Last week, the El Korah Shrine Center hosted the 2008 Pacific Northwest Shrine Association Convention.

About 1,000 Shriners came to Boise for festivities, including a parade on Saturday, and to spread the word about the group's work: supporting Shriners hospitals that provide free burn and orthopedic care for children at 22 hospitals in North America.

"There are no cash registers at Shriners' hospitals," said Boise Shriner Bert Miller, who helped organize the convention.

Friday morning at a welcome ceremony, Miller introduced one of Shriners' newest patients, Tyler Pickering, the Caldwell toddler whose siblings and grandfather died in a crash at the McCall Airport earlier this year.

Pickering was badly burned in the accident, initially received treatment from other hospitals, but will now be under the care of Shriners at no charge to his family until he turns 18.

As his mother, Jennifer, stood behind him with his stroller, Tyler faced the room of adults - men in fezzes, the Shriners' trademark head gear - and greeted them with a single, "hi."

Miller's devotion to the Shriners came about in the 1970s when his infant son needed orthopedic surgery for club feet at the same time Miller was recovering from a broken neck.

"That was our medical year," said Miller, whose son received care from the Shriners through his teenage years, grew up and became an RN.

Since the 1920s, when the Shriners opened their first hospital to care for polio victims in Louisiana, they've treated close to 900,000 children, Miller said.

Around 1,000 Idaho children are now in the care of Shriners hospitals.

But like all fraternities, Shriner membership has been declining. Though the group includes younger members, "the average age is pushing into the 70s," said Miller, who's in his 50s.

The same economic forces that make it hard for young families to pay their medical bills make it hard for young men to find the time to join a fraternal organization.

Shriners were founded in the late 1800s as a social wing of the Masons - hence the Arabic imagery considered "exotic" at the time.

Soon, the dues-paying members decided to do something useful with their money, Miller said. They started building hospitals. This is not to say that Shriners have given up the principal of "fun."

The Shriners parade through Downtown on Saturday was a good example. If there's such a thing as a trio of Shriner symbols, the third, after the fez, and the crest with crescent moon and scimitar, would surely be men wearing those fezzes, driving tiny cars.

The El Korah "Sand Duners," one group of small-car enthusiasts, raises money for an annual screening clinic for kids who might benefit from treatment at a Shriners hospital.

But Saturday, as a lone, Shriner bagpiper warmed up his pipes on a corner near Main Street, Sand Duner Parade Master Roy Clever and his wife, Paula Clever, of Boise, were busy polishing two miniature blue dune buggies.

Roy Clever was preparing to don his fez and take the wheel. "You get to a certain age, and you start getting skinny again," he said, looking at the car's tiny seat.

Anna Webb: 377-6431