Scottish Rite special screening highlights Masonic influences in 'National Treasure'

Fort Scott Scottish Rite Consistory member Scott Chitwood takes his turn helping himself to the homemade pizza served at Thursday night's meeting. Chitwood is an eight- year member and a degree master with the Scottish Rite Masons.

By Mitzi R. Shead

Herald-Tribune

Fort Scott, Kan. -- Bad weather tends to go along with the month of January.

With that fact in mind, the Scottish Rite Masons from Fort Scott and surrounding areas decided to schedule a fun night for their members and invite the general public. That way, if bad weather prevented some members from attending, they wouldn't miss an important business meeting.

"We normally have to cancel our meeting for this time of year, due to bad weather," Fort Scott Scottish Rite Masons Executive Secretary Keith Jeffers said.

But this year they planned to beat the bad weather, and beat it they did.

"What was normally the snowed-out meeting of the year seems to be, this time, the most popular meeting of the year," Jefferson said prior to the meeting.

Fort Scott Scottish Rite Temple hosted a dinner and a movie for their regular members as well as the general public, Thursday night.

"National Treasure" was the chosen film, starring Nicholas Cage and featuring a treasure hunt involving clues left by this country's founding father, who also happened to be Masons.

The dinner, homemade pizza, was made by members and was included along with the movie for $6-per-person. Charles C. Blatchley, a Masonic historian and Pittsburg State University professor, provided information about the Masonic influences shown in the movie and mentioned interesting things to watch for during the movie.

"When the movie first came out, I heard a lot of Masons were going to the movie theater wearing Mason regalia," Blatchley said.

Though the movie is not accurate when it comes to depicting Masonic history, it is, according to Blatchley, "Hollywood at its best."

Blatchley made suggestions -- prior to the showing of the film -- of things to watch for during the movie.

The first was Charles Carroll of Charrollton, a man who, until his death in 1832, was the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and a man to whom Blatchley is related and is named after.

In the film, Carroll gives a clue to the finding of the treasure of the Knights Templar to the great-great-grandfather of the film's hero, throwing generations of his family into a treasure hunt.

Though Carroll was never a Mason, as the movie indicates, eight signers of the Declaration of Independence were known to be Masons, including Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Robert Trent Payne.

Many members had already seen the movie, but according to the talk after the showing, enjoyed it just as much when watching it again.

"It was better than expected," Jefferson said after the event.

"What we really want to emphasize is that our meetings are open to the public," Jefferson said.

Jefferson said that around 20 non-members attended the meeting along with 25 members.

Scottish Rite Masons are America's largest private organization involved with remedying communication disorders in children, and the Kansas Masons alone have donated $15 million to KU Med Center cancer research and prostrate cancer research.

In an article in the most recent special issue of the Scottish Rite Journal, Sovereign Grand Commander C. Fred Kleinknecht was quoted as saying, "the essence of the Scottish Rite is "to learn to be better and to do good in the world."