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Clem Kadiddlehopper, Freddie the Freeloader, and the Mean Widdle Kid were all personas quite familiar to the television-viewing public in the fifties and sixties. The creator of these characters was Brother Red Skelton, who was a member of Vincennes Lodge No. 1 in Indiana and a truly thoughtful and respectful entertainer to many generations. The son of a former circus clown vaudevillian, comedian Red Skelton left home at ten to travel with a medicine show through the Midwest, and joined the vaudeville circuit at fifteen. He debuted on Broadway and radio in 1937 and on film in 1938. "The Red Skelton Show" premiered on NBC in 1951. For two decades, until 1971, his show consistently stayed in the top twenty, both on NBC and CBS. He closed each show with the beautiful sentiment," Good night, and may God bless."
On 14 January 1969, Skelton offered his television audience his reminiscence of an incident from his schoolboy days in Indiana. Mr. Lasswell, Skelton's teacher, felt his students had come to regard "The Pledge of Allegiance" as a daily drudgery to be recited by rote; they had lost any sense of the meaning of the words they were speaking. Skelton then delivered to his audience a stirring version of the explanation provided to his school class by their teacher so many years earlier and which is reprinted here:
I ---Me, an individual, a committee of one.
PLEDGE--- Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
ALLEGIANCE--- My love and my devotion.
TO THE FLAG---Our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom. Wherever she waves, there's respect because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts freedom is everybody's job.
UNITED---That means that we have all come together.
STATES---Individual communities that have united into 48 great states. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose; all divided with imaginary boundaries yet united to a common purpose, and that's love for country.
AND TO THE REPUBLIC---A state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people, and it's from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION---One nation, meaning "so blessed by God."
INDIVISIBLE---Incapable of being divided.
WITH LIBERTY---Which is freedom, the right of power to live one's own life without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
AND JUSTICE---The principle or quality of dealing fairly with others.
FOR ALL---For all, which means, boys and girls, it's as much your country as it is mine.
"And now, boys and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance… I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: "under God." Wouldn't it be a pity if someone said that is a prayer, and that would be eliminated from schools too?"
Louis A. Bowman, resident of Oak Park, Chaplain and a member of the Board of Governors of the Illinois Society of the Sons of the American Revolution had lead that group in the Pledge of Allegiance with the words "under God" added as early as 1948. The National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution gave him an Award of Merit as "the originator of the under God idea." Bowman explained that the words "under God" were first used in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Lincoln appeared to have added the words extemporaneously, as they do not appear in his original draft.
The petition to various State Legislatures to cause schools to adopt these two words had been made after the Knights of Columbus adopted a similar provision to use the phrase when reciting the Pledge in their fourth degree effective after their National Board of Director's meeting, April 1951. Masons continue to recite the work as their conscience dictate either as the author wrote the work, or with the phrase added.
In 1969, Supreme Court decisions had eliminated compulsory prayer and Bible reading in public schools as unconstitutional including the 1940 decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis that a local school board could expel students who refuse to recite the Pledge. Abington School District v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett, were recent rulings from 1963, and protests over American military involvement in Vietnam had rendered the American flag as much a symbol of divisiveness as of unity.
Skelton, in the most soft-spoken and considerate manner, added to Mr. Lasswell's explanation, a lamentation of the thought that the 1954 insertion of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance might someday cause it to be considered a "prayer." He feared that doing so would see the pledge eliminated from the landscape of public school use. Given the recent Appeals Court rulings that teacher-led recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools was unconstitutional, Red Skelton's words now strike many as remarkably prescient and more prophetic than even he imagined.
To Masons the recitation of the Pledge has been left to the discretion of the Master of each Lodge and performed informally before the commencement of any official act of the proceedings. To exclude the Pledge from the formal proceedings was the result of the discussion by returning war veterans from the Great War or World War I, and a protest to the Grand Lodge's practice then of excluding petitioners who were not "whole of limb." Francis Bellamy, a Baptist Preacher and Committee Member of the National Education Association wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. In his Pledge, he expressed the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, "Looking Backward" and "Equality." Both were members of Little Falls Lodge No. 181, Little Falls, New York.
Both would concur with the current condition of the Pledge as being left discretionary in Masonic lodges. Nationalism is politics and every learned Mason knows that demonstrations and discussion along those lines have no place in the lodge hall once the formal proceedings have commenced. That is not to say, however, that Masons do not revere Patriotism. That quality is on par, in the Masonic mind, as the essential duties owed to the individual's religious faith. Charity and justice require each of us to make a conscience decision to decide for ourselves how to manifest our beliefs and not impose our notions on others. Therefore, like the example of our kind hearted Brother Red Skelton, we must recognize that the opportunity remain present to make the choice. However a Brother chooses to exercise his privilege, to salute the flag or remain seated, I pray that all lodges retain the strength to respect his decision without conflict and inappropriate hard feelings.
Torence Evans Ake PM
Senior Deacon
Auburn Park Lodge No. 789
August 2006
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