A conversation with Charlotte Roth, Exalted Ruler of Elks Lodge #2591

The Elks are there before anybody else, said Lake Elsinore Elks Lodge #2591 Exalted Ruler Charlotte Roth while she proudly describes the numerous charitable projects the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks have sponsored during her approximately 30 years of affiliation. Fellow Elk Larry Williams, the publicity chairman of the approximately 1,000-member local chapter of the fraternal order, has been a member since 1989 and publicizing their accomplishments ever since.

Originally founded on February 16, 1868, by English immigrant and comedic entertainer Charles Vivian to assist the widows and children left destitute at a friend’s passing at Christmastime, the social group gradually expanded to help others in need.

Actively assisting at the national and local levels, the Elks Lodge #2591 stretches out a helping hand to those who need it, assisting college-bound and trade school students with financial scholarships, hosting blood bank drives, sponsoring drug awareness and youth programs and raising money for health and welfare programs for children.

A scholarship dinner held on May 22 distributed $13,000 from Elks and $4,500 from Elks Ladies Scholarship programs to local students. A variety of unique fundraisers are evident about the lodge from the patronage of cardboard elk decorations to generate funds to repair the headquarters’ roof to the distribution of purple piggybanks to collect spare change toward the disabled children’s programs. (“A coin a day — They’ll walk, talk, see and play.”) Members of the Elks and the Elks Ladies Auxiliary also visit veterans at a VA hospital every month, showering them with gifts such as playing cards, soaps, personal care items, crotched lap robes and appreciation.

Originally, the lodge was chartered in 1979 and located in the Four Corners area in Lake Elsinore. Land was acquired in Wildomar and the current lodge was built, explained Williams. The lodge is part of Division 4 with 11 other lodges, including the Temecula Valley Lodge, which was sponsored by the Lake Elsinore brethren. Lodge #2591 members reside in Temecula, Hemet and all over the valley, he said.

“It’s a friendly lodge,” Williams says. “People always talk about [how] no one comes in a stranger. They always make them happy, cook their dinner.”

Since her reign as the first female Exalted Ruler of the Lake Elsinore Lodge began April 1, Roth has been involved in promoting a literacy program, the Dictionary Project. It was started by South Carolina resident Mary French, who wrote and distributes a child-friendly dictionary for grade school students through her nonprofit group to encourage the usage of the ordinarily intimidating tomes.

The idea was removed from the back burner recently and now Lodge #2591 is in the dictionary distribution business. While standing in front of a display of some of the thank-you letters from local children thanking the lodge for their own personal copy of the dictionary, Roth describes plans to order more volumes over the summer.

“It’s geared toward the interests of a child,” she says. “It has historical stuff, a biography of each president. It has some of the Constitution. It takes countries and geography — it’ll take Vietnam and correlate it to the size of Texas.

“It has the longest word in the dictionary — 26 lines long, and there’s the definition down there and it doesn’t take nearly as much room.”

Roth was amused by a letter submitted by a young scholar thanking the lodge for his gift — “Thank you for the new shiney [sic] and educating dictionaries. If it weren’t for you, we’d still be using old, ripped… (how shall I say it?) things that we call dictionaries, all ripped up by people in this class (who shall remain nameless)…”

“The kids were all totally jazzed because the books are presented to them. We just put it as a gift from the lodge…

“The money [to buy the dictionaries] came from our Bingo group.

“I only ordered a little over 100 books and a couple of special education classes got them because their teachers can pick that kind… but the Elks grandparents jumped on [the extra copies]. I’ll say this for our Elks grandparents: they were very generous… to keep getting these books out to other children. I’m so impressed.

“If you can stimulate them with literature, you gotta hook them. You gotta help their direction and [French’s] whole project is designed around giving these children independence — it’s very interesting.”

For more information and to obtain the free children’s dictionaries, leave a message for Roth at the Lake Elsinore Elks Lodge #2591 at (951) 674-6804 during office hours Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.