Roaring ahead: Lions Club at 50 – Members celebrate five decades of service to the community

Published 6:49 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

By Lynn Porter

When Joyce Horn was growing up, it was customary that those who could would help the less fortunate, she said.

“Like breathing and eating, you were expected to give back to your community,” said the 74-year-old Mercer Island resident, “and one way or the other I think all of us have done it.”

The “all” are members of the Mercer Island Lions Club. The club turned 50 this month. Members celebrated with a dinner and program Friday at the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church.

In its five decades of service, the club has raised about $650,000 for charity and other causes, said Horn, the club’s treasurer. And the organization has stayed afloat despite sharply declining membership in the 1970s and no large increases in the 1980s and 1990s.

“I think all clubs went down rather dramatically and ours is coming back — has come back up,” said Frank Couch, 77, a member since 1983 and now on the club’s board of directors.

With a bolstered membership of 44, the Lions continue to do good. The club will bring a health screening van July 8 and 9 to an as-yet-undetermined site in the Island’s business district. People may get their hearing, sight and blood pressure tested in the van and undergo testing for diabetes — all for free.

The club also supports a number of other causes with money it brings in from a yearly Christmas tree sale. Among those that received donations recently are: the Mercer Island Boys & Girls Club, which got $7,000 to help it support its programs, and Mercer Island Youth & Family Services, which received an equal amount for its emergency assistance fund to help people short money for utility bills, medicine and the like. In March the club donated $500 to Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind to assist people who are blind and deaf in learning computer skills.

Educators and students continue to be recipients of the club’s gifts. The Lions sponsor a teacher of the year award in which a Mercer Island High School educator is honored with $500 from the club. Each year, the club also gives $250 to a deserving student in each class at that school. Additionally, this year the Lions is offering a $1,000 scholarship to a deserving Mercer Island student who intends to attend college or vocational school.

Doing good wasn’t always easy though. In 1972, membership dwindled to six. It’s difficult to know what caused the decline, but some members conjecture that the rise of the two-income family and the demands on it may be part of the reason, along with young people placing less emphasis on civic service.

In the 1980s and 1990s membership stabilized, but didn’t grow measurably, said Horn, who noted that about 40 percent of the club’s members are 50 or older.

But recent rule changes that allow people to be members of more than one service club have helped spur membership in civic organizations, said Horn. The admission of women earlier also added members, she said.

Horn knows all about that. In 1985 she was one of two of the first women allowed in the Mercer Island Lions Club. In 1995 she became its president.

“There wasn’t really any friction, but on the other hand it had been a good-old-boys club for a very long time and some people didn’t think that should change,” she said.

But that’s no longer the case, and the club has very active and capable women members, Horn said.

One of the younger women members is Lisa Stewart, 40, who Couch credits with making the club’s Peace Poster contest a success.

None of the older members wanted to go to the schools “to tackle peace,” said Couch.

But Stewart did, and in her first try in the 2001-02 school year she solicited posters from students at Islander Middle and the St. Monica School. An entry by Ari Robbins, then 12, was a finalist out of about 350,000 submissions to Lions International from children ages 11 to 13 around the world, she said.

Stewart, who has four children, said she joined the Lions because it’s important work.

“I just feel that one component of a meaningful life is commitment to serving your community with whatever (energy and) talents you have,” she said.

To join the Mercer Island Lions Club, call Horn at 232-2347 or Couch at 232-1233, or any member.