NORWAY – A Norway Grange member recently stood in the shadows of the original hall where more than 100 members used to meet every week to tackle issues ranging from farm subsidies to education and tax reform.

“It was really something,” said Ethel Lacourse, who has been a member of the Grange for the past 64 years and has often wondered what the 1876 Grange Hall looked like on the third floor of the Sun Media group building at Main Street and Pikes Hill Road.

The original Patron’s Hall mural, which identified the Sun Media Group building as home to the Norway Grange No. 45 and depicts Grange symbols of farm life, was restored last year. It is the only publicly visible link to the building’s earlier use.

Lacourse, who will be 80 years old this fall, got a chance to see firsthand the original hall with its remarkable mural that overhangs the stage. But it took some climbing to get there.

“This is nothing compared to the old Paris Academy. Those steps go straight up,” Lacourse said as she climbed up steep, wooden stairs to the old hall.

As she got to the third-floor landing at the top of the staircase, Lacourse was delighted to see the door with its little cutout window intact. A gatekeeper would open the window before opening the door to a member, but only after hearing the secret knock, Lacourse explained.

There are still secret codes that must be used to gain entrance to the door at the current Norway Grange Hall on Whitman Street, Lacourse said as she entered through the door and into the meeting room.

“I’ll be darn. Who would believe?” she said as she walked into the room that is now filled with newspaper stacks, but highlighted by a remarkable mural overhanging the stage which depicts an agrarian scene.

“This is cool,” she said with a broad smile as she examined the mural and various Grange symbols that are painted on the walls and ceiling of the room through the light of the red filter paper that is kept over the windows to preserve the newspapers stored there.

Lacourse said she always wondered whether the Grange may have also met in the older section of the Sun Media Group’s two buildings that were linked together in the 1960s. After viewing the older room, that has old hanging light fixtures but no evident Grange symbols, Lacourse said it is probable it was never used as a meeting room.

Norway Grange built its own Grange Hall in 1909. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building is now home to the Oxford Hills Performing Arts Association, which leases space, and the Grange. The Grange members are in the process of continuing renovations, such as exterior painting, that were begun last summer with the restoration of the stained-glass children’s window.

Lacourse, who has served as secretary since the 1950s and as master from 1957 to 1958, along with other duties, said the Grange ranks have fallen to about 30 members, but there has been a recent resurgence of membership applications including several last week.

“We had 56 one year who wanted to join the Norway Grange. Now you can’t talk kids into going,” she said.

Lacourse joined the Grange in 1945 with her parents and brother, first attending the Grange by Lake Pennesseewassee and two years later transferring to the Grange in downtown Norway.

In 1948, she and dozens of other members loaded a bus to Portland to take their 7th degree – a national Grange degree. There were 17,277 others who took the degree in Portland that day.

“That’s how active we were,” she said.