Happy birthday to Lions Clubs International
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — During 2017, the Hot Springs Village Breakfast Lions Club, with the 46,500 Lions Clubs and 1.4 million members worldwide, has celebrated 100 years as Lions Club International.
The year 1917 was a time of cheap labor, growing immigrant community, the assembly line, child labor and World War I, when the USA entered the war in Europe.
In Chicago, a center of societal ills, Melvin Jones met with clubs and said that the best way to help themselves was to serve others. By June 7, Jones brought clubs to Chicago from several states. William Woods represented a multi-city club called the Lions’ Clubs. The clubs agreed to become an international club under the name Lions Club International, adopting the symbol of a lion.
Oct. 8, LCI held its first Convention in Dallas, Texas, electing Woods as president and Jones as secretary-treasurer with authority to establish headquarters in Chicago. The LCI was thus established with 800 members and $72 in the bank.
November 1918, the first Lions Club magazine stated a Lion is to “aid my fellow man by giving my sympathy to those in distress, my aid to the weak, and my substance to the needy.”
In the 1920s, during a robust economy, the blind were struggling to survive. It was thought they could never care for themselves; were kept at home; closed off from the world. There were few homes or schools for the blind. The Lions taught the blind to make brooms and went to the schools to check eyesight of the children.
In 1925, Helen Keller asked the Lions to “constitute yourselves as Knights of the Blind in my crusade against darkness.” This energized the clubs to work harder for the blind with employment and the first Boy Scout troop for the blind.
In 1954, in a contest, the LCI adopted the motto “We Serve.”
“The HSV Breakfast Lions continues on the shoulders of those Lions who have a passion to serve for the betterment of mankind. Happy birthday, LCI and all her clubs and members,” states the press release.