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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2016
Grier: ‘The kindest, most sincere man you could meet’
the informality of the din-
ing room at the Spruce Street
lodge hall, Grier’s prayers
strayed from the wording
enshrined in the Masonic
codebook, using a delight-
ful conversational approach
as he sought blessings on the
man who cooked his lunch
or another member in ailing
health.
Continued from Page 1A
deeply, too. They have lost
an inspirational lodge brother
who served as their chaplain
for 45 years.
Mike Carmel of Long
Beach, a past master of Occi-
dent No. 48, Free & Accepted
Masons, serves as a district
officer in southwest Wash-
ington. “Norman Grier epit-
omized the ideals of Freema-
sonry in his practice of civility
and kindness, while maintain-
ing the highest standards for
his own personal conduct,” he
said.
“As recently as a few
months ago, before he turned
88, Brother Norm delivered
a beautiful Masonic lecture
straight from memory that
required about 30 minutes of
letter-perfect recitation and it
was just about one year ago
that, under doctor’s orders, he
stopped splitting wood for his
fireplace.”
Sports fan
Grier followed Ilwaco and
Naselle youth sports, espe-
cially basketball, attending
games, keeping newspaper
clippings and delighting in
family members’ successes.
He was a fixture, shuck-
ing corn at the Ilwaco sports
booster wagon at the Kite
Festival in Long Beach, a
familiar figure in big hat and
sunglasses.
Granddaughter
Marie
Green had a stellar sports
career at Ilwaco High School
(as Marie Wroble) and later
coached at Naselle and in
Oregon. She treasures her
grandfather’s scrapbooks and
recalls he even “scouted” vis-
iting teams by clipping news-
paper stories from outside the
area.
“The last coherent conver-
sation I had with my grandpa
was about my basketball team
and how our games went over
the weekend and what do I
expect out of the season,” said
Green, head coach for Knappa
girls. “That will be what I will
miss the most with him — our
sporting chats. Even though I
wasn’t playing but coaching,
he would come to a handful of
games to show his support for
what I was doing. That meant
the world to me.”
Worked for county
In addition to his commu-
nity life, Grier was known
throughout the region for his
professional activities.
Grier was building roads
for the state of Washington in
the late 1960s when a falling
lump of clay broke both his
legs at the site of the Wash-
ington Plaza Hotel in Seat-
tle. After a lengthy recovery,
he joined the staff of Pacific
County in 1971 as a survey
party chief. Later, he was
promoted to assistant county
Declining health
Mike Thornton/Submitted Photos
LEFT: Norm Grier was master of the Ilwaco Freemasons lodge in 1960. RIGHT: Norm
Grier’s father, William Grier, was master of the Ilwaco, Wash., lodge in 1948.
engineer, retiring some years
ago. Until last month, he
served on the county’s Flood
Control Board.
Workmate Chuck Mik-
kola of Ocean Park, who suc-
ceeded Grier when he retired,
recalls his balanced temper-
ament. “He was very conge-
nial,” Mikkola recalled. “Peo-
ple would holler and scream
at him,” because Grier was
scrupulous in enforcing legal
regulations. “He would still
maintain his composure
and sometimes just end the
conversation.”
One day their work crew
parked their truck with the
windows open and hiked into
Raymond, returning to a sur-
prise, Mikkola said. “As we
got closer, we saw something
moving inside the Suburban, a
tail, and we thought at first it
was a coyote.” Instead, a pack
of dogs from a nearby farm-
house had climbed inside.
“They had got into Norm’s
lunch pail and eaten it all,”
Mikkola said. “Most of us
would have wanted to shoot
the dog, but Norm said, “They
have to eat, too,’” he said.
Seaview move
Norm Grier’s father, Wil-
liam, was born in Scotland,
and came to the United States
as a child. During World
War I, he served in the U.S.
Army Expeditionary Force in
France.
William and his wife,
Auda, spent their honeymoon
in the 1920s in Ocean Park at
a house where longtime Nah-
cotta oysterman Dobby Wie-
gardt and his wife, Lila, later
lived. Wiegardt graduated
from Ilwaco High School in
1948, some three years behind
Norm Grier, who was in his
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sister Ann’s class. They were
lifelong friends.
The Grier family had lived
in Portland, then moved to
Knappton in the 1940s when
William, an accountant, went
to work in the sawmill. His
other son, Bill, was an Eighth
Air Force co-pilot whose
B-17 was shot down on a
bombing raid over Nazi-held
Holland in 1943 and did not
survive a parachute drop into
the North Sea.
The same year the Griers
moved to Seaview.
Chaplain’s role
William Grier was master
of the Ilwaco Masons lodge in
1948 and spent a dozen years
as its chaplain. Norm Grier
served as master in 1960 then
moved to the chaplain’s chair.
In a light-hearted father’s
day interview in the Chinook
Observer a few years ago, a
reporter asked Norm Grier
what was the best advice he
had received.
Noting that Masons cannot
directly recruit, Grier replied,
“My father advised me in
his own way — secretly, I
should say, he didn’t come
out and say it — but secretly,
he wanted me to join the
Masonic lodge. And I’ve been
pretty active in that over the
years; I still attend and enjoy
it.”
“Pretty active”? A modest
understatement.
“The Masonic lodge was
his life,” said his widow,
Willa Grier.
For 45 years he served
as chaplain to the Masons.
Although unable to attend
Saturday, he was still listed in
the program for the officers’
installation ceremony.
At formal lodge gather-
ings, the willowy thin Grier
would bend his tall frame
onto a kneeling pad, dig his
pointed shoes into the car-
pet and offer prayers with
clarity and assurance. Amid
This past two years, Gri-
er’s regular attendance at the
Masons’ informal Wednesday
lunches wavered as his own
health see-sawed. Each time
Grier missed, Carmel would
report on his latest ailment
and the progress of his recov-
ery. Usually, Grier would
return in a week or two, grin-
ning, shrugging off a hospi-
tal visit or another course of
treatment, fiddling with his
hearing aid to make sure he
could understand the latest
chatter at the dining table.
But less than a month
ago, an angiogram revealed
a damaged heart valve and a
severe coronary artery block-
age. A stent was inserted, but
doctors determined the dam-
age was already too severe for
further treatment.
When Carmel went to Gri-
er’s home Thursday, the ail-
ing Grier reached out with
a Masonic handshake and
insisted on standing up.
“When I stopped to visit as
his health was rapidly failing
four days before his death, he
took my hand with the grip of
a Master Mason and gave me
a huge smile, then, despite his
illness, rose to say goodbye
to me and the master-elect of
Occident Lodge, Ron Rob-
bins of Klipsan,” Carmel
said. “He also whispered to
me about Ron, ‘That’s the fel-
low who has done so many
great things for the lodge!’”
‘Kind’
Robbins was installed as
master of the lodge Saturday.
Through the beautiful sym-
metry of small-town connec-
tions, that afternoon’s sub-
stitute chaplain — offering
a special prayer for Grier —
was Wiegardt, who served as
the lodge’s master in 1962,
two years after his friend.
When asked for a trib-
ute to his contemporary, the
85-year-old Wiegardt did not
hesitate. “I think the word
‘gentleman’ is a good one,”
he said, then added. “A kind
gentleman.”
Granddaughter
Green
echoed that view. “He was the
kindest and most sincere man
you could meet,” she said.
“Anyone who met him would
fall in love with him and his
wonderful spirit.”