The Mount Vernon Lions Club will celebrate 100 years in service in Mount Vernon this year, and Saturday, April 20, held a banquet recognizing past and current members for helping the club reach that achievement.
Mount Vernon mayor Tom Wieseler read a mayoral proclamation, highlighting many of the accomplishments of the club in it’s 100 years of service to Mount Vernon, including helping to pave First Street in the 1920s, providing meals to people during the Great Depression amongst other relief, the creation of Davis Park in Mount Vernon, the establishment of the Mount Vernon Parks and Recreation board, the numerous scholarships provided to area students and more than 1,000 annual vision screenings conducted at the area elementary schools in the past decade.
“Looking around this room, it’s a veritable who’s who of important people in Mount Vernon’s history over the past several decades,” Wieseler said.
Cornell College president Jonathan Brand said five of the 22 members on the original charter in 1924 had connections to Cornell College.
“That we’re celebrating the Mount Vernon Lions Club’s 100th anniversary here at Cornell brings it full circle to me,” Brand said. “The connections the Lions Club has to not only Cornell, but the Mount Vernon club are important.”
Brand said that nationally, many service organizations are seeing declines in memberships over the past decades, and as a college Cornell continues to try and get students to engage in their communities and make them better places to live.
“The work the Lions Club does in those steads locally should be celebrated,” Brand said. “Here’s to another 100 years.”
Past District Governor Dale Schoening read from the history of the club’s Charter Night, as was previously reported in the May 8, 1924 edition of the Mount Vernon and Lisbon Hawk-Eye Herald.
The newspaper defined the ways the club worked, and their mission on improving the communities they were a part of through their service.
“[The club] seeks truly to embody and express the very highest type of community manhood through its membership,” Schoening read. “All sit down together to a common meal, and know nothing of differences as they talk man to man and plan to achieve for the betterment of the community all those programs which have made Lionism a synonym for progress and community uplift.”
“No man joins the Lions Club for what he can get, he comes into membership and asks only an opportunity to serve,” Schoening read.
A video was played, highlighting the major accomplishments for the club over the past 100 years, including that formation of Davis Park. Previous to the creation of Davis Park, the Lions Club would bring in a portable swimming pool on a yearly basis for the youth in town to enjoy.
In 1959, the club helped with the purchase of the land that would make the Davis Park the community knows and loves for $3,300, roughly $35,000 today. A few years later, the club helped pass the bond that helped construct the pool in the park.
Matt Siders said the club’s impact on the parks and recreation programs in Mount Vernon can not be understated.
The club also had two times the Mount Vernon Marching Mustangs represented the state at Lions Club events. In 1980, the band placed 10th in those who performed in Chicago overall.
“It was exciting to be part of the Marching Mustangs at that time,” said Sharon Glenn.
In 1984, Glenn said that more than 200 clubs from across Iowa helped sponsor the bands trip to San Francisco, Calif., where the band placed second of 24 bands competing.
Past international president Justice Brian Stevenson was the keynote speaker at the celebration.
“Mount Vernon showed more than 100 years ago when they created this club a willingness to march together to make Mount Vernon community what it is today,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson said that is apparent with the club’s focus on youth and youth activities in the community.
“Even though they may only make up 30 percent of the world’s population, they are 100 percent the future of the world,” Stevenson said. “This organization, like all Lions clubs, has shown the importance of changing the world one person at a time.”
He said the actions of the club working together have made the communities a better place.
“The rewards for your club aren’t in material, they’re in the smiles of those who you’ve shown your gratitude in your acts of service over the years,” Stevenson said.
The rewards are the small acts like helping with the holiday meals program at Southeast Linn Community Center each year, to the big projects like the creation of a park that has been integral to the community for more than 60 years now, or the $325,000 in donations they’ve made in their 100 years of service to countless causes.
At the meeting, nine members received chevrons denoting numbers of years of service, with more than 290 years of service commemorated.
As well, Lions Club member Fred Lehman was honored for his 71 years of service to the Lions Club organization in both Mount Vernon and West Liberty, with the Warren Coleman Honorary award. The Warren Coleman award is given to the Lions Club member who exemplifies the highest standards of Lionism and community volunteerism.
The night concluded with a round of Bingo, one of the activities that member Fred Burke said he continually has youth in the community mention how fun that event is at the Heritage Days festival in Mount Vernon.
Current, past and other Lions Club members gather for a social hour at Cornell College Saturday, April 20, to mark Mount Vernon Lions 100 years as a club.