MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Mooseheart Service
The McGee Children
By LOUIS W. HARVISON
Among the papers on Bro. McGee’s person when he met his death was the Mooseheart pamphlet. Often the wife would look over these papers and one day when looking over the pamphlet it prompted her to ask admission for her three boys to MOOSEHEART.
The mother made known the desire to place her boys at MOOSEHEART and the lodge secured admittance blanks. The Governors’ after carefully considering the case and giving it proper investigation had the McGee boys admitted as students.
On Oct. 1st the McGee boys came to MOOSEHEART. They are: Thomas Francis, age 11; John Joseph, age 9; and Mathew McGee, age 6. They have entered into the MOOSEHEART life in a most pleasant way and say they are happy.
Hadn’t the McGee boys entered into MOOSE-HEART they probably would have become urchins of the street, later to work in some mill and would have drifted into a bad crowd of boys and men, such as is the case of most boys who are left at a young age to earn their livlihood; but, at MOOSEHEART they will be taught the right kind of living, given a good education and a trade and their young lives will be nothing but happiness and content.
Walnuts are ripe and all the boys are busy gathering the harvest. Most any day you can see the three McGee boys coming over the hill from the Lake Woods with their backs bowed under the weight of a lumpy gunny-sack whose contents proclaim the walnut harvest. Their hands black, their back weary, their shoes muddy, their heart full of joy.
This Christmas will be another happiness for the McGee boys and they will be made to forget the past. When they wake up on Christmas morning they will find that Santa Claus has not forgotten; their stockings will be filled with goodies, their bedsides heaped-up with toys. Such is the way of MOOSE-
TJ
!
^HE McGee family was the happiest in the world for on Christmas Day of 1918 they had been blessed with another child, a tiny baby girl. The mother and baby had taken the place of Santa Claus and the Christmas tree and the father and other five children looked bn in admiration and were made far happier by that little life than by any amount of glit-teringly ornamented trees or heaps of presents.
Bro. Thomas F. McGee was a member in good standing of Philadelphia Lodge No. 54 and also a native of that city. He was a great believer in the Loyal Order of Moose and MOOSEHEART and knew that should anything happen to him his beloved family would be provided for.
Bro. McGee was a brakeman on a railroad, earned a good salary but was unable to put anything away for a rainy day. It cost all his earnings to clothe and feed the family of seven and now there would be an “extra” bill for services given his beloved wife.
It was on March 30 th, 1919 that Bro. McGee met with his sudden death. On that day, in the afternoon, he went to the Moose Temple to pay his dues. When leaving the secretary’s office he asked for a phamphlet telling “all about that MOOSEHEART school.” He then walked briskly out of the building and started to cross Broad Street when a speeding: automobile hit and instantly killed him.
This was a great blow to the wife who had just been dismissed from convale-scense. She realized her helplessness and thought that charity would be the only help for her six children and herself but —. The lodge gave Bro. McGee a proper burial and saw that the family would not be in want.