Roma Lodge #1573

The Roma Lodge January article for the Il Leone normally would be filled with pictures of our annual Christmas party featuring a delicious ham and yam dinner, talent by our junior members, homemade pies for dessert made by members and a visit from Santa Claus. Each of our junior members would receive a Christmas stocking filled with candy and toys and everyone would have a great time.

Unfortunately, the year of 2020 has been anything but normal. We had a successful drive through polenta/stew dinner for over 125 of our members in November and scheduled a similar event for our annual holiday get-together. Unfortunately, just two days before the event the governor declared a shutdown for Tulare County and we had to notify over 110 members, who had RSVP to attend the event, we were forced to cancel it.

In 2020 we had also scheduled our 90th anniversary celebration for which we had a couple of local carpenters build a display case for our original charter which was made in 1930. Again, after a date had been selected, venue and caterer chosen, and invitations printed and mailed the event had to be canceled. Our annual ravioli dinner, our major fundraiser for the year, was also canceled and now the 2021 World Ag Expo has also been canceled. Roma Lodge has been at every show since it started in 1967 selling our traditional sausage sandwiches which has been a favorite of show goers from the beginning.

The lodge has not met since February and it does not look like it will meet for the foreseeable future. In January lodge dues for 2021 will be solicited. Each member will have to determine whether they will continue their membership in the lodge. Of our nearly 300 members we have 75 who have been members for over 40 years and of those 41 have been members over 50 years. Roma Lodge dues are $75 per year of which only 25 cents are kept by the lodge. ($21.52-OSDIA, $32.51-Grand Lodge, $4.98-Il Leone, $.74 Scholarship Assessment, and $15.00 Life Insurance-$74.75 Total)

We inform our members the best way to get a return on their dues investment is to attend monthly meetings, where we provide a free dinner for all the members, volunteer at the World Ag Expo food booth, ravioli dinner or annual Christmas party. If the lodge cannot hold these activities, it may become difficult for members to continue their membership when we cannot offer these incentives. We hope the pandemic will end soon and can return to our regular monthly meetings and other fundraising activities. We shall see!