A lodge’s history is crucial to its future, but history comes with age and when those years are accompanied with decay, it can become difficult to see that future as bright. It’s a story that is all too real for the Brothers of Hialeah-Opa-Locka Lodge No. 391. Recently, our worst fear was realized when our already aging roof began to leak water into the lodge room, following Hurricane Irma.
Faced with dwindling finances and the seemingly impossible task of repairing our roof before it became too late, we not only increased membership dues and cut expenditures drastically, but also turned to one brother’s talents to raise money and see our roof fixed.
It turns out that my passion for photography led to a fundraising idea, where we would offer lodges across our district professional photography services in the form of masonic portraits for their newly elected officer lines, in exchange for a donation to our building fund.
The fundraiser quickly garnered support from the district and multiple lodges signed up to have their officer lines photographed during their upcoming installations. The district wide photo sessions were a tremendous success and not only helped us collect funds to fix our roof, but helped us do it sooner rather than later to avoid a potential disaster with the rainy season right around the corner.
Adversity brought our brothers together to fix an issue that could have spelled disaster for our beloved lodge. We are excited about repairing our building and hope to conduct district-wide portrait sessions every year. We hope that this will help us renovate other areas of our lodge and continue paving our way toward a bright future. Anyone interested in participating in our fundraiser and having Masonic portraits taken can contact us by visiting our website at www.hol391.com.
Sincerely & Fraternally,
Alejandro Zequeira
Worshipful Master
Hialeah-Opa-Locka Lodge No. 391
954.540.8202