In an age where technology seems to be the connection of choice between people, it seems fewer and fewer seek out fraternal organizations.
But the connection between Merritt and the local Patricia Rebekah Lodge is still going strong.
Patricia Rebekah Lodge #33 celebrated its centennial last month by hosting about 40 people from lodges around the region.
The major milestone was commemorative of the meetings that started it all way back in March of 1914.
Those interested in establishing a Patricia Rebekah Lodge in Merritt held a meeting one day, and by the next, there were 20 applications to process for membership. By the end of that year, 48 members had joined the Rebekahs.
The Rebekahs are a sister service club to the Independent Order of the Oddfellows, a fraternal organization that has members in 19 countries.
Members of the organization can belong to any faith, but are united by the belief in a supreme being.
The group is named for the biblical figure Rebekah, with her kind and caring heart.
Over the years, the Rebekahs have supported numerous local projects such as Christmas hampers, the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Big Bike and the Berta Fraser Day Centre. Members visit with the sick and delivered meals on wheels for years. They also continue to provide a bursary to a student graduating from MSS.
“We do a lot of good around town and we don’t always broadcast it,” said Phyllis Riley, who’s been a member of the club for 61 years.
Today, Riley is the club’s warden, and looks after the regalia and makes sure the meeting room is in order.
Those meetings take place on the second and fourth Monday of each month except July and August at the Merritt lawn bowling club house.
The former local Oddfellows and their long-standing sisters have quite a storied history in town involving their meeting places.
In the early 1920s, the Oddfellows had built their first hall, but a fire at the back of the hall in 1945 would result in the building being totally demolished.
It was rebuilt and a lodge room added in the lower hall, but another disastrous fire would strike on Halloween night in 1965. Although another hall was built yet again, it would prove to be hard to maintain financially. At that time, Merritt was booming and other organizations’ halls were springing up.
In the 1970s, the Oddfellows’ membership declined to only five, and the Oddfellows had to sell their hall. The new owners eventually sold the hall and property to the City of Merritt, which turned it into Spirit Square.
The five members gave up their charter and transferred to the Kamloops lodge.
While all that was going on, the Rebekah sisters rented various halls and continued to meet in members’ homes.
One of their meeting places, the downstairs of the Grasslands Hotel, would prove to be yet another fiery hurdle for the club to overcome.
In 2007, the fire that completely gutted the Grasslands Hotel and resulted in its demolition would also swallow everything the Rebekahs had, including their piano, an altar built by Brother Frank Muldowan, and their original Bible — which had survived the other two fires.
“The last one was the worst one. We lost all our stuff in that fire,” Riley said.
But Patricia would carry on, as furniture and other donations from other lodges came to the rescue.
Today, she said the group averages about 15 or 16 people a meeting, and is typically in the 20s for membership. They still have their social hour, of course, after the meeting’s business.
Riley said the group is always seeking new members, and membership is open to men as well.
