State President’s Message

The President for the Maine Elks Association for 2024 to 2025 is Michael Hannigan, PDDGER and PER from Houlton Lodge #835, Houlton, ME.

Our 2024-25 State Association President is an educator by trade.  He teaches life sciences at Houlton High School and offers courses at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, U-Maine Fort Kent and Northern Maine Community College.  He came to the trade about twenty years ago from an initial career as a research scientist.  He earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science with a focus on Immunology from the University of Connecticut, and worked as a researcher for several years.  He credits his training as a scientist of the immune system, the system that provides our defenses against infectious disease and cancers, for his insight into the research needs and functions of the Maine Children’s Cancer Program.

Mike has been an Elk for seventeen years, serving the Houlton Lodge #835 as an officer for many of those including Exalted Ruler from 2017 – 2019.  He was named Houlton’s Elk of the Year in 2014, and was subsequently named their Officer of the Year for 2018.  He was elected Honorary Life Member in 2022.  

At the State level he served as State Trustee for the Houlton Lodge from 2019-2023.  He was on Shawn Stacey’s Northern District Deputy suite as Esquire from 2019-20 and for the 2020-21 fraternal year he served as DDGER Maine-North himself.

Mike has worked for the State Association as it’s Fraternal Committee chairman and as the Northern District MCCP Assistant.  He’s been recognized with the MEA Tall Elk award as well as the Northern District Outstanding Exalted Ruler awards, and as president of the MEA PER Association for 2021-22.  For the 2023-2024 fraternal year Mike served as MEA president-elect.

Our new president is an active, involved true believing member of our order, and it is his goal to be able to get to know each of the twenty Lodges in Maine – to become both our friend and our advocate.