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Speaking of hanging in there -
Where would Shriners be today if Freeland Kendrick (Lu Lu Shriners,
Philadelphia) hadn't hung in there and fought for his vision of an
official philanthrophy?
Prospects didn't look good for Kendrick, there was a lot of doubt
about assuming the responsibility of a hospital to treat children with
orthopedic needs.
That was until, at that historic meeting in June 1920, Forrest
Adair (Yaarab Shriners, Atlanta) stood and delivered his "Bubbles"
speech that inspired all those attending to an unanimous vote. Shriners
Hospitals for Children was born!
Here
is an except of that famous speech as it appeared in the book, Parade to
Glory.
...Then, from his seat near the front of the city auditorium, arose
Forrest Adair. He was a striking man, with a heavy black mustache and
thick black hair. Like Melish, he was a power in all of the Masonic
circles of his home state. But unlike Melish, he was inspired. He could
foresee the opportunities that would lie ahead.
"I arise, unlike my friend, Past Imperial Potentate Melish, without
reluctance, but with enthusiasm," he said.
A hush fell over the auditorium as if the representatives could
sense what was to come. Adair continued: "I was lying in bed yesterday
morning, about four o'clock, in the Multnomah Hotel, and some poor
fellow who had strayed from the rest of the band and he was a
magnificent performer on a baritone horn stood down there under the
window for twenty five minutes playing `I am only blowing bubbles.'"
There was laughter, for even though it was prohibition days, there
was still plenty of Zem Zem water and camel's milk available, and the
representatives could understand what had happened.
"Do you get it?" Adair asked, and there was more laughter. "And
after a while, when I dropped back into peaceful sleep, I dreamed of a
little crippled children's hospital, run by the Scottish Rite fraternity
in Atlanta, Georgia, which has been visited by a number of members of
this Imperial Council, and I thought of the wandering minstrel of the
early morning, and I wondered if there were not a deep significance in
the tune that he was playing for Shriners `I am only blowing bubbles.'
"We meet from year to year; we talk about our great Order; we read
the report of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are accumulated
and loaned to banks and paid us for our mileage and per diem, and on our
visitations we stop in some oasis and we are taken in an automobile by a
local committee, and he first drives us by and shows us; `This is our
temple, our mosque. It is built of marble brought from Maine or Georgia.
The lot cost fifty thousand dollars; we could have sold it for two
hundred thousand before we built upon it. The building cost us a
million, and it could not be put up now for two and a half million.'
`What is that wonderful hospital over there?'
`That is the hospital of the Sisters of St. Mary.'
`What big school is that in the distance?'
`That is a school erected and maintained by the Catholic church.'
"And we get here and we hear the baritone. That fellow told us what
we are doing."
The hush over the auditorium deepened. Already, there could be no
doubt that Adair was delivering an inspired message, a message that was
to become known wherever Shriners gathered as the "bubbles" speech. One
member who heard it was so shaken that in later years he purchased three
copies of Sir John Millais' famous painting of a boy blowing bubbles,
one of which now hangs in the Greenville, South Carolina, unit of the
Shriners' Hospitals. But once started, Adair did not let up. There are,
he said, four hundred thousand cripples in the United States "and
unfortunately they are in the alms houses; they are in the homes; they
are mendicants; they are paupers; and the best alms you can give is that
which will render alms unnecessary.
"My Brother Melish goes back to these other resolutions which have
been postponed from year to year, while we blow more bubbles and sing
again `Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.' This resolution has been
changed. It does not establish, Brother Melish, a home. The word there
is `hospital; the Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children.' I presume
that any intelligent committee that may be appointed by the incoming
Imperial Potentate will provide rules that, in the first place, no child
be admitted unless in the opinion of the surgeons, after careful
examination, its trouble can be corrected or benefited."
At the Scottish Rite hospital, Adair said, no feeble minded were
admitted. He said that the Atlanta institution had started with only
eight thousand dollars in capital, but that it had had no hard time
getting money all it wanted "as long as God Almighty continues to put an
occasional drop of the milk of human kindness in our blood."
Adair described some of the work that had been done in Atlanta,
naming the names of the children whose crooked bodies had been improved.
He said:
This resolution merely recognizes the fact that we appreciate that the
responsibility is upon us, and while we have spent money for songs, and
spent money for bands and they mean so much to us, let us keep it up you
cannot put your finger on a thing that I know of that has been done for
humanity that can be credited to the Shrine as an organization. If this
is established, these little rules and regulations that Brother Melish
is so afraid of, will be taken care of by a competent committee. If they
don't do it right and devote themselves too much to Catholic children,
the Negro children, we can fire them and get another committee. I
apprehend we will not want to restrict it to the crippled children of
Shriners. We don't. The first prerequisite with us is that the child's
trouble may be corrected or improved. The second prerequisite is that
they shall be financially unable to pay. You could not get your child in
that hospital [Atlanta] if you would pay a thousand dollars a week,
because you would be depriving some little pauper of a bed.
I want to see this thing started. For God's sake, let us lay aside
the soap and water and stop blowing bubbles and get down to brass tacks.
Let's get rid of the technical objections. Let's blow all the dust
aside. And if there is a Shriner in North America, after he sees your
first crippled child treated, in its condition, and objects to having
paid the two dollars, I will give a check back to him for it myself.
I hope that within two, or three, or four or five years from now we will
be impelled from the wonderful work that has been done, to establish
more of these hospitals, in easy reach of all parts of North America,
and let it be known that while our friend, the enemy, is now about the
only institution that is establishing hospitals and schools and things
of that kind for the benefit of humanity, the Shrine is going to do them
one better. And every argument that Brother Melish makes, every argument
that Brother Melish has presented against this, is, to my mind, an
argument in favor of it.
Adair sat down to thunderous applause. There was no doubt of the
feeling of the session. He was followed by others Noble Robert Colding
of Atlanta; Noble Opie of Ararat in Kansas City; Noble Charles E.
Ovenshire of Zuhrah in Minneapolis; Noble Edward C. Day of Algeria in
Helena; Noble Henry Lansburgh of Almas in Washington; Noble F. F.
Whitcomb of Tangier in Omaha; and Noble J. Harry Lewis of Osman in St.
Paul.
Then, just as Deputy Imperial Potentate Garretson was about to put
the question to a vote, Kendrick offered a brief appeal.
"The time has come," he said, "when we should do something big. And
what can you do as big as to furnish a hospital for a poor little
crippled kid? Suppose it is black; suppose it is Catholic; God put it
here on earth and it is up to us to help it. And it means Canada as well
as the United States, for our jurisdiction is North America."
Again there was applause and then silence as the representatives
waited for a vote. Now Melish once more rose to his feet. "I want to say
just one word," he said. "I think I know how this thing is going. I
think the duty of us all, the duty of myself first, is that if action is
to be taken today, as it is, upon this matter, that we want to go before
the world showing that the vote was unanimous, and that is the way I am
going to vote."
And so he did. The vote was unanimous.
There is just one additional note of the Portland session at which
the hospitals were approved. In later years, at least four temples
claimed as their own the wandering minstrel who played, "I'm Forever
Blowing Bubbles."
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