ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. (AP) - About a century ago, 10-year-old Stan Longdon arrived at Masonic Children’s Home, an imposing stone building rising on a hill on the southern edge of Elizabethtown.
He’d traveled from Pittsburgh, sent to live at the children’s home for orphans and other children whose families could not care for them. Stan, his widowed mother and sister had lost their home and had been reduced to living in a single, rented room.
Masonic Children’s Home would provide him shelter. The Masons would feed and clothe him and make sure he got his education; the staff would provide guidance and discipline.
Their medical care would even save his leg - perhaps his life - after a Masonic Freemasons Hospital doctor on campus, in those days before antibiotics, successfully treated a significant wound he had suffered in a fall.
And as he grew up and started a sales career, when he settled in Greensboro, North Carolina, Longdon made sure he supported the home - and its children - however he could.
“I think it was (his true) home for him, I really do,” says Evelyn Hunter-Longdon, a nurse-anesthetist who married Longdon in the early 1980s. “He’d talk about the cow barn and the orchards, those kinds of things. They had a little pond they could swim in.
“When we met, one of the first things he said was, ’I want to take you there.’”
And though Longdon passed away in 1996, his presence at the children’s home is still tangible. The most recent example: A donation made by his widow for $83,500 to support a $2.2 million renovation project of the children’s cottages and facilities.
“I was just thinking, as I worked outside, who influenced me in the desire to give and help others,” Hunter-Longdon said by phone from her Greensboro home. “The answer is, my mother and Stan. As a little child, my mother always told me it’s better to give than receive. And Stan always gave, both of himself and monetarily.” Hunter-Longdon, like her late husband, also lost her father at a young age.
Giving “has always seemed the right thing to do, especially for children,” Hunter-Longdon says. “Masonic Children’s Home makes a difference in children’s lives. I’m happy to be a small part of it.”
A revelation
Late in the morning of Aug. 26, there were some jitters outside the girls’ cottage at the children’s home. School would start on Monday, but that wasn’t what was causing such impatience.
It was the big reveal of this phase of the renovation project: an entirely new interior, furnishings and design for this home that houses about 20 girls.
When noon hit, the doors opened.
And then, says Ginny Migrala, the squealing began.
The girls raced around their new home, marveling at all the touches - many of which were exactly what they’d requested. A giant kitchen. A big chalkboard for house messages. Squishy furniture in the upstairs living room. A redesigned, finished basement for hanging out.
And, maybe best of all: a bedroom of her very own, for each girl, with bedding each girl had picked out for herself and a chalkboard wall she can decorate any way she likes.
“There were so many thank-yous, so many hugs,” says Migrala, director of children’s services at Masonic Village.
It was the first large-scale renovation of the cottages since they were built nearly 24 years ago, Migrala said, and though “we’d been asking, ’can we remodel, can we remodel’ for the last couple years,” the renovation work had a very short window for completion.
Preparation began in May, the girls’ cottages were vacated June 20 and the final inside touches were finished the day before the big reveal.
They include two additional second-floor bedrooms, made possible by closing a towering living room ceiling that essentially was “wasted space,” Migrala says. There’s a sleek white kitchen, with a dining table big enough to accommodate everyone; artwork; hooks for backpacks and jackets; a cushioned window seat on the stairway up to second-floor bedrooms. The bathrooms, too, were completely redone with bright colors coordinated right down to the bath towels.
Work on the exterior continues, and then there’s a break until next year, when the boys’ cottages are renovated.
And Migrala fully expects the personal touches that are evident in the girls’ cottages will be adapted for the boys, too.
For example, she says, “We love the chalkboard (bedroom walls). We’re always struggling because kids always want to have (their own) identity, and be an individual, and not have a cookie-cutter approach to anything.
“So being able to do that but not put a zillion holes in the wall?” Migrala says with a laugh. “That was my goal.”
Between the girls’ and boys’ cottages, they’re almost at full capacity, say Migrala and Megan Leitzell, public relations coordinator at Masonic Villages.
In many ways, Migrala says, the mission remains the same as when the children’s home opened for its first residents in 1913. The children stay at the home at no cost to their families.
The goal, she says, “is to provide quality care for children and to meet their needs and help them reach their full potential. In this day and age, it’s harder to raise kids, especially teenagers, and keep them safe.”
One change in mission, she says, is to “provide more for their education … and we have a lot more kids in college, both two- and four-year programs.”
Most of the children at Masonic Village come from Lancaster County and Philadelphia, she says, and Masonic Villages is working to spread the word of what’s available within the local community. “We have four (siblings) coming soon from Elizabethtown, which is great,” Migrala says.
Sometimes Masonic Villages is recommended by an older sibling or a teacher, and the child does not have to come from the family of a Mason. They do have to live in Pennsylvania, have no significant health issues and have a family background in which staying at home is difficult, if not impossible.
While at the children’s home, they go to Elizabethtown schools, join sports teams, get jobs and volunteer in the community, take music lessons - as stable a childhood and teenage experience as possible.
The renovation, Migrala says, is a wonderful gift to a great group of kids.
“All of our needs were fulfilled and more,” she says. “And more!”
’It’s a part of my life’
That, Hunter-Longdon says, is exciting to hear.
She’d never known about the Masonic Children’s Home before she met her late husband, she says, but it was one of the first things he told her about during their first date all those years ago.
“We had dinner, and it lasted four hours, and by the end of it I could have written a book” on the Masons and the children’s home, she laughs.
And because he was so beloved, she says - “I would have gone to the end of the world with him after that (first date)” - she has no doubt he’d want her to continue the donations he made during his lifetime and which she has continued since 2003.
“It seems like it’s such a part of my life now,” Hunter-Longdon says. “I think about it a lot; I think about the kids.” She attended a party for the four Class of 2017 high school graduates this year, she says, “I was so impressed. I thought, ’My, my. It’s so wonderful that their life (at Masonic Children’s Home) will influence them forever.’ It’s a wonderful thing to carry away.
“Life is difficult enough; (the kids) don’t need more burdens.”
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Information from: LNP, https://lancasteronline.com
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