July 1, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

My home office is in what decades ago was the dressing room for the Toulon Independent Order of Odd Fellows, adjacent to the old IOOF lodge hall (members wore gowns and regalia to lodge).
With a lineage that goes back to the guilds in 16th Century England, the Odd Fellows (which did not mean “odd” as we think of it), now mostly defunct, comprised a fraternal organization such as the Masons, and later in the U.S., more of a service club.
I am active in my local Lions Club, [another club] that does good works for our community.
But our numbers have dwindled precipitously. From a hundred members when chartered in 1948, we now gather but a handful for our monthly meetings, mostly old duffers like me.
Where have all the Lions gone, and does it really matter?
As early as the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America was a nation of joiners, “forever forming associations.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.