we have a Harry Truman who was a Grandmaster of Masons in Missouri when he was president. Now, he doesn’t dare to say that while he’s president because there’s too many splinter groups that raise cane with him. We have an autograph book by him. His book is autographed by Harry Truman. We have a raft of books autographed either by the close relative of the author Monroe, and those, or by the presidents themselves, those that was and they were in collections that go way, way, way back. So some of them are. And I would suppose they would be very, very valuable in that respect. A lot of the memorabilia we have, men have traveled all over the world. We have samurai swords that somebody picked up, probably in Japan or was there, and they’re in cases down there. And we could tell you where they come from because they put everything in a computer and pretty much can punch out where they came from. Where. Who brought them in and what have you. Oh, boy. Maps and things that people drew. There’s a chair down there somebody made. And they spent a lot of time on this chair. And they do it on the goodness of their house because there’s no money in it. I mean, you know, they just carve things and put together things, and they do it because they love the fraternity.
David McCafferty [01:08:40] The library has a death mask of President Lincoln. How did they come about that?
Charles Berry [01:08:42] That was William R. Pringle, who was the representative of the House of Representatives. He had that. Where he got it, I can’t tell you. But it is the death mask of Lincoln and a cast of his hand. Now, Lincoln was predisposed to be a Mason. And we can find some of the Masonic words in his speeches. He was shot out of office, so he couldn’t. You know, Eisenhower was the same way. Milton’s brother, Milton Eisenhower was a Mason. Ike Eisenhower positioned the lodge, but then he withdrew it when he was put into as president. And he said when he was done with the presidency, he would set his petition back in again. Well, you know, he had that massive heart attack, and that killed him very early. His brother Milton was a Mason, and most of those men that were there. But it’s difficult. Judge Santel, when he was going to be confirmed as a federal judge, a lot of the members said that he belonged to a cult. But when that hit the newspapers, most of the senators were Masons and they raised cane. Whoever said it was a cult? That’s crazy. You know, Masonry is completely open. You can read any place about Masonry. I have some books written in English down there. Strictly in English. Everything anybody ever knew about Masonry. The ritual, the everything. And it’s written straight out in English. And your wife could go down there and read it if she wanted to, and she’d know as much about Masonry as anybody would have.
David McCafferty [01:10:30] Because it’s so the stigma of a secret fraternity is?
Charles Berry [01:10:33] Oh, it’s hogewash. No, the only secret would be is the fact that we are friends and we do hold a common denominator, probably that by that. I mean, you know, most Masons know the rules on behavior and what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to do it. So we get by that. The next thing we discuss is things about. About life or. Now, we don’t talk about religion in the Masonry period, that’s forbidden. And we don’t talk politics. That’s forbidden. That’s the things that separate us, and we don’t want those. You can go outside the lodge or down the social room and talk about politics till you turn blue, but up in lodge, you don’t. The Master is the sole Master of the Lodge. He’s a benevolent dictator. What he says absolutely goes, and he needs the goodwill of his men. So he’s going to be a little hesitant about being too much of a dictator. But he is, and he’s responsible for his lodge, and that’s the way it’s set up. If you do say or something, he can just simply tell you to sit down. If you don’t sit down, he’ll ask you to leave. So we normally try to behave ourselves as much as possible, and because we want to, not because we have to. But some of the things down there are just absolutely priceless. Somebody made a whole collection of badges, and some of them go all the way back to presidential campaign batches, and they’re hanging up on the wall. And, you know, the collectors are looking for that sort of thing. We have a whole bunch of silver coins that probably two or two and a half inches, well, two inches in diameter. And they’re the sterling silver coins that were made for Masons. Rickenbacker, Kipling, Mayo, Mayo’s clinic, Charles Mayo, Macarthur, to name a few. And they’re. In case the cases are, they’re pretty much priceless. I don’t think you could put a price on them, but.
David McCafferty [01:12:51] Well, it’s definitely something that everybody should go see, at least.
Charles Berry [01:12:53] Oh, I think so.
David McCafferty [01:12:55] And you get the history of not only our city, but of our country.
Charles Berry [01:13:00] Absolutely. And, of course, you know, you have to talk to somebody who’s kind of been in it to point out the history of something. You know, even the zodiac is the eclipse, the ecliptic. The path of the sun around the earth is called the ecliptic. And, of course, the Hebrews had the signs of the zodiac. And the zodiac is a greek word for house of animals, and that’s what they saw in the sky. We do the same thing today because we see the little dipper and the big Dipper. Well, they aren’t dippers, they’re just stars and they look like a dipper or Orion, you know? Well, these people really saw some things because there were no buildings, no skies, no lights, and they just looked at the sky and awe. So there’s things like that that go back into history that I’m convinced that my heritage is Hebrew, because the laws of the land, the Bible, the laws of the country, are based on the biblical teachings, just without an argument. And, of course, I’m greek. If I write from left to right, and I read from left to right, that’s my greek heritage. And if you go back far enough, you see how you are and what you are and how you think. And one of the things, before I quit, I wanted to say that what makes you think like you think? Why do you think like you think? How do you arrive at the conclusions you arrive at? Well, you would have to say schooling, mother and father, environment. You would have to say relationship with my peer group. You would have to say, oh, golly. To think of a couple, you’d have to say my brain capacity. We’re certainly not physical capacity, so we must have a brain capacity. You know, Einstein could outthink us all on certain things. We couldn’t even come close to him. So what makes you think like you think? Probably ten or fifteen different things that cause us to think. Masonry kind of helps me with that because I have some things I can pull from and kind of adjust my thinking, and I think that’s what life’s about.
David McCafferty [01:15:36] Well, Mr. Barry, this has been a fantastic interview. I thank you for your cooperation. I really appreciate it.
Charles Berry [01:15:40] Well, you’re certainly welcome. It’s been a pleasure. And I enjoy my Masonry and I enjoy talking to people about it.
David McCafferty [01:15:46] Thank you.
Charles Berry [01:15:47] You’re welcome.
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:15:48] Can I actually ask, like, just two questions, just to kind of clarify before you leave?
Charles Berry [01:15:52] You certainly can.
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:15:54] Just where did you live before you moved into the apartment at 116th in Detroit? Were you still in that same neighborhood?
Charles Berry [01:16:04] No, I was at 74th and Detroit street, and I went to Watterson School, which was up the corner on Detroit. Then I went to Lake school, which is an annex down farther on Lake Avenue. Incidentally, that’s where the Greyhound bus started. Bus company started down there. Anyway, before that, I lived on 7908 Grace Avenue. And I don’t even know if Grace Avenue is still in the. Whether they’ve changed everything there. But I remember that address because, as in kindergarten or the first grade, I was required to be able to recite my address. And that stuck in the back of my head forever. But that’s where we came from. My brother was born on Newman Avenue in Lakewood, and that’s where they wound up with the creatures that came with the rental at the apartment. And they got out of there as quick as they possibly could. They even left the mattresses and the bedclothes and just simply left because there was no way of doing anything. There was no fumigations or anything, anything. But. So it’s been an exciting ride.
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:17:18] Did you ever kind of go back to your first old neighborhood? Like, did you ever spend any time at the Gordon Square Arcade?
Charles Berry [01:17:26] Oh, sure, I lived down there. We went to the Capitol Theater. We could go to a matinee for two cent at one time or a nickel later on, and we could get a Mr. Goodbar. That was probably a half a pound of chocolate for a nickel, you know? And that’s all we had. I used to go in the chairs in the front room and feel down around the cushions. If I could find a coin or two, you know. And then my father was generous once in a while, he’d give us a couple of cents, we could take in a movie. And there was a matinee for us down there. They gave away dishes at those places. They gave away towels. And if you went to certain matinee, they would give you some trinket, you know. And so it was a great experience. And we roller skate. We had roller skates, a kind of clip on your feet, and you had a clamp on your shoes. And, of course, we hated tennis shoes. We hated all types of tennis shoes. We wanted leather shoes. It was the Appalachians that wore tennis shoes. Now, today, nobody buys leather shoes, you know? And so things have changed. They put a bowl on our head and then trimmed our hair around. We hated that, you know? And my father then learned to cut hair up a little bit. And he had the clippers that you clip with your hand, but they pulled like crazy. Cause, you know.
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:18:50] And just one more. Where. Where was the small grocery store that you worked in?
Charles Berry [01:18:56] It was at Frye Avenue and Detroit street. That was in Lakewood. It’s in Lakewood. About three blocks into Lakewood. And that’s when I lived at 117th. Now I run around with most of the kids from Lakewood High School, because I was so close. I was so close to Lakewood. And we did quite a few things, you know, together.
Emma Yanoshik-Wing [01:19:21] Do you know what is on that site now on Fry in Detroit?
Charles Berry [01:19:26] Well, they’re tearing it all down. Fairchild Chevrolet used to be there tearing it all down and they’re going to put up new homes there and. Yes, and so I don’t know quite how it’s done right now, you know, across the street was a Mercedes Benz car place, and we’d go over and look at the cars. We could no longer afford those and we could fly, you know, but it was great to go look at them as young men, you know.
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