In view of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Mechanics in Brooklyn from the Independent United Order of Mechanics (IUOM), Friendly Society, will on Sunday, Sept. 13, join in celebrating virtually, for the first time ever, Mechanics Day.
“As a Mechanic, we celebrate with our noble order, families and friends by uniting to display our tenets of ‘Friendship, Love and Truth,’ which dictate that we should be friends and truthful to all mankind and, above all, be our ‘brother’s keeper,’” Roy Reid, the Jamaican-born Public Relations Committee director, a branch of the Executive Committee of the IUOM, Friendly Society in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, told Caribbean Life recently.
He said that Mechanics Day is celebrated each year by all IUOM-members worldwide on the second Sunday in September.
“It is defined as a Thanksgiving Day and intends to enhance the feeling of unity within the Order,” Reid said. “Mechanics Day represents the start of the new working season. A long-standing annual tradition, it is a day of atonement for mechanics.
“Globally, we appear in numbers to worship and give thanks to the grateful geometrician,” he added. “It is a day to welcome the newly-initiated to see a unified benevolent association of brothers and sisters, an undiscovered family.
“It gives a Mechanic an opportunity to meet like mechanics and show their love for each other,” Reid continued. “’How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity’ (Psalms 133). This is the basis of which Mechanics Day is celebrated.”
He said that this year’s Mechanic Day will be celebrated, via virtual web-based communication, under the theme, “Overcoming Obstacles in Uncertain Times.”
“Outside the norms due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all challenged with how we communicate amongst family and friends,” Reid said. “With a positive mindset, but, unfortunately, with the absence of physical interaction, web-based communication advantageously brings us all together through video streaming globally.”
Reid said that the IUOM was formed in England in 1757 as a Friendly Society, “a type of mutual benefit society that also served ceremonial and friendship purposes.”
He said IUOM became established in the United States in 1910, with membership open to men and women, boys and girls, of “high moral and ethical standards, who believe in a ‘Supreme Being’, who rules and governs the universe.”
The group’s values are “Brotherly Love, Relief, Truth, Secrecy, Fidelity and Benevolence,” Reid said. “Our aim has been and continues to practice and promote the devotion to religious, charitable, educational and community philanthropic services.”
In the late 19th century, he said the Order spread to various sovereign nations and dependent territories in the Caribbean Sea and North America. The first branch in the United States was formed in 1910, Reid said.
Currently, he said the IOUM, Inc. has over 20,000 members, with subordinate lodges and chapters spanning the Eastern United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, Central and South America, and the Caribbean basin, namely Aruba, Belize, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Panama, Suriname, French Guiana, and The Netherlands Antilles.
Reid said this year’s Mechanics Day will be held from 3:00 pm, Eastern Time (US and Canada), via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8266002525?pwd=ZCtxaTIvdnR4bVduQWVDelVGakQrQT09; meeting ID: 826 600 2525; passcode: 577645.
Dial by location: +1 929 205 6099 US (New York); +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago); +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown); +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma); +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston); and +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose).
Reid also said that the Order’s Public Relations Committee, will, on Dec. 20, present a global Virtual Christmas Concert, with entertainment provided by undisclosed reggae artists.
