Consecrated 28th November 1972
Meeting at: Johannesburg - Freemasons Hall, 8 Park Lane, Parktown
Meeting Dates: 4th Tuesday Jan, Feb, Apr, May, July, Aug, Oct, Nov Inst Nov
Contact 083 325 8577
Lodge History
The reason for forming a lodge was well expressed by W Bro George Hookham in the oration given at he Consecration: 'The founders of this new lodge are those who are experts at keeping machines heavier than air right up above the clouds. However, they must have their feet firmly on the ground ... In Ovid's poem on the founding of Rome, Romulus and Remus decided to put their faith in the omen of the birds – the aves .... and so today we .... 'put our faith' in a group of aviators'.
This reason was ratified in a resolution passed in the lodge in June 1974 to the effect that the lodge admits to membership 'only those persons who have acted officially as qualified air crew'.
And so the lodge blends the brotherhood of masonry with the esprit de corps of the world of aviation, as evidenced in particular by regular 'fly aways' to support country Installations, including those of Aviation's paired lodge, Gladwys, at Schweizer Reneke.
The Charter Master, W Bro Merton Freeman, was to become an Assistant District Grand Master in 1973, Deputy in 1981 and District Grand Master in 1989. The Charter Senior Warden, Bro Col Stanley Walters had an unusual masonic career for, although initiated in Natal in 1920, he dropped out of masonry until 1961, when he joined Corona Lodge. Then in 1967 he was a founder member of Verona Lodge but he still could not be persuaded to go forward to the chair. In the Mark, also, he reached a point and stuck there but suddenly decided to 'give it a go' and having shown - at the age of 74 - what he could do there, he signed up as Senior Warden Designate of Aviation and was the second Master.
Aviation Lodge had, in 1993, 56 members and continued, in the Secretary's words, to be 'fit and well'. It meets at Freemasons' Hall in Parktown, and in 1989 increased the number of meetings from six to eight per annum.
Reference: 'A Century of Brotherhood' by A A Cooper & D E G Vieler