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Brother John Belk
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“Hey, John, what are you doing out here in freezing weather handing out football programs?”
“Same thing as you, Brother. Raising money for crippled and burned children.”
For half a century John Montgomery Belk enjoyed working for the Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas, doing everything from leading that event to ushering Masonic families to their stadium seats.
Not bad for the CEO of America’s largest chain of privately-owned department stores, donor of $40 million to his alma mater, Davidson University, son of one of the 13 founders of Oasis Shrine in 1895 and nationally honored for his endless work for the Boy Scouts of America.
What really made Belk stand out as a brother Mason was that he was the personification of the continuum of Freemasonry in America.
He was a direct descendant of William Alexander, great grandfather of Hezekiah Alexander, one of three powerful men who established and developed Charlotte in the mid 1700s. If the title of mayor existed then, Hezekiah Alexander would surely have been its first. Two and one-half centuries later, descendant John Belk was indeed elected mayor of Charlotte, and for more years than any other in city history at that time.
Hezekiah Alexander and many relatives migrated from Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, undoubtedly already raised as Masons there. In Charlotte they would meet at Hezekiah’s famous house, the only Masonic building of its kind in America.
John’s father, William Henry Belk, Sr., was a long-time member of Monroe, NC, Lodge 244. He and his brother, Dr. John Belk, opened their first store in Monroe in 1888 using the name The New York Racket. It was to be the first of today’s hundreds of Belk stores.
John’s mother was a teacher. One of her students: Brother Randolph Scott.
John Belk and all his brothers—William, Henderson, Irwin and Tom—became Masons after World War II. John petitioned Excelsior 261 January 21, 1946, was initiated March 4, passed April 15 and raised August 12. They were doing what their father hoped for and expected of them. Affiliation with the Scottish Rite soon followed, “back when they met in a wooden house on South Tryon street next to the Masonic Temple,” John wistfully remembered.
John married Claudia Watkins, a sitting district court judge, after he reached his 50th year—like his father. That age gap had its effects on the five Belk sons and one daughter, Sarah. Asked to pose for a photo with his father’s bronze bust, John laughed, “This is the closest I ever got to Daddy.”
Being awarded his 50-year pin by his Excelsior Lodge brethren was among the most moving events in John Belk’s Masonic career. The one Mason he remembered best was “Uncle Sam” McCall, the coach who taught him his catechism, as he did hundreds of other candidates.
There were, of course, uncounted Masons among John’s thousands of employees and suppliers.
John liked to compare Masons with Boy Scouts. “Both call for commitment to the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God, and respecting all faiths.” He subscribed to the truism that Masonry makes good men better and felt he was surely a better person for his lifelong commitment to the Order.
His pride focused on his Mecklenburg County heritage, but his life was only part of a larger saga of the Alexanders of Scotland and their commitment to Freemasonry.
William Alexander was the first Belk ancestor to come to America. William’s parents moved from Scotland to northern Ireland around 1610 as part of the plan of King James I to colonize Scottish Presbyterians on lands confiscated from rebelling Irish Catholics. These Alexander forebears came to Raphoe, Ireland, as tenants of Sir James Cunningham, a Scottish nobleman from Ayrshire. They settled on lands granted him in Donegal County in Laggan district.
These Alexanders had left Scotland to seek a better life, but by the 1640s William knew his dreams could never come true in Ireland. Religious persecution and potato famine in 1639-40 drove William to the eastern shore of Virginia. There he married and became the father of seven sons and two daughters.
Masonic literature reveals much more about John’s Alexander family. Alexander III, born in 1241, became King of Scotland in 1286. He is alleged to have been a patron of Freemasonry and the supporter of the construction of Kilwinning Abbey. The ritual of the Scottish Rite degree Knight of St. Andrew gives Alexander III credit for being protector of the Masonic fraternity. Other stories attribute this virtue to Alexander’s son David I of Scotland.
Anthony Alexander is known to have been appointed Master of the Work and Warden General of Scotland by King Charles I in 1629. He was admitted to the Masonic Order Fellow Craft degree in the lodge of Edinburgh in 1634.
The Grand Lodge of Freemasonry in Scotland was organized on St. Andrew’s Day 1736. St. Andrew was the patron saint of Scotland, November 30 being set aside in his honor. He is also the patron of Freemasons in Scotland. He is said to have been crucified on a cross resembling the Roman X. That cross evolved as the flag of Scotland, with a white X on a blue field, which became the first of three superimposed designs that are today’s British flag, the Union Jack.
St. Andrew’s cross is incised twice on the front wall of Hezekiah Alexander’s rock house in Charlotte, along with the year of its completion, 1774.
The Belk family home in Charlotte still stands proudly at the entrance to the Presbyterian Hospital complex. It houses administrative offices today but in 1924 John’s father, an ardent Presbyterian, moved the hospital to the site of Elizabeth College and built his mansion there. He chose C. C. Hook to design the neoclassical house of beige brick and stone. Whenever city or hospital officials asked John’s permission to alter his childhood home, he never budged one inch.
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Produced by the public relations committee of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Masons in North Carolina,
2921 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27628 MMVIII
Author/editor: Walter J. Klein wklein(at)carolina.rr.com
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