A Memorial Day Weekend like I've never spent before

June 14, 2006

By JOHN CROWLEY
BLOGGING ON ARGUSCOURIER.COM
POSTED JUNE 1, 2006 2:21:00 A.M.

(Each week, we focus on one of our bloggers. John Crowley is one of the newest additions to the Argus-Courier blog team, and his other musings can be found at http://crowley-blogs.arguscourier.com.)

Sitting on a red-eye flight last Friday night trying my best to pass as much as possible of the 3.5-hour flight asleep, I started thinking about the past year and why I was even flying to Chicago and not spending it barbecuing with my family.

I never in a million years thought I would be spending my Memorial Day Weekend attending a Moose convention, but there I was, traveling 1,842 miles to visit Moose headquarters and find out more about this fraternal organization.

As few as 18 months ago I hadn't even heard of the Moose. I guess, back them, my first impression was that it was some kind of a club for retired persons and some may even say that, due to attrition, that's what it had become. However, as some of you know, it is far cry from that here in Petaluma.

At 5:10 in the morning I landed at O'Hare with about two hours sleep. A half-hour ride to Chicago's downtown Hyatt, a quick freshening up and onto the bus destined for Mooseheart, a child city and school -- one of the Moose organization's raison d'être. Created in 1913 to care for children whose parents, for a variety of reasons, are unable to provide for them, it is a fantastic 1,000-acre campus with teaching, medical and sports facilities that would wildly exceed anything comparable. It's so big, it even has its own ZIP code.

Struggling from the lack of sleep, I attended my first ever high school graduation ceremony here in the U.S. -- a precisely coordinated event aided expertly by the local NJROTC that reflected the quality of care and education that the graduates receive at Mooseheart.

I met Jeremy, a forward-thinking Moose from New York, who mentioned that he was instrumental in the filming of Bravo TV's "Queer Eye" episode about a Moose lodge in New York (if anyone has a copy that I could watch, please let me know). We chatted about the need to move with the times and how to position the Moose to accept and indeed embrace the changes that are happening in society.

Many great and magical people and ideas come from Petaluma, and one of these inspiring persons is Janet Fregulia, who is now the top person heading up the Women's Moose organization. Janet had joined the organization many years ago right here in Petaluma, then about seven or eight years ago had moved to Chicago to steer the organization into the 21st century. After all these years she still receives her copy of the Argus-Courier every week, so she knew right away who I was and how we'd revitalized the Petaluma lodge. Of course, she also knew from Moose internal reports that we are the fastest-growing lodge in the country.

We talked about some of the new and exciting but non-traditional events that we are creating in Petaluma to attract a younger membership such as the Conversation Café, the Foreign Movie Night, the wildly successful Acoustic Open Mic Night and the Moose Lecture Series which will be starting this summer.

On Memorial Day, we were treated to an inspiring speech given by retired Navy Captain Gerald Coffee who was shot down while flying combat missions over North Vietnam in 1966. As he recounted his time in a North Vietnam prison and how he survived the solitary confinement for so long, I thought how small and insignificant my minor troubles seemed in comparison.

Up and out of my hotel on Tuesday morning at 5 a.m., (I was getting used to see the sun rise) and back on to another 1,842 mile flight to SFO.

"Use your seat bottom as a flotation device" were the last words I heard as I incredibly managed to doze off into a seat built for someone half my size.

(To find out what else John and other Petalumans are talking about on the Argus-Courier blogs, visit www.arguscourier.com/blogs.)