OAImages Blog

In the 1980s and 1990s Occoneechee lodge issued a jacket patch that was earned by those who met the requirements in the area of American Indian dancing. It is not often seen for sale or trade and remains a difficult piece for collectors to acquire.

Thanks to Joe Cranford, past Occoneechee lodge chief, I am now aware of two varieties of this patch. Joe has two of these from circa 1989 and 1993. Probably due in part to the scarcity of this piece, this difference had not been noticed or cataloged before now.

Joe explains the difference between these patches:

“There is a little known variation in the Occoneechee J5 ‘Gentgeen’ patch that you might find interesting. I’m not exactly sure when the first Gentgeen patches were made, but they were held by some old advisor. Every time a Gentgeen was earned, the lodge would have to get in contact with this individual and get x number of patches only. When I was lodge chief around 2002, it was practically impossible to keep getting the Gentgeens this way, so the lodge made another run of the Gentgeen. Among some smaller differences, the easiest way to tell the two apart is the ‘4′ in 104 is open in the older one (also the one pictured on your site) with a cloth back; and closed in the newer one with a plastic back. I earned the old one back in about 1999, and acquired the other one in 2003.”

I have tentatively labeled the older “open 4″ version of this patch J5a. The newer “closed 4″, pictured at the top of this post, has been labeled J5b. I propose the following listings for these two varieties.