Lions celebrate 65 years of service to the community
“The year 1952 was the beginning of an era: Elizabeth II became the Queen of England and Eisenhower was inaugurated as the president of the United States. However, the event that had more effect on the people of the community of Norwood than both of these events combined was the chartering of the Norwood Lions Club.”
Those words were written about 25 years ago by the late Dave McNeil, a charter member of the Lions club.
The year of 2017 marks the 65th anniversary of the Norwood service club and Dave’s words are as true now as they were when he wrote them.
It was in latter part of 1951 and early in the year 1952 when a group of community minded individuals held the first meetings of what would soon become the Norwood Lions Club.
These meetings were held with members from the sponsoring Lions Club from Peterborough who indoctrinated the new clubs members with the practices and principles of Lionism.
The club held its first charter night on Jan. 30, 1952 in a unique ceremony at the Norwood Town Hall, when a total of 30 members took the pledge and received the charter to form the Norwood Lions Club.
“Of course, you cannot do very much work for your community when you are broke”, so club members immediately set to work to raise funds for their community betterment projects, over the years these fundraisers have included everything from bingos to selling peanuts and light bulbs door to door to hosting street dances, donnybrook auctions and community variety shows, whatever the event the only real requirement was to make sure they had fun doing it.
There is not enough space in this column to list the countless projects the Norwood Lion’s club have contributed to over the past 65 years, however in six plus decades the club has contributed over 1.5 million dollars and countless hours to worthy village projects and international projects. One of their first missions was to provide eye tests to the areas school children, a mandate that continues on a worldwide basis with the Lions International Sight First Program.
It is likely that many amenities would not exist in the village without the contributions and ideas from the club. Among their many projects, the club is responsible for numbering the houses in Norwood, they provided a blue box to every household to get the recycling program started, they are responsible for at least three major and numerous other smaller renovations to the Norwood Town Hall (with another major overhaul in the near future), the Lions park by the river was created by the club in the 1960s, the club was also a major sponsor and source of labourers to help construct Norwood’s new park and splash pad beside the community centre in 2011, the same community centre that received $355,000 from the club to help make it a reality in 2004.
The club is a tireless sponsor for the Campbellford Hospital when they were raising funds to purchase a CT scanner and are already on board to support the Norwood Hospice. Membership has fluctuated over the years; presently they have 47 active members, who dedicate themselves to the same motto that the original 30 did: “We Serve”.
Sixty-five years later they continue to be an important presence in the community and a driving force for “community betterment”.