The North Carolina Mason

May/June 2016 The North Carolina Mason Page 13 STATE, from previous Aberdeen Roman Eagle 550 held an afternoon blood drive April 8. ey were dedicat- ing the drive to Clement Faircloth. — Gene Maples Roxboro Person 113's 52 nd Annual Fish Fry was held May 6. e community looks forward to it every year as a great lunch and opportunity to help charities. — Michael Day Newport Members of Newport 706 are sup- porting a local food kitchen. Attendees of the lodge's April 4 first degree were being urged to bring food items for the effort to feed the needy. — Tom Boyle Newland Linville 489 held a breakfast on April 16. ey had an educational pro- gram on Masonic funerals. e public was invited to share the meal. — Terry Gevedon Conover Mason jars to fill with pocket change are popular fundraisers in several lodg- es. At Conover 709, they reassure you that if you don't have change, "Don't worry, we take cash and checks." — Conover Lodge Newsletter Laurinburg Laurinburg 305 held a blood drive on April 29. — Gene Maples Catawba Riverside 606 held their Annual Ham Day March 12. ey were also doing a 30 guns in 30 days raffle. — Steven Lee Pendergrass Hope Mills Lebanon 391 hosted their seventh Annual Lodge Golf Tournament on April 16. ey held it at Gates Four Golf Course in Fayetteville. ey of- fered door prizes as well as trophies for first, second, third, and last place teams. — Lebanon Lodge Newton Catawba 248 held a 30 for 30 at 30 gun raffle. One $30 ticket got you in for the drawing for a gun each day for 30 days. Only 1,000 tickets were sold. Pro- ceeds were for the Masonic Homes. — Hickory Lodge Candler Hominy 491 held a pancake break- fast (including eggs and sausage) for charity April 2. — Chris Manis On April 30, Hominy Lodge raffled a 50 th Anniversary Ruger 10/22 rifle. — Terry Gevedon Highlands Blue Ridge 435 recently bought two benches to make it more pleasant for you and others to sit around under the oaks on the campus at our Home for Children in Oxford. — Trestleboard Coinjock Currituck 463 hosted a Pancake Breakfast May 14. — Mark White Mount Airy Granite 322 held their Annual Ham and Egg Breakfast on March 12. ey started early (5:30 a.m.) and served until 10:00 a.m. It was seven dollars for dine-in or take-out. — Home Dearmin Weaverville Blackmer 170 held their barbecue fundraiser on May 7. e eight-dol- lar plates featured pulled pork, baked beans, slaw, and hushpuppies. — Terry Gevedon Huntersville Long Creek 205 was presenting Johnny Oates his Veteran's Emblem on March 14. e award celebrates his 50 years as a Mason. Long Creek Lodge held their An- nual Fish Fry on April 2. — Gary Cooke By DeVonna Mathis My husband, Bill, and I have a StarNews newspaper that is very special to us. It is dated Tuesday, February 16, 1999. You are thinking, "So what?" at's the day my husband and I flew out of New Hanover County airport for Hawaii via Los Angeles. We were on our way to attend the Conference of Grand Masters of Masons. Ma- sons from around the world would be attend- ing. It is a gala affair, so you pack all your favorite things — including a tuxedo for my hus- band and my favorite green sequin dress. We spent the night in Los Angeles, arriving the next day in Hawaii. We head for the baggage claim area. As we watch each person claim their bag and leave, we notice we are the only ones left without bags so we go make a miss- ing luggage report. Not being too con- cerned, we go on to our hotel, the Shera- ton Waikiki, thinking it would only be a matter of time and our luggage would be located. A day passes, no bags; two days pass, no bags. We begin to become very concerned at this point and decide to buy some clothes. My husband and I are both previous air- line employees, both hired in 1966 by Piedmont Airlines and later with U.S. Airways and American Airlines. I men- tion this because as an airline employee you never, never put anything of value inside your suitcase. Bill always wore his father's railroad watch, given to his father when he retired from Atlan- tic Coastline. For some reason, Bill had put this watch in a blue Crown Royal bag and stuck it in the middle of his suitcase. e watch has a 14-carat gold chain with a Ma- sonic fob on the end with a diamond in the middle. At the end of our stay in Hawaii, we still had not received our bags. Fast forward to Janu- ary 7 of this year, I re- ceive a phone call. Hear- ing a foreign-sounding voice, and thinking it is telemarketing call, I hang up. In a few minutes I get a second call, but before I could hang up the second time the voice asked for my husband. Bill had a stroke in April 2014 and has dif- ficulty with his speech, so I identified myself as DeVonna, his wife. e young man told me that the hotel was cleaning out their storage area and found our bags. After getting over the shock I began to ask all kinds of questions, but he was unable to answer since he was not there in 1999 and neither were most of the employees. Eventually, we worked it out to have the bags sent by FedEx. ey arrived January 19. Bill and I were like kids at Christ- mas. We could not wait to see if his father's watch was in his bag. My bag had never been locked, but Bill's bag had a metal lock on it. Now, how do we get it open? Bill goes over to his chest and opens up his jewelry box scratches around and pulls out the key. I'm amazed again: 16 years later and we still have the key. We open our bags and, to our surprise, they are exactly as we had packed them. Our pillows on top, which we always packed and had forgotten, and our clothes beneath. In the middle of Bill's bag, just as he packed it, was the blue Crown Royal bag with his father's watch. He wound it up, and it's ticking away. e next thing we wanted to know was, do these clothes fit after all these years? I tried on my favorite green se- quin dress. It fits! Next the slacks and tops. Bill tries on his tuxedo, it fits, so do his suits and other garments. We had a ball going through our time capsule of clothes. I unzip the front pocket of my suit case and there was the StarNews for Tuesday, February 16, 1999. As we have had time to soak this all in we realized had we not had our land line we most likely would have never gotten our bags back as the phone number on our luggage tags was a home phone number. We did not have cell phones in 1999. Miracles do happen! Bill and DeVonna's time capsule DeVonna and Bill Mathis pose in the clothes they had packed for a trip to Hawaii in 1999. Bill's father's watch.

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