In January of this year, Frank Preble, past potentate of the Kora Shrine Temple in Lewiston, became the first Mainer ever to chair the board of directors of the Shriners Hospital for Children, established in Springfield, MA in 1925 and now celebrating its 85th year.

Operating a network of 19 hospitals dedicated to pediatric specialty care, innovative medicine, surgery, and research treating children suffering from a variety of devastating orthopaedic conditions and spinal cord injuries, plus another three facilities which treat young burn victims, Shriners Hospitals for Children have treated more than three-quarters of a million kids since their inception in 1922, without ever imposing out-of-pocket charges for anyone. Mainers, especially, are fortunate to have easy access to both one of the world’s foremost pediatric orthopaedic facilities, in Springfield, and also to the Shriners burn treatment facility in Boston. In June of this year, staff from Springfield came to Central Maine Medical Center to perform check-ups on Shrine patients from Maine, and saw more than 100 patients in one day. Anther outreach clinic is planned for CMMC in early December.

Last year alone, the Springfield hospital treated more than 20,000 kids and provided more out-patient orthopaedic care to kids than any hospital in the world except Mexico City.

“We don’t set broken bones,” Preble explained. “We provide state-of-the art, specialized care that isn’t available anywhere else,” even, he asserted, at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “Children’s treats cancer, internal medicine issues, general surgery – no one else has the dedicated resources to focus on orthopaedic treatment that we do.”

Originally established to treat children with polio, the services of the Shriners Hospital in Springfield have expanded to cover everything from “the most routine to the most rarely seen orthopaedic conditions,” according to the hospital’s brochure. “Our specially trained medical team strives to put the joys of childhood into the life of every child.”

Representative of its unique focus on the orthopaedic health of kids, the Springfield hospital has published a handy reference card entitled, “School Backpack Awareness,” intended to help avert problems of injured muscles or joints. Cards are available from most Shriners, or from the Kora Temple. More information is available from the hospitals’ website, www.shrinershospitals.org.

Because the next closest Shriners orthopaedic hospitals are in Montreal and Philadelphia, the Springfield Hospital serves a vast population. The hospital “family” includes nearly 12,000 active patients, 230 employees, 170 volunteers and over 23,000 Shriners from 17 Shrine Centers in New England and New York. The operating budget last year was $25-million, and the hospital staff performed 780 surgical procedures and treated more than 18,000 outpatients.

While Maine has ex officio board membership at the hospitals in Boston, Montreal and Springfield, this is the first time in the 85-year history of the Springfield hospital that a Mainer has chaired the board. Preble continues to be active in the Kora Shrine, of course, and in various other Masonic organizations in Maine.

“It’s possible,” Preble said, “to be involved in some Masonic activity every night of the week.” He is, and more than that.

Masonry is in large part about good works, and the Shriners have elevated that purpose, through their hospital network, to a specific and unique level of service. That such service continues to be supported through fun and fellowship carries the 19th Century vision of the founders of the Shrine fraternity well into the 21st.