CAMDEN — Masons from Amity Lodge No. 6 and St. Paul’s Lodge No. 82, along with teachers and the principal of the Camden-Rockport Middle School, met in the gym April 17 during the spring assembly to award a few lucky reading program students with free bicycles, safety helmets and certificates of accomplishment.  

It was a festive and energetic atmosphere in the gym with the band playing as the students gathered for their monthly assembly on the last day of classes before the beginning of spring break. There were 18 perfectly aligned mountain bikes at the front of the bleachers all transported to the school by the Masons in the back of their pick-up trucks. 

Thirty students participated in the reading program and a total of 172 books were read school-wide during a three month period. The top readers were Ella Ryan, a fifth-grader who read 28 books and seventh-grader Tanner Hilt who read 20 books. 

The students were entered into a drawing to win a bike each time they read a book. The drawing for the bikes included nine boys and nine girls.  

The 18 bikes were all assembled by a dozen Masons the Monday night before the award ceremony. The Masons who attended the ceremony were Bob Annis, Joe Corrado, Brian Gasser Walter Greenlaw, Elwood Doran and Jeff Sukeforth. 

At the end of the awards program, Sukeforth advised the student winners to make sure that they always wore their helmets and not to ride the bikes home since their parents would need to adjust them to their individual heights before hitting the pavement.  

The Grand Lodge of Masons in Maine adopted the Bikes for Books program in 2006 when the first ten bikes were given to students at Madison Elementary School. Since 2006 Masonic Lodges in Maine have awarded over 5,000 bikes to middle and elementary school students who are involved with their school’s reading programs.

In 2015 alone Maine Masons will award over 1,500 bikes to students. Masons of Amity Lodge #6 and St. Paul’s Lodge #82 of the Rockport Masonic Center have alone awarded over 50 bikes to students in the reading program at CRMS in the past three years. 

The program is a win-win situation for the students and the Masons. When school began in 2014, Sukeforth, the Bikes for Books coordinator for the Rockport Masonic Center, met with Michelle Gabrielson, the Intervention Coordinator, and Jaime Short, principal of CRMS, to go over specifics of the program for the 2015 school year. 

The Masons were once again able to donate 18 bikes to the program as well as providing every student in the program with a new bike safety helmet and a certificate of accomplishment for all the students’ achievements in the reading program in 2015.

According to Gabrielson, the reading program this year had its best year of participation with thirty-eight students involved. Books read by the students show that  nineteen, fifth graders read the most books with 102; twelve sixth graders read 37 books; five seventh graders and two eighth graders read a combined 33 books.  

Sukeforth said that bikes were awarded according to the number of students involved with the program. Eleven bikes were awarded to the fifith grade, five to the sixth grade and two to the seventh and eighth grade.  

The money for the bikes and helmets was raised by both lodges through fundraising and through many generous donations of some of its members. Once both lodges had their required funds raised they applied for matching grants from the Grand Lodge of Maine Charitable Foundation, which provided $500 to each lodge from its Youth Activities grant program, according to Sukeforth. 

For more information on Bikes for Books or Maine Masonry please go to www.mainemason.org or you may call Sukeforth at 691-2270.

Sarah Shepherd can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com