The Story of Eastern Masonic Retirement Community

Eastern Star Masonic Retirement Campus: Serving Seniors in Need Since 1931

Situated on 19 picturesque acres in southeast Denver, the Eastern Star Masonic Retirement Campus offers patio home living for those who are still independent, assisted living for those who need a little more help, and memory care for individuals who need a secured environment. However, we have not always been this big!

In September of 1925, the Grand Chapter of Colorado, Order of Eastern Star, voted to establish and maintain a home for the aged and indigent members of the chapters. Robert Russell, a Masonic Land Baron, donated the land. The home was opened in 1931 with a total cost of $55,000. The original house consisted of 17 single rooms, five double rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, a large living room, and the matron’s living quarters.

With an increased demand for additional rooms, the board added the south wing to the home in 1955 for $75,000. Even with this new addition, the demand for rooms remained high, so in June of 1959, the north wing was established for $68,000. Since then, smaller projects have been the focal point of renovations, and throughout the years, we’ve accomplished a great deal to make our residents’ stay the best it can be, including:

Landscaping the grounds
Replacing drapes, rugs, and furniture
Maintaining and updating to comply with all fire codes
Having an elevator installed

As more improvements were made to the property, the waitlist grew. In June 1977, another ten large private rooms, a large lounge, a spacious hall, and a chapel were added. A medication and exam room ensured that our house had everything our residents needed to be happy and safe. One very special part of our community is the longevity of our staff. We have 2 caregivers that have worked here for 25 years and 3 other staff who celebrated working in our Dietary department for 20 years.

The latest addition to our campus was completed in 2014, the Mary Barry Building.

The Eastern Star Masonic Retirement Campus embraces the following mission: To take pride in meeting the social, physical, and spiritual needs of the residents of its campus through high-quality senior housing and services while being true to the Masonic family’s principles and values. We integrate this mission with the commitment of the Masonic and Order of the Eastern Star organizations to provide a caring, compassionate, and homelike setting for all of our valued senior residents, many of whom are not Masonic members, as an affiliation is not a requirement to live in our community.

Our Signature Events!

Our longest running signature event is our Golf Tournament, where family members, community partners, residents and the Masonic Community all come together for a fun and collaborative golfing event. Before Covid, we held an in-person auction at our golf tournament, but the Quarantine period had us rethinking the auction for safety purposes, and we moved it online – which, surprisingly, generated more money! This year the combined events golf & auction provided an impressive amount of over $26,000 raised to benefit our community.

Our Evening of Laughter night at the Comedy Works was very successful before COVID. Thanks to our sponsors, we were able to bring our residents in to help fill up the comedy club with family members, community partners, and members of the Fraternal Family. Because most chapters and Lodges go dark in the summer months, it was a great way for everyone to be together and LAUGH. Covid was not kind to the event, and we hope that we can rebrand it in the future to keep everyone laughing.

The one activity that is now our residents favorite signature event is a pizza party whenever our Executive Director goes out of town. We have a giant picture of the ED looking silly announcing the pizza PARTY. Everyone is in the dining room extra early to indulge in the deliciousness!

New for 2023 is our Salute for Service Campaign

In partnership with Colorado DeMolay, we are selling American Flags for $40, the flags are 3′ x 5’ and will be on 9ft poles. The flags will be planted in our great lawn for the week of November 5-12 to salute Veterans in the community. People can purchase the flags in honor or in memory of a Veteran, and the names will be posted on a banner by the field of flags. The banner will be flanked by a flag representing each branch of the military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Royal Navy, Space Force, and an MIA / POW Flag. Money has been donated by Denver Lodges to cover the cost of the flags and poles. The DeMolay will be planting flags.

We care about our veterans! You can find our appearance on KWGN here!

Holidays at Eastern Star

Our Fraternal family of Colorado is very generous with their support of our community. Chapters & Lodges host meetings, and the Masonic youth are very active here as they dress up as the Easter Bunny and hop around campus for the Easter Holidays. They also help us with our family picnic around the 4th of July and have hosted carnivals and game days. This year, they will be doing a statewide project and showing off their talents in our 1st-ever talent show. In turn, we host community shredding events on our campus for them to run and raise money for their activities. An average event will generate over $1,500 in 2 hours!

Christmas at Eastern Star Masonic Retirement Campus

If you look at our website, www.esmrc.com, all pictures on our website are real photos of our residents, none are stock photos! So it’s only fitting to continue with that theme when we do our Christmas Card. We use our community as a backdrop, and our residents are the stars. Some of our traditions from Christmas past:

We decorate our community right around Thanksgiving.
- The Masonic youth come to help, because decorating over 400,000 square feet is no easy task! Especially not with 5 trees, plus one grinch tree put up right by the Executive Director’s office. Stockings are also hung on every door to make it festive for all until the weekend after New Years.
Thanks to the Masonic Community we host a Santa Wish Program for our Medicaid residents.
- They each make a wish of a need or two and then the list is communicated on trestle boards around the state. The wishes are then picked and communicated to The Fraternal Relations Director. They get dropped off in time to be wrapped and ready for Christmas Eve Day delivery by the Executive Team.
Masons donate butter cookies in the tubes for every resident to receive, as well as chocolate for each staff and resident.
- Seeing the joy on the residents’ faces when they do get their Christmas wish or seeing their eyes light up at the sight of their shiny tube of butter cookies is irreplicable! Our residents are all very unique, and we’ve seen tears of joy because a resident got a book while another couldn’t believe that Santa found the candy she requested from a neighborhood store in Nebraska where she grew up. After gifts are found and enjoyed, every resident proudly wears their new clothes and shows off their gifts – it truly makes everyone believe in Santa.
A tissue drive is held so that each resident gets a box.
One of the Eastern Star Chapters hosts a pizza dinner and Christmas Cookie Buffet.
- Every resident gets to take home a to-go container of homemade Christmas cookies. YUM!
We host our annual open-house Christmas party for families to come and enjoy the party with their loved ones as they don’t often go out for the holidays.
The Masonic youth, DeMolay Jobs Daughters, and Rainbow Girls host a sing-along and Ugly Christmas Sweater contest that gets uglier every year!
- The laughs that are shared and the bonds formed would melt even the Grinch’s heart.