5 minute read
A Mason to Emulate
from OMN - 2024 April
by W.B. Myron E. Miles, Grand Orator
My dad, W.B. Kenneth W. Miles, grew up on a small ranch along the Powder River just below Sumpter Valley. He finished his 8th grade education in the one-room school at Lockhart that I later attended. As a teenager, he and his brothers logged and sold cordwood to fi re the locomotives on the narrow gauge Sumpter Valley Railroad. From that he moved up to become a logger for the Stoddard Lumber Co. that logged the forests on the south side of Sumpter Valley and shipped the logs on the narrow-gauge railroad to mills in Baker City. He won the heart of the prettiest girl in the valley, married her, and started a family. When World War II broke out, he used his limited railroad experience to land a job with Union Pacific as an “essential worker” in the war effort and moved to the major switchyard for Eastern Oregon in Rieth, just west of Pendleton. He was working a double shift on a rainy night when he was bucked off a boxcar that he had climbed to the top of to set the hand brake, was run over and lost his left leg just above the knee. He survived, recovered, and was fitted with a wooden leg (made from willow), held on by a steel and leather belt around his waist. He then returned to Baker County to buy the old home ranch from his parents where he resumed haying the meadows along the river, riding horseback caring for the cattle in the mountain pastures, and returned to his first love of logging the timber growing on the ranch. Starting with a worn out, used D4 Caterpillar tractor, he built a business of contract logging for other timber owners as well as several sawmills in Baker. He drove “Cat”, set his own chokers, loaded logs on trucks with the “jammer”, and cruised timber both afoot and horseback. No one ever thought of him as a cripple. He was the toughest man I have ever known. His association with the neighboring ranchers, timber owners, dredge workers, miners, and business owners in Sumpter Valley, most of whom were Masons, led him to petition and be raised a Master Mason in McEwen Lodge No. 125. He found a close parallel between the morals and principles of Masonry and the way he had lived his life, establishing a reputation of honesty and integrity and being a man of his word. Although limited in education, he became a strict Ritualist, memorizing his parts, and studying the Ritual nearly every morning the rest of his life.
Although McEwen 125 is a small Lodge in a declining ghost town in the Elkhorn Mountains, it wasn’t always that way. It was chartered June 16, 1904, in the bustling gold rush town of Sumpter by ranchers, miners, dredge workers, railroaders, bankers and businessmen and flourished until tragedy struck in August of 1917, when a fire burned most of the town to the ground, including the prominent new two-story Lodge Hall. The town never really recovered, but the Lodge was a survivor and lived on. Kept alive by loyal members who were used to adversity in their daily lives, it welcomed my dad and his work ethic and dedication. He was Master when I came of age and mentored me through the memory work and studied hard to be able to raise me as a Master Mason. He also raised his grandson, M.W.B. Craig A. Sipp. In December 1994, he and Ralph Morgan, my brother-in-law, and I traveled to The Dalles to install Craig for his first time as Master of Wasco Lodge No. 15.
My dad was an excellent example of a Mason who took our teachings, morals, and principles to heart, doing his best to live by them and to pass them on to his sons, grandsons, and others. He didn’t know it, but he was pioneering Masonry forward. That legacy is sorely needed in today’s world as we struggle to cope with the pressure and stress of changing times. We must be the ones to help make today’s good men better as we continue to set an example by Code and conduct and Pioneer Masonry Forward.
