Volume 3, Issue 2 February, 2012
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE Ted Blevins
Membership – Again!
When the Fort Collins Lions Club was founded in 1920, 92 years ago, there were 28 members. The club grew up and down over the years, but as recently as 2000, there were 116 members.
We now have 71 members, a loss of 45 in a little over 11 years. Unless we do something differently, we will have a membership of 34 in the year 2020, our 100th anniversary — just 6 more than we started with in 1920.
We need numbers to survive and serve our community at the current level. Our charitable budget this year is about $67,000, essentially all of which comes from Bingo. We need a minimum of 20 members per week to conduct our two games. Normally, about 28-30 members help in a given month, but if we continue to lose membership, we cannot continue the two bingo games.
Several of you have brought guests to meetings in the past year. We had great attendance at our “membership meeting”, but we only got two new members from that meeting.
In my own experience, I was a guest three times before I decided to join. My sponsor, Warren Mauk, made sure to invite me several times. And I believe that is the key – follow-up.
Make sure your guests are invited to at least three meetings so they can learn firsthand what a great service club we really are. Tell them we’ve raised over $1.2 million over the past 18 years for charity right here in Fort Collins, tell them about Kidsight, Ensight, our glasses programs, our 9 Health Fair. Tell them about our youth programs and hearing programs, our diabetes awareness efforts, the Lions Eye Bank, the Lions Camp. But, be sure to tell them to come back again, as your guest.
Let’s stop our trend of losing over 4 members per year. We can and
must do it!
Ted
******************************************************************
William (Bill) Brenner
President of Fort Collins Lions Club
1963 – 1964
Fifty-two Years a Lion
In the January issue LeMoyne Anderson recalled the trauma when he and Hollis, on a couple of days’ notice, had to find a place for the Lions to meet after Ace Gillett’s restaurant in the Northern Hotel was shut down by the Larimer County Health Department.
Ladd’s Covered Wagon solved LeMoyne’s problem, but we met in a couple of other places during the 1960s…Wayne’s café (about 115 North College) and the 10th floor of the Rocky Mountain Bank Building at Canyon and Howes.
About 1968 the Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs pooled their resources and purchased some used kitchen equipment and helped turn a Linden Street storefront into a meeting hall and food facility for the Salvation Army. The three service clubs met there until we all moved into the newly completed Lincoln Center about 1980.
In spite of all the moving, the Lions, under great leadership, continued to find new ways to help the visually handicapped, provide support for and send campers to Woodland Park, man kettles and raise money for the Salvation Army, donate money for medical equipment at the Poudre Valley Hospital and provide CSU scholarships for needy Fort Collin’s youth. More recently we sponsored and organized the annual 9Health Fair and provided the impetus for the Ensight Skills Center.
When Lion Dale Shannon installed me as president of our Lions Club in 1973, my challenge was to keep these great programs going. In those days, before women were invited into Lions club membership, the wife of the newly installed club president automatically became president of the Lioness Club. These hard working ladies provided the woman power to carry out many of our Lions club programs. They also planned many of the major club social events…Christmas and Valentine’s parties, picnics, etc. They were, indeed, instrumental in helping the Lions achieve their goals! Also, in those days, our Board of Director’s meetings rotated among the Club officers and always ended with a great dessert and coffee which helped keep attendance high!
Back in the 60’s and 70’s our weekly meetings always started with a song or two from our Lions Club song books sung with gusto. Doc Byers or Charlie Compton usually led the singing accompanied by Earl Cady on the piano to keep us near pitch. They’d probably roll over in their graves if they heard us sing “Happy Birthday” today!
Lunch was served to the Lions seated on both sides of long tables…making it difficult to always sit with the same Lions!
Lions club programs, then as now, emphasized local culture and community needs. Traditionally, at that time, CSU football coach Bob Davis (who Lion Tom Toliver played for} and basketball coach Jim Williams would bring us a rundown of their personnel and expectations for many years, at the time when athletes came to CSU primarily to earn a college degree.
Lion Joe “total recall” Price was club secretary for a few years before and after my term as President. He never took notes, but with very few exceptions, all meeting minutes read the same!
Our treasurer, George Wolfe, did his best to make the treasurer’s report look positive during my term, but it was a struggle. Trying to help the budget, Lion Tom Toliver initiated a “50 – 50 raffle” for our meetings where all the money was split in half. Half went to charity and half to the winning ticket holder. Lion Elton Collins was the first winner and gave his half to the charity, thus, starting a precedent that continues to this day in one form or another!
Our major fund raiser, as it was for many years before and after my term as President was the Broom and Bulb Sale, held every year in mid-September. The 50 or 60 Lions that worked were just able to cover Fort Collins before its population really exploded. Many families in Fort Collins waited for the Lions to come, to stock up on light bulbs. Even so, it was tough to net more than $3,000 or $4,000 dollars from the sale.
Over the years we supplemented those earnings with candy machine sales, garage sales, art shows, hoboes with cans at street intersections, raffles, pancake breakfasts, bowl for the blind, horseshoe tournaments, chili cook-offs, bike rides – and now Bingo!
But whether we struggled to make money four decades ago, or to find the help we need to man Bingo and our charitable activities today, Thursday noon’s meetings are fun, with good programs to boot! We need to get more members in the Lions Club to enjoy the fun and provide more man-and-woman power to support our work.
******************************************************************
If You Like Dogs
-
“If there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.” Will Rogers, humorist
-
“The average dog is a better person than the average person is.” Andy Rooney, journalist
-
“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.” Robert Benchley, humorist
-
“My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog already thinks I am!” Unknown”
-
“If your dog is fat, you aren’t getting enough exercise.” Unknown
- “Happiness is a warm puppy.” Charles M. Schulz, cartoonist