Page 30 - September Issue

The FOP at 100
Grand Lodge marks its centennial by returning to Pittsburgh for a bi-annual conference that celebrates continuing the fight Delbert and Martin started here in 1915.
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL n PHOTOS BY BOB BAIKE
The “other side” of the Horse of Honor in the Lodge 7 foyer – the one opposite the side with the images of the Lodge’s forefathers – fea- tures the faces of Martin Toole (left) and Delbert Nagle. Look into their eyes and see if you see a little bit of yourself in the two cops who started the Fraternal Order of Police 100 years ago.
You might have more in common with Martin and Delbert than you will ever know. In 1915, they were mired in a world of raging anti- police sentiment from the general public, and bosses that tried to squeeze every last drop of labor out of them every day.
Now, think about what our world might be like if Martin and Del- bert did not get together with 21 of their brothers from the Pittsburgh Police Department and on May 14, 1915 held the first meeting of the first lodge of Fraternal Order of Police? Martin and Del- bert and all the FOP has achieved since then were very much top of the mind when the organiza- tion returned to Pitts- burgh Aug. 9-13 for the
bi-annual national conference and celebration of 100 years of assur- ing police officers don’t have to be subjected to what they endured back then.
“The first thing I thought of when I gaveled the conference to order was our founders,” National FOP President Chuck Canterbury disclosed. “If they could walk in our shoes 100 years later, what would they have thought about what they created and how shocked would they be that their movement went so nationwide?”
From Fort Pitt Lodge 1 in 1915, the FOP has grown to more than 2,100 Lodges and more than 325,000 members and become the largest police labor organization in the U.S. The David Lawrence Convention Center right on the banks of the Allegheny River was packed with so many people, that President Canterbury might have felt all 325,000 had come to celebrate. The conference certainly accentuated the FOP’s cachet that compelled the nation’s top cop, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to be the keynote speaker for the opening session.
Canterbury submits that the constant during the 100 years is that the FOP has stayed true to its commitment of being the advocate for working law enforcement. That so many of its members are still retired police officers advocating and fighting the fight to preserve the benefits 100 years in the making is testament to the Lodge con- tinually manifesting another fortifying constant: “Fraternalism with activism,” explains Canterbury.
But perhaps to fully understand what the FOP has achieved and sustained in its first 100 years, we can turn to our very own John Dineen, Chicago Lodge 7 past president and National President from
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 n SEPTEMBER 2015
Illinois State Lodge National Trustee Robert "Rocky" Nowaczyk dislays a sign made to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the FOP.