Also, please note the minutes to our last Valley meeting of December 14, and our Spring Schedule, as prepared by Illustrious Secretary Skip Sanford,33 IGH. If you didn't know, Br. Skip is 'retiring' as Olympia Valley Secretary after ten or so years of faithful service. Please join me in sincerely thanking Skip for that wonderful service to our Valley!! Hopefully we'll see his smiling face often on the sidelines for many years to come!
Filling those big shoes, our Brother Gary Norton, 32 KCCH will take over the Secretarial reins. I know that VWB Gary will do an outstanding job, providing he can "keep his stick on the ice"! Please wish Gary well, and give him your support!
Fraternally,
Kris Graap, 33°
Al Peringer died peacefully this morning, Saturday, December 31st, at 0530 at Panorama Retirement Center, Lacey, at the age of 90.
Al was a life-long Mason, Past Worshipful Master of Berkeley Lodge 167, Chesapeake, VA; a 60-year Shriner and Past Commander of Afifi Legion of Honor (2008). He retired from the US Navy in 1968 with the rank of CWO-4, in the pay grade LT(JG).
Al enlisted in the Washington National Guard at the age of 17 while a student at Olympia High School in 1938 and served two years in the coastal artillery and, as he would proudly say, “rose to the ‘lofty’ rank of PFC.” In 1940, he enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to the USS Pruitt, a destroyer mine layer, which was in dry-dock at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Al retired from the Navy in 1968 after serving our nation for over 30 years. His Navy career specialty was in communications/electronics and he was involved in the development of naval radar. He was a life member of the Pearl Harbor Association, the VFW (Past Commander of his VFW Post in Virginia) and life member of the Military Officers Assoc. of America (MOAA).
He leaves no survivors and his ashes will be interned at Arlington Cemetery in the spring pending their schedule. Funeral/memorial arrangements are unknown at this time.
Al was a kind and gentle man of honor and impeccable morals and standards. Although physically slowed by age, he maintained his wonderful sense of humor and greatly loved the work of our Masonic and Shrine bodies. He said that the proudest moment in his life was when he was installed as Worshipful Master of his Lodge.
I know that he rests in glory in his heavenly home. We will miss him very much.
John C. (Jack) Taylor
Puyallup, WA
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