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Several longtime members of the Stafford County Lions Club gathered for this 1998 photo. Left to right are Dickey Ballard, Carlton Beach, Edmond Sitek, Herndon Bullock and William H. Bass. The club is celebrating its 50th anniversary in April. |
THE PASSAGE of 50 years
brings many changes to any
organization.
Officers come and go, members lose touch, meetings shift from restaurant to restaurant, and once-profitable fund-raisers gradually fall victim to changing times.
The Stafford County Lions Club has experienced all that and more.
Some things, however, have remained remarkably the same since the group was formed in the spring of 1952. A handful of the club's founding fathers are still members, and the original goal of community service remains alive and well.
The Stafford Lions will celebrate 50 years of living up to their "We Serve" motto with a banquet and dance on Saturday, April 6, at the Holiday Inn Select at Central Park in Fredericksburg.
"It's been fun being a member all these years," said 80-year-old Dickey Ballard of Falmouth, who joined the group in 1959. "There have been a lot of good people involved and a lot of work helping the community."
Ballard said he wasn't surprised that the group has survived for 50 years, despite the fact that membership dwindled to just six Lions during the mid-'90s.
"We hoped it would last for a long time," he said. "We were down--but not out--there for a while. But now the club's making
a comeback.
"I always said my priorities were family first, church second and then the Lions."
Asked if he would be on hand for the 50th anniversary party, Ballard replied: "If the Lord's willing, I'll be there."
Invited guests for the banquet include members from about 70 Lions clubs in District 24-A, which consists of 11 counties and stretches from Westmoreland to Manassas and from Spotsylvania to Alexandria.
The 7 p.m. party also is open to the public. Music will be provided by the Fredericksburg Big Band, and a silent auction will benefit the Lions' sight-conservation efforts.
Providing help to the seeing- and hearing-impaired has been an important goal of Lions Clubs International since the 1920s. Other priorities are diabetes research and helping young people.
According to its Web site, Lions Clubs International is the world's largest charitable organization. It has 1.4 million members in more than 44,000 clubs in 183 countries.
But in Stafford, it all started with a meeting of 24 Lions on March 20, 1952, at the fire house in Falmouth.
Connecting with the Stafford County Lions Club for many long-time residents means exercise at the end of a broom.
Stafford Lions sold about 1,000 brooms a year made by residents at the Virginia Home for the Blind in Charlottesville as a fund-raiser from 1954 until the 1980s.
"That was one of our biggest fund-raisers," said Ballard. "The first job I had with the Lions was as broom chairman. And I remember we sold 125 dozen brooms that year."
Club members usually sold the brooms door to door, but occasionally used a dash of creativity. A yellowed Free Lance-Star clipping from 1958, for example, reported that a parade of antique cars through Falmouth and Fredericksburg was to launch the Lions' five-day broom sale.
Another clipping, this one from 1962, reported that a group of Lions took advantage of a county budget controversy to sell 48 brooms at a crowded public hearing.
Like most civic groups, the Stafford Lions have tried a little bit of everything to raise money over the years.
One of the group's early fund-raisers was an auction in 1952 that included everything from antique furniture and a Model-A Ford to live pigs and a horse.
For many years, the Lions co-sponsored a Pet Parade at St. Clair Brooks Park in southern Stafford, which included awards like "the snake with the best personality."
The group sponsored a three-ring circus at Stafford High School in 1967 and also conducted its share of pancake suppers and candy sales.
But perhaps the most creative fund-raisers were a series of so-called "Womanless Weddings" in the mid-'60s, with club members--which were all male at the time-- playing all the roles.
"People would fill the high school auditorium and be standing around the sides for those things," recalled Ballard. "They were kind of like a play, and some of the guys were really good at it."
A newspaper account of the 1965 wedding mentions Ralph Metts, "a petite figure gowned in antique satin," as the bride and Jake Thomas as the lucky bridegroom.
The Stafford Lions Club was sponsored by the Fredericksburg Host Lions Club and celebrated its charter presentation on May 7, 1952. Ballard said there are four surviving members of the original group--Gordon Byram, William H. Bass, Herndon Bullock and Samuel H. Berry.
Early projects included collecting eyeglasses, setting up eye exams, repairing and painting homes of needy families and delivering baskets of food to families during the Christmas season.
The group also sponsored the Bland Memorial Music Contest for area school students and, for many years, presented awards to the most outstanding senior boy and girl at Stafford High School.
Ballard said that one of the club's most successful projects was providing relief to victims of Hurricane Carla in 1961. The Lions joined with other area groups in collecting several truckloads of clothes and supplies for people in Louisiana, Texas and southwest Virginia.
The Lions grew to about 50 members and then saw their ranks dwindle during the 1980s and '90s, as did many community service clubs in the area.
Although current club president David Paulson has been a member of the Stafford Lions Club for only two years, he has an appreciation of the group's history and traditions.
You see, he is a third-generation Lion. His grandfather was a Lions club member for 51 years, and his father is at 20 years and counting.
Paulson is a 30-year-old native of Muskegon, Mich., and a Marine reservist. He has lived in Stafford for almost five years.
He smiles when he tells of being elected the club's first vice president on the night he joined. It seems the dwindling roster called for desperate measures.
The membership now stands at 24, and Paulson is optimistic about continued growth.
"In some ways, it's like reinventing the wheel," he said of the club's resurgence.
"We're emphasizing the basic tradition of the Lions. But we're also getting ideas from other clubs about new projects and fund-raisers, and ways to interest younger members."
In recent years, the group's membership has been helped by an influx of former Jaycees and also by incorporating the Garrisonville-Park Ridge Lions Club, which saw its own membership drop to a handful of regulars. In addition, Lions International opened its clubs to women in 1990, and the Stafford group has benefited from the contributions of new female members.
Paulson said that while the events of Sept. 11 haven't had a direct impact on increasing membership, they did "underscore that our work is important and that by strengthening our community, we are strengthening the nation."
The list of Lions club projects this year is a long one.
The group still sponsors the Bland Memorial Music Contest, conducts a peace poster contest for middle school students and awards about $4,000 worth of scholarships to high school seniors in the county.
In addition, the group sponsors a Leo Club--the high school equivalent of a Lions club--at Colonial Forge High School.
Other projects include collecting eyeglasses, soliciting contributions for the blind and arranging for sight and hearing tests. The Lions also have partnerships with the Stafford chapter of the NAACP to sponsor a health fair on June 29 and have joined with other clubs
in the district to help Habitat for Humanity build a house in Fairfax.
The club also recently was involved with providing a Ferry Farm Elementary School student with a Braille 'n' Speak computer to aid his education.
Paulson said that as president, "it is interesting to help organize people's interests and talents into community service."
He said that what makes a good Lion is simply a "willingness to help." And that's a quality that Stafford County Lions have demonstrated since 1952.
It seems only fitting to give Ballard the last word.
"Pretty much all the money we raised went back to the community. That's the beautiful part of it," he said.
"The new members have a lot of good ideas. I'm sure they'll carry on very successfully."
The guest of honor for the anniversary party is Robert "Bob" Browning Jr. of Pineville, W.Va., a past Lions International director.
Tickets are $40 per person. To make reservations, call Bob Baker at 371-5120 or e-mail him at baker15610@aol.com. Attire is semiformal, and reservations should be made before March 30.
More information about the group can be found on its Web site: staffordcountylions.org.
