Clintonville club welcomes five members

The Clintonville Lions inducted five new members during the chapter’s September meeting at Mathew’s Supper Club.

In recent years, the club has experienced a drop in membership due to death and members moving away.

The chapter says adding the new members will help to bring the club’s membership numbers toward what they were a few years ago and continue the club’s legacy of service to the community.

The new members installed were:
• Lynn Didier, office manager and owner at Biel-Didier Funeral Home.
• Jay Hornung, packaging engineering and operations excellence manager at Creative Converting.
• Sara Mullen-Hornung, graphic designer, web page designer and printer at her business Cambridge Design & Print.
• Lois Renner, retired nurse.
• Mary Zabel, assistant branch manager at First State Bank.

“These new members, in addition to becoming part of the world’s largest service organization of 1.4 million members in approximately 46,000 clubs in more than 200 countries, become a member of a historically active club serving the Clintonville community,” said Lowell Easley, secretary of the Clintonville Lions.

Historically the club has been active in the community. Past projects include donations of $17,000 to furnish the Clintonville Community Center, $5,000 to the Clintonville Fire Department to purchase a heat imaging camera, $2,500 to the ThedaStar helicopter, $17,000 to construct the Lions shelter in W.A. Olen Park, $7,000 to the Clintonville High School Endowment Fund and $9,000 to the Wisconsin Lions Camp to replacing a cabin.

Other purchases have included an ice machine for the high school athletic department, a cooler for the concession stand, a tape player for the music department and a camera for the graphic arts department.

More recently, Easley said, the club donated over $15,000 toward development of the Gordy Noren Memorial Skate Park on the corner of East 12th Street and Lincoln Avenue.

Noren was an active member of the Clintonville Lions before he died four years ago. He was the driving force behind getting his initial skate park built in Clintonvile in the late 1990s.

Easley spoke of the club’s current service projects.

“The club is most proud of its two signature projects — constructing and installing wheelchair ramps for those in need, and conducting vision screening in schools and daycares,” he said.

Easley said since 1999, the club has installed 52 wheelchair ramps, averaging four to five ramps per year. In 2016, 10 ramps were constructed.

Ramps, he said, are installed year around, rain or shine, in the cold of 20 degrees below zero and the heat of 95 degrees.

“Where there is a need for a ramp, the club’s dedicated installation crew is quick to respond,” Easley said.

As for the club’s vision screening project, Easley said the club uses the Spot vision screening camera. The camera uses infrared light to automatically take 23 pictures of both eyes simultaneously to detect six different possible vision issues. Parents are provided a printed report, and their child is encouraged to see an eye doctor if he or she is “out of range.”

“Use of this camera here in Clintonville has already been responsible [for] several children being referred for examination by [an] eye doctor that resulted in the diagnosis of a serious eye disorder,” Easley stated.

Over the past couple years, the Clintonville Lions Club has lost 11 members: four died and seven moved away.

“It has been a struggle to find replacements for these lost members,” said Easley. “There has been a decline in the numbers of people willing to commit to volunteering time and talent to the betterment of their community.”

According to Easley, statistics released recently by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show volunteering in the United States is at a 10-year low.

This, he says, is a concern for all service clubs and service organizations that are voluntary non-profit organizations where members meet regularly and also perform charitable work for their community.

Easley went on to note that the Clintonville Lions, formed in 1924 and today recognized as the third oldest club in Wisconsin, was down to its lowest membership of 14 until the addition of the five new members.

He said when the club was chartered in the fall of1924 by Lions Clubs International, it had 31 initial members. During its 94-year history he said, the club has had periods where its membership was more than 40. Today, the club membership is 19.

“The club has always been extremely active in the Clintonville community for its betterment, and its service has always extended beyond Clintonville to meet needs in the region, state, nation and world,” Easley said. “With more members the club can do even that much more.”

To become a member of the Clintonville Lions, contact club President Bob Didier at 715-250-1141 or email [email protected] The club also has a Facebook page and a website.