At the end of June, Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone announced that he would be resigning. This set off a chain of events that resulted in Andrew Crockett, Noble Grand for True Fellowship 52, feeling compelled to resign mid-way through his term. To help us understand this decision, as well as take a review of what Andrew was able to learn and accomplish in his abbreviated term, he agreed to be interviewed for the Triple Links newsletter. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MW: What do you feel most proud of having accomplished in your six months as Noble Grand?
AC: There were several things that I’m pretty proud of. It’s like the fact that we did as large an installation as we did. And that was something that was really important to me because a lot of the older members who attended it said they hadn’t attended an installation for a lodge that was that large since the 20th century.
There is this narrative in a lot of lodges that the good times are in, you know, in the past. And what I’m dedicated to doing is letting us see a sneak peek of what the future could be. And having such an uproarious, well attended installation, it was something that I think gave people that sense.
And again, one of the other things I’m very proud of is how my lodge came together and supported our DDGM for the District 107 and 175th celebration of Odd Fellows in California. That was another wonderful, well attended, sold out, packed event. That again, shows that it’s like we don’t need to be nostalgic about the past, because our future is so compelling, we should embrace it. And it’s like this again shows up in the swag. It’s like the bolo ties have been consistently successful. In fact, I sold two more just today at Grand Lodge.
And it’s one of those things where I can see in both the old-timers and the newcomers that there is a future that’s starting to be seen through the mists of the morass of the present. And people are eager to get to it.
And something else that I’m proud of was, as I like to put it, we dug up some graves we found. The fact that our lodge had 15 unused grave sites that our lodge brothers and sisters had purchased many decades ago and just discovering that, and knowing that, and saying it’s like, this is something that is an extremely valuable resource for our members. How do we use it responsibly?
The fact that I’ve been, in my position as Noble Grand, starting the conversation with the Order of the Good Death, and how we can really get back to that mission of relieving the distressed and burying the dead. It’s like everything I’m proud of is where we have been continuing the never-finished journey of restoring our word of who we are as Odd Fellows.
MW: So, in your time as Noble Grand, what were some of the things you learned?
AC: There were three: Three things that I think were important lessons. When I approached the office, I had them as hypotheses that I was testing. The first one is: The power of linking together communities. And the best place that this is present is with the Larping group, Refuge LARP. Because, as of today, we confirmed that we do have a green light to start preparing a LARP weekend at the Three Links camp. This has been a journey that has been from the very beginning. In fact, all the Larpers got initiated my first week as Noble Grand, and my last week as Noble Grand, we finally secured the green light to go ahead with this project.
MW: Nice getting closure on that, huh?
AC: Yeah, it is. It is nice and poetic. The fact that we were able to get this done in such a short period of time, even though we thought it would be much shorter to get to this point.
MW: I also found it poetic that your first and last meeting as Noble Grand were both third degree ceremonies.
AC: Yes. That was one of the reasons I did that. Part of the reason why I set being noble grand as the resignation effective August 1st at 11:59 was that yesterday evening, August 1st, I was at the 175th anniversary of my Masonic Lodge, which is the oldest civic organization in the Santa Clara Valley. And we had the Grand Master of Masonry there, and the line officers of the Grand Lodge in attendance. It was a BFD, so to speak, and I was there as the sitting noble grand of the oldest Odd Fellows lodge in Santa Clara County. At the event celebrating the oldest Masonic Lodge in Santa Clara County, one of the things I learned by attending this event, because my Masonic brother Angelo prepared a historical lecture about the Lodge, and he highlighted that the first lodge building that San Jose 10 inhabited, at the corner of Santa Clara, St. and market, where the Chamber of Commerce is now, was the original Masonic Odd Fellows building.
And the San Jose Odd Fellows Lodge and San Jose Lodge #10 both occupied the same building as joint tenants. So there’s a history of these fraternities being very close and friendly with each other. It was very nice to be there representing the continuity of that cross fraternal connection.
MW: OK. Well, it’s good to hear some of what you’ve learned. But would you say the job was harder or easier than you anticipated?
AC: The job was more boring than I anticipated. In terms of the hypotheses, let me just finish up. So the first was that linking of communities is powerful. It can be challenging, but it’s huge. And something else I learned, is never underestimate the power of a member that’s very involved in other communities that you don’t see much of at the lodge. Because my hypothesis around there was, even if you have just one connection with somebody who’s connected with a bunch of other things, you can end up with something amazing happening. And the example I’ll give is “Hamiltunes”. This is one of those unexpected benefits that was not even on my radar when I took office, but it was just merely engaging in the question of, “oh, I haven’t seen you around Lodge. So great to see you again. What are you involved with? Ohh! Is that something we could do too?” And just exploring those connections ended up being a huge benefit.
So that’s another hypothesis, and the last one was, uh, and this gets into the difficulty of being Noble Grand, is what is the right amount of committees? How do you manage committees effectively? And that was a harder question to answer than I initially imagined, because I thought having bespoke committees dealing with each thing individually was the way to go. And what was fascinating was that by trying that hypothesis, we found it didn’t work. And then what we did was we tried to find affinities in these committees, and then clustered them based on their logical affinities, and just fewer numbers of committees. And this helped us have faster meetings.
And one of the innovations that I hope [Vice Grand and presumptive successor] Zandria takes on is recognizing that some committees might not need to report twice a month, but only once a month. And how do we structure that so that some committees report on the first meeting of the month and others on the second, so that it further expedites the meetings?
So these things? The parliamentarian aspect. It’s both boring and vital, and that was one of the lessons this time has taught me is that, if you love community, the thing that is going to make you a great community advocate is a tolerance for boredom. If you have that tolerance, you will be one of the best community advocates in your area. It’s kind of strange, but this is what I’ve been seeing first-hand this whole year.
MW: Well, we’ve talked about what you’re proud of, what is something that you wanted to accomplish but weren’t able to and maybe something you hope that your successor takes on?
AC: Well. One of the things I was really looking forward to was the Grand Master’s reception. And the other thing was restarting the fact that, our lodge, being a consolidated lodge, has 2 birthdays. We have the birthday in January, which is from Santa Clara 52, and then we have the birthday in November for True Fellowship 238. And the thing is, we had kind of fallen away. As we found out from the Shulers, that doing that celebration used to be a big annual thing, and we realized that it’s our sesquicentennial this year.
MW: Right, this year will be 150 years for True Fellowship 238.
AC: So that is pretty awesome! So those are two things that I’m very much looking forward to Zandria’s leadership as Noble Grand, and they were ones that I was looking forward to.
And I think that she will revel in them, and indeed she’s commented that she thinks it’s going to be really awesome, you know? Being a woman, noble grand, receiving the first woman Grand Master of the state in the Grand Master reception. She is excited about it, and I’m looking forward to supporting her and having her six months as Noble Grand be historic.
MW: So now that you aren’t Noble Grand, what will your focus be on? Maybe talk a little about why you had to step down.
AC: So, one of the reasons why I wanted to be Noble Grand in 2025 is because this isn’t an election year. Unfortunately, this year has been absolutely terrible in so many ways. And I work in government. I’m active in union politics. There’s a lot of things where I’m connected to the political sphere of Santa Clara County, including the fact that I ran for Santa Clara County Assessor in 2022, and got the most number of votes, both percentage and absolute, against a 28-year incumbent out of any challenger he ever faced in his time in office. So it was something where that was a big deal and I specifically chose this year because I was wanting it to be a quiet year politically, so that it wouldn’t interfere with my ability to enjoy a full year as Noble Grand. Unfortunately, two things have happened. One was Larry Stone, the assessor, after 30 years in office, announced, to everyone’s surprise, that he was resigning. And that resignation came as a surprise because he had frequently said that he planned to die in office! So this was quite a shocker, and he had already announced that he was planning to run for the 2026 election. It was a political earthquake. And because I had previously run for Assessor, I was tapped as the most logical person to be appointed to the vacancy this has created. So I suddenly was in this position where if I was appointed, it would be on August 12th.
And I looked at the calendar and I talked with my executive committee saying, OK, If I wait until August to find out definitively if I’m going to get this, it will be something where I step down and somebody has to step in, and they’ll only have five months in office, which means they don’t become a Past Grand. But if I step down in July and take nominations at the last meeting in July, it means that we can elect them in the first meeting of August and they can have six full months as Noble Grand, and they are able to become a Past Grand. And one of the challenges that was discussed in the Executive Board meeting was that our lodge has grown a lot recently, and so we’re entitled to a lot more slots at Grand Lodge, but we don’t have enough Past Grands in travel-worthy condition to send to the Grand Lodge.
So, we decided as a community that, even though this was me, you know, taking a risk politically, going out to try and seek this appointment, it’s something where there’s the best case scenario if I get appointed, and then everything’s cleared off my deck so that I can actually take care of business in the 84 day term that I would have. Or, the alternative is that I stepped down and I don’t get appointed. And in that circumstance, I would be able to be involved in the assessor campaign. That’s one of the things that’s been an expectation of me from my union involvement in all of this.
So I was going, even if I don’t get appointed, the likelihood is that I’m going to be tapped for a lot of political involvement this year because we’re having an election and it’s like “Crud, this was not my plan!” So I’m now available to deal with that, and one of the things that actually has me give a sigh of relief is that my union is going to be spearheading an effort to try and staunch the bleeding of the financial kind at the hospital, because we had a billion dollar hole blown in our budget by federal action. And we’re pursuing having a ballot measure on the November ballot where the assessor race is going to be, to do a sales tax increase in order to raise about 300 million.
MW: And you know we can’t talk about that in the lodge because that is definitely politics.
AC: Yeah, all of this is politics, and this is why I needed to step away, because it’s like I would never be able to serve. It’s like as long as I am a creature of politics, I would never be able to serve in an even-numbered year. And the reason I chose an odd numbered year was because this was supposed to be a quiet year!
And instead it’s like one of the worst political earthquakes in my lifetime. So accordingly, that has unfortunately impacted my ability to serve. And the thing I’m proudest of is that my lodge recognizes my commitments and they say, “Yeah, we are a healthy enough community that we can step in and give you relief.” And that was something I was discussing this last week with some of the brothers and sisters in the lodge. Part of our duty is to relieve the distressed, and this fact pattern has been terribly distressing to me. And if we do not relieve our own distress, relieving the distress of others just makes us hypocrites. So we have to mind the care for ourselves and make sure that we’re recognizing that there’s only so much a human body can take.
MW: I thought you had an excellent six months as Noble Grand and I look forward to seeing what you do next. And just personally. I want to thank you for making clear that your commitment to the degree lodge is solid, even if you do become the interim assessor.
AC: Yeah. If I was appointed to that, I would still be going to the degree weekend because honestly, it’s like, the fact that Masons are now talking about what we’re doing at the degree lodge, we’re making waves with this thing, and I’m very proud of it, and I want us to continue to pursue positive growth.
MW: Alright, thank you for sitting for this interview. And I know that in about a week and a half, you’re going to turn 40, and you’ll either be the interim assessor of Santa Clara County or you won’t, but either way, we’ll have a party for you at the next potluck.
AC: I can tell you that no matter how it breaks, and it does look likely that I won’t be appointed, but however this thing breaks out, I will be so much less stressed on August 13th than I will be up until the 12th.
MW: Well, thank you for your six months of loyal service and good luck!
— Mason Wolf and Andrew Crockett