The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Don't Get Around Much: "We get out and ask people if they want to join, and a lot of people say they don't have time, that they pertain themselves more to home," says Peter Giammona, secretary of the Fraternal Order of Eagles No. 8.

WG Elks and Eagles are on the endangered species list

In our high-tech world, are dwindling fraternal lodges still relevant?

By Cecily Barnes

It's 2 p.m. at the Elks Lodge in Willow Glen, and the parking lot is desolate. An elderly man in a La-Z-Boy snoozes in the front lobby, his mouth hanging open, while two or three people fold pamphlets beneath the electronic bingo board in the main hall.

Welcome to the fraternal lodges of the 21st century. These once-thriving social centers, which at one time attracted one in every five to eight men, have today dwindled to scattered groups of seniors wondering what the heck happened.

In the past 20 years, membership has dropped steeply in nearly every fraternal order in San Jose and across the nation. San Jose's Elks Lodge went from 3,300 members in the 1970s to its current roster of 1,228. The Fraternal Order of Eagles plummeted from 5,400 members in the 1940s to 100 members today.

Willow Glen's Moose Lodge has dropped from 800 members in 1980 to 500 today. Nationally, membership in the Lions has dropped by 12 percent, the Elks by 18 percent and the Masons by 39 percent.

Harvard University Professor Robert D. Putnam theorizes that this decline represents the decay of communities in America.

"Many major civic organizations have experienced a sudden, substantial and nearly simultaneous decline in membership over the last decade or two," Putnam writes. "The most whimsical yet discomforting bit of evidence I have discovered is this: between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America increased by 10 percent, while league bowling decreased by 40 percent."

Of course, bowling hardly equals political activism, Putnam acknowledges, but the greater significance "lies in the social interaction and even occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza that solo bowlers forgo," he says. This same interaction occurs at lodges across the nation--or at least it used to.

'Too busy' to join

When 86-year-old Joe DiSalvo was a younger man, he lunched at the San Jose Elks Lodge in Willow Glen nearly every day of the week. He would spend mornings at his Lincoln Avenue appliance shop and typically hit the club at least every other day. Always, he says, the place was packed. Men would bring their clients, business associates and out-of-town guests. In the evening, a card game was always going on.

"I would go to lunch every day. I would go by myself, or if a merchant salesman came in, I would take them," says DiSalvo, 25-year owner of DiSalvo Appliances on Lincoln Avenue and an Elks member since 1937. "I would also use the swimming pool and the steam room and sauna."

But the club was more than just a place to socialize. Its members were and continue to be active fundraisers in support of local charities. Weekly meetings determine how the funds should be spent.

"We are the largest nonprofit organization granting scholarships, second only to the U.S. government," says Elks historian Dick Bartels. "We support little league, veterans and drug awareness programs."

But the 3,300 who were Elks members in the lodge's heyday have slowly dropped off the list due to death or ill health. And with younger people "too busy" to join, the list keeps getting shorter.

The lodge was unable to provide statistics about whether charitable contributions have declined along with the membership. According to Elks secretary Raymond Monette, most of the lodge's ledgers have been destroyed by floods.

"We get out and ask people if they want to join, and a lot of people say they don't have time, that they pertain themselves more to home," says Peter Giammona, secretary of the Fraternal Order of Eagles No. 8. "These are the answers we get."

In 1983, the Eagles moved from downtown to a much smaller Lincoln Avenue location, where Giammona does the cooking himself. The Elks Lodge stopped serving lunch and now leases out its kitchen and main assembly room to other community groups such as the Italian Men's Club. The Olympic-sized swimming pool gets little use, except when the wives bring their grandkids.

Antisocial animals

Peter Giammona, 78, wears a blue bowling shirt with the word "Pete" inscribed on the left breast pocket and a symbol of the Eagles order on the right. He has thinning white hair and a stocky body. At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, he is the only member at the lodge, a two-room building decorated with Eagle paraphernalia, paintings of the founding fathers and brown, orange and yellow shades.

Occasionally members will come just to hang out, but not much anymore, he admits. They used to march in all the parades, Giammona says, but it's hard to get around these days. And the charities, well, they still contribute--just not as much as they used to. So what exactly do they do?

"We have our meetings twice a month, and a dinner dance once a month," Giammona says. "And we support charities up to the hilt. Matter of fact, we just gave $2,000 to the Crippled Children's Society of Santa Clara County."

Still, Giammona admits, it's not like it used to be. In the 1940s, the order was 5,400 people strong, and members were provided with medical care, sick benefits and a lodge dedicated to philanthropy.

"We had doctors that took care of our people, and the lodge paid sick benefits," Giammona says. "If you had an illness for a week, you would get a stipend. It wasn't a lot, but it could put bread on the table."

Since most people get medical benefits through their job these days, there's little necessity to join a lodge. In the past, having free access to doctors was an enormous impetus for joining fraternal orders.

'Why go anywhere?'

Television, computers and just the changing times have been offered as reasons why lodge membership continues to sink. People are inundated with ways to spend their free time, and joining a fraternal order has slipped further and further down the priority list.

"The era has changed. People have more access to go somewhere else and enjoy themselves. Within an hour or so, you can be anywhere you want to--Reno or Vegas. It's not like it used to be, " Giammona says.

And even staying home is loads of fun; there's the Internet, computer games and, of course, television.

"If I can watch TV at home with my can of beer, why go anywhere?" Elks secretary Ray Monette asks rhetorically, holding up his arms.

Maybe Americans just aren't joiners like they once were. Harvard's Putnam cites statistics that show declines in union membership, parent-teacher group participation, Boy Scouts--and the number of people who socialize with their neighbors (see below).

And then there's the other explanation, clung to by the old, generation after generation.

"These young people," Giammona says. "They're a different breed, I tell you."

Divided We Stand

* The proportion of Americans who socialize with their neighbors more than once a year has slowly but steadily declined over the last two decades, from 72 percent in 1974 to 61 percent in 1993.

* The number of Americans who have attended a public meeting on town or school affairs in the past year fell from 22 percent in 1973 to 13 percent in 1993.

* Church-related groups constitute the most common type of organization joined by Americans; they are especially popular with women.

* Non-agriculture-related union membership has declined from 32.5 percent in 1943 to 15.8 percent in 1992.

* Participation in parent-teacher groups at schools dropped from more than 12 million in 1964 to barely 5 million in 1982, before recovering to approximately 7 million in 1995.

* Boy Scouts membership is down by 26 percent since 1970, and Red Cross membership by 61 percent.

* The American Association of Retired People grew from 400,000 in 1960 to 33 million in 1993.

Source: Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy, January 1995.

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