By Anthony Stoeckert Special Writer
As it marks 50 years of fraternity and public service, Princeton Elks Lodge No. 2129 is getting a makeover.
Not just at its headquarters, a converted barn on Route 518 in Montgomery (Blawenburg), but also in its membership, which has added some younger faces in recent years.
“I would have to say with the last year, because of the new group of people coming in — and because we’ve had the opportunity to go back and look at what we did in the past because we had that 50th anniversary — it’s kind of revitalizing the Princeton Lodge, as well as our charitable activities,” says Robert Church, who has just began a one-year term as the lodge’s “exalted ruler.”
Mr. Church is in his sixth year with the Princeton Elks. He was 40 when he joined and the average age, he says, “was well up into the 70s.”
That’s changing. Seniors remain an important part of the lodge, but Mr. Church says younger members are joining. The lodge signed up about 80 new members in 2009 (bringing the total to 320) and is going through about 25 active applications.
Many of those new members are bringing their kids to lodge functions, like this year’s Super Bowl party, something that was noticed by Buddy Cavanaugh, a member since 1973.
“This room was only children,” says Mr. Cavanaugh of the lodge’s main banquet room that night. “They had a buffet, they had crafts, they had Wii, TVs, activities for the kids. I never saw it so busy. I came in to go the bar … I couldn’t get to the bar, I was just amazed at all the people.”
The bar was equally packed with adults, watching the game. Everyone at the party was either an Elk or an invited guest. “It was just marvelous,” the 75-year-old Mr. Cavanaugh says.
“I think the seniors in our lodge are revitalized by it, too. because they see this younger generation starting to pick up what they began,” Mr. Church says. Those younger members are also revisiting some of the older generation’s traditions, such as the lodge’s Halloween party, which made a return last fall after several years.
The national Elks organization began in the mid- 1800s under the name the Jolly Corks. It was started by a New York performer named Charles Vivian as a way to get around the city’s “blue laws,” which banned drinking alcohol on Sundays. A funeral led the members to turn the club into a fraternal and charitable organization. The group’s official name eventually changed to the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks.
The Princeton lodge opened in 1959 and moved to its current location in 1973. The lodge was recently renovated, most notably its banquet room, which hosts lodge functions and is available to rent for showers, weddings and other occasions.
Requirements for being an Elk include being an American citizen, believing in God, not being convicted of a crime and wanting to help others. “The cornerstones of the order are Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity,” Mr. Church says.
Mr. Church says there was a definite view of the Elks as an old person’s group when he joined, but he met some members when he and his wife hosted a Sweet 16 party for one of their daughters at the Elks’ banquet room.
“I was retired from the New York Police Department, had lived in Montgomery, back then, for about five or six years, and didn’t know a lot of people within Montgomery,” he says when asked why he joined. “A couple of guys that I had met in passing kept saying, ‘You should join.’ And it was a way to meet people and to also be involved in some charitable activities.”
The social and charity aspects are two things about the Princeton Elks that haven’t changed. Much of the group’s efforts are geared toward helping special needs children. Those include raising money to send special needs children from the lodge’s area (which covers Princeton, Hopewell, Montgomery, West Windsor and Plainsboro) to Elks Camp Moore in Haskell, a camp run by the New Jersey State Elks Association.
“It’s a camp that provides one-to-one care for severely disabled children to have a camp experience,” Mr. Church says. “Each Elk Lodge in the state raises funds and supports ‘camperships’ for those children to go there and have that camp experience.”
“Camp Moore is a great thing, it’s super for the kids,” says Frank Drift, a member of the Elks for 41 years. “It needs to be funded. If you don’t have the money to help fund it, it will go away.”
Another important cause for the Elks is helping veterans. Mr. Church says Elks lodges throughout the state helped raise money for a specially outfitted bus to transport injured troops from Fort Dix to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C.
“We also welcome the troops home when they come in,” Mr. Church says. “We’ll go down there and work with the USO to make meals for the families and the troops when the come in from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places overseas.”
Assisting veterans was one of the main reasons Mr. Cavanaugh joined.
“I was interested in helping veterans because I was in the National Guard since I was 17,” he says. “One of the (concerns) at that time was, What can we do for the vets? And so I chaired a committee.”
One of his first efforts in that area was hosting a party for veterans from a nearby veteran’s hospital. “We got a group of veterans and brought them to the lodge for dinner and dancing,” he says.
Other charitable causes the Elks take up are raising money for children with cancer to get treatments. They also raise scholarship funds for area students and provide disabled people with wheelchairs and other needed equipment.
Working hand-in-hand with the Elks’ charity work are the social functions the lodge hosts. One of the most important ones took place in February when the lodge celebrated its golden anniversary. It’s shaping up to be a busy year for the lodge, and that’s the way they like it. Sitting in the building he helped renovate in the 1970s, Mr. Cavanaugh is asked what being in the Elks all these years has meant to him.
“The camaraderie and knowing community people, there are a lot of people in the community you wouldn’t know otherwise,” he says. “You feel like the Elks really contribute, you’re one small part of it.”
To contact the Princeton Elks, write to secretary@princetonelks212 9.org or visit www.princetonelks2129.org .
