Thursday, March 11, 2021

‘Brent Morris to retire’

     
S. Brent Morris
I wouldn’t want you to be caught unawares, thinking it’s some April Fools prank, so with his blessing I share the news that S. Brent Morris is retiring from his employment situation at the Scottish Rite at the end of the month. The details will be discussed in Issue 52 (Spring 2021) of The Journal of the Masonic Society, which is at the printer now and will reach our members next month.

Don’t panic. Brent will remain active in the Masonic fraternity! He’s your Brother Mason. He just won’t be in the official management and the de facto spokesman of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction. He has served as editor of The Scottish Rite Journal and as strategic communications director for the Jurisdiction for many years.

Let’s be honest: the grand masters and other politicians come and go, but it is the steadying hand of experience, governed by wisdom and knowledge, that leads us for the long term.

His successor, Bro. Mark Dreisonstok, has been in place already. I’m told part of the institutional knowledge Brent has imparted is a reminder to consult both this blog and the other one each morning to see what’s going on in this fraternity. Mark holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, where he specialized in medieval languages and literature, and has taught at many universities in the DC area. You may have read him in a number of Masonic periodicals and area newspapers.

Bro. Brent says he will take with him a portfolio of responsibilities—things he loves doing, such as editing the Scottish Rite Research Society’s annual Heredom, and the offerings of the recently revived Masonic Book Club. (The first of which, come to think of it, will reach us members in a couple of weeks.)

Brent is in his fiftieth year as a Freemason, and it wouldn’t be easy to enumerate the many stations and places in our fraternity where he has been an inspiring exemplar. Of course, he is a Founding Fellow of the Masonic Society. And a Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge 2076–the first American to be such. Grand Abbott of the Blue Friars. Naturally, a 33rd Degree Mason and holder of the Grand Cross in the real Scottish Rite.

He was made a Fellow of the Philalethes Society in 1980. Get it? Brent was made a Mason in 1971, and was elected to join the forty Philalethes Fellows nine years later.

The Masonic credentials and accolades go on almost endlessly. (Oh, and he wrote and co-wrote a bunch of books, including Committed to the Flames and this handy book.) Outside the apartments of the Temple, Brent holds a Mathematics Ph.D. from Duke. He labored as the Executive of the Cryptologic Mathematician Program of the National Security Agency, and has taught mathematics and computer science at Duke and Johns Hopkins. His affiliations in the math world are as impressive and numerous as his Masonic ties.

If you know him, you know of his expertise with card tricks—in essence, another manifestation of mathematics. He even wrote a book on that.

(None of the other tributes to Brent Morris you’ll see will include this obscure trivia, but way back in the first decade of the century, when Masonic cyberspace was primitive and small, one of the little rascals who constantly made a spectacle of himself with his various frauds called Brent names in such a bizarre outburst, I laughed so hard, the bowl of my Peterson 302 popped off its stem and tumbled down my shirt, the burning tobacco ruining everything in its path.)

I have pleasant memories of meeting him for the first time at a nearby Masonic dinner in 2007, and other “experiences” too.

Best wishes to you, Bro. Brent! Thank you for what you have given Freemasonry. (The retirement bash better look like something Leo Taxil would throw.) I hope to shake your hand again soon.
     

1 comment:

S. Brent Morris said...

Jay-- Thank you for your kind words. My job with the Supreme Council has been fun and satisfying. I only hope that my readers have enjoyed the Journal as much I have putting it together. --Brent