A NEW YEAR, AND THE VISION OF LIONISM:
By Lion Mike LeMay,
PDG, 22-W, District 6-SE Officer
Charter Night Address
Acknowledge President ____ and introduction; Acknowledge
Lion’s Dignitaries and Guests, Lions Club members of the _______________ Lions
Club.
This evening we come together in the fellowship of Lionism
to celebrate the beginning of a new year, and to celebrate the _____anniversary
of the charter night of your club. As a Certified Guiding Lion, a PDG and, as such, an officer of LCI, it is my distinct
honor and pleasure to address you all tonight. I am pleased to acknowledge the
accomplishments of this club in Lionism—we have much to appreciate and to
celebrate.
Our founder, Melvin Jones, was a true visionary. I imagine that the movement he began in 1917
has grown far beyond even his most visionary dreams. As you all know, ever
since 1925, when Helen Keller challenged LCI to become “Knights of the Blind,”
we have been active in and known for our sight related work. That effort
suggests the theme for my remarks this auspicious night. I would like to
acknowledge the accomplishments of this club in their _____ year(s) in Lionism,
and I hope inspire us all to renew our efforts in that work.
Sight is an awesome aspect of our human condition. Some studies
have suggested that for most persons, 90 % of all their knowledge about the
world around them comes to them through their eyes. Indeed, human vision is a
wonderful yet fragile sense-organ. At the best of conditions, our vision is
limited. Unaided, our eyesight is limited in the distance to which it can see
clearly, and in the range of light it can see. Although our eyes are marvelous
organs, they are subject to disease, to injury, and to a deterioration that
comes naturally with age. Fortunately, human ingenuity has developed aids to
assist, correct, or enhance our vision. Consider, for example, just a few such
devices that are now routine to the human condition.
What woman, upon being presented a diamond engagement ring,
has not appreciated, with ecstatic joy, the enhanced view of her ring when seen
through a jeweler’s eyepiece that enables her to see its clarity and brilliance
in a way she is simply unable to do looking at it, gracing her finger, with her
naked eye? The jeweler’s eyepiece sharpens the focus for her. It lets her look
deeply into the sparkling crystal stone, revealing its hidden flaws or a color
or range of brilliance. Most of us, when driving in bright sunlight, have appreciated
the use of sunglasses that block out the glare from a range of ultraviolet
light. Many of us have enjoyed the
“rose-colored” view of the world from rose-tinted glasses. And I dare say that most of us in this room, having
passed the age of 40 or 50, have developed near-sightedness and we require
prescription eyeglasses to restore our vision to 20/20, to see that road sign a
few blocks away, and read its information instead of glimpsing only some blurry
words. So too, many of us who have
watched the various CSI television
shows marvel at the special red-tinted goggles they wear to view, under blue
light, a crime scene at which is suddenly revealed some cleaned-up human blood
splatter or body fluids that were invisible to the unaided eye. Many of us have
marveled, when enjoying some military-related movie that shows soldiers wearing
night-vision goggles, at the green-glow images they can see in pitch-darkness.
And finally, who among us has not viewed with wonder the awesome photographs
taken by the Hubble Space telescope? Hubble lets us view objects literally billions
of light years away. Our jaws drop at
the sight of gaseous nebula in which we can see stars being formed at nearly
the dawn of time. We can see across the vast expanse of time and space and gasp
at the distant parts of the universe as they were forming shortly after the
“big bang” birth of creation itself.
So, too, joining a lion’s club and becoming involved with
international Lionism provides a new
vision with which we see the world around us. Like the jeweler’s eyepiece, our
local club enables us to view our community with new insight, to see needs that
we just had not focused upon. This club,
whose chartering we celebrate this evening, for example, saw the need for assisting this
senior-citizen center in which we celebrate tonight. It raised thousands of dollars and is helping
the center in myriad ways, notably providing recently $1,500 to improve the
grounds and outbuildings at this center.
Like those rose-tinted sunglasses, our Lion’s district
blocks out the distraction of thinking “we can’t do that” and enables us to
accomplish goals beyond the local club’s capacity. Our local district, as you
know, brings many clubs together to support the Colorado Lions Camp for
handicapped children. What joy a project such as that brings to the heart of each
lion member in the district! What a vision of happiness we see on the faces of
those children who, because of our support, can spend a week at camp in the
beautiful foothills of Pike’s Peak. This
club’s members have helped in fundraising projects of other near-by clubs to
help support that effort. Some of its members have worked up at the camp to
improve its physical conditions. And of course, the proceeds its raises from
this evening’s silent auction will go towards purchasing and installing some
much-needed new carpeting at the camp.
Like a pair of prescription eyeglasses, our state-wide Lions
organization enables us to support guide dogs for the blind and hearing dogs
for the hearing-impaired. Our state-wide organization, the Colorado Lions Clubs,
supports Lions “Kidsight.” As you know, Kidsight provides vision screening to
children state-wide and provides corrected vision prescription glasses, often
with the cooperation of a local lion’s club, for children in need. This new
club is already supporting Kidsight, and will host a training session for some
of its members to be screeners and to hold screenings this coming year in the
Fountain community. Lions of Colorado,
as do those in many states, also fund an eye bank and an eye institute.
Multiple district organizations establish projects that,
like those CSI devices or those military night-vision goggles, reveal patterns
and needs we otherwise could not envision. I was honored to serve as a district
governor within Multiple District 22. That district, in conjunction with The
Johns Hopkins University, supported the Wilmer Eye Institute with a project
costing millions of dollars. It brought
in the scientific expertise of NASA and the medical innovations of brilliant
doctors at the university to develop devices that enable individuals with very
limited “tunnel vision” to see the world around them. They look like something
out of science-fiction. But they literally provide sight to persons who
previously were legally blind. I
challenge the members of this new club to expand your vision to the Multiple
District level. Perhaps this year your club can honor a member or two of your
club by a donation to the Colorado Lion’s Foundation to enhance that work and
to name those members as recipients of the Ann Sullivan and Humanitarian
Awards.
Like the Hubble Space Telescope, Lions Clubs International
Foundation has given a new vision to millions of lions around the world.
Bringing together our financial and human resources, we can send millions of
dollars in disaster relief to the victims of the tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita, and the recent earthquakes in Pakistan
and India.
As its Guiding Lion, I know this club made a contribution to LCIF for the
Katrina Relief effort. Thousands of Lions members rushed in to give of their
time and talents to assist at shelters, provide and serve food, and distribute
water, clothes, medical supplies, prescription glasses and so on to evacuees
from these natural disasters. LCIF enables lions to dare dream of wiping out
from the world blindness caused by diabetes. Together we can undertake projects
to prevent blindness among the adults and children of entire nations from a
disease like “river blindness.” If I may
“put on my cap as District 6 SE Chairman of the Sight First II campaign,” let
me remind you all of the accomplishments of the first Sight First campaign. It raised
and disbursed $175 million in grants that funded 724 projects and provided 65
million treatments for river blindness; built or expanded 258 eye hospitals; provided
equipment for 300 eye care centers; expanded 6 training facilities, trained
13,886 ophthalmologists, ophthalmic nurses and allied health care workers, and
trained over 68,000 health workers to provide primary eye care services or
disease control, and improved eye care for more than 100 million people. Now LCIF
has launched a three-year campaign—SightFirst II—which seeks to raise $150
million to continue the wonderful work that has been done for the past fifteen
years through the SightFirst program that restored sight to more than 4.6
million suffering from cataract blindness, prevented blindness in 24 million
more, and provided eye-care services for under-served people in 88 countries
around the world! I challenge you all, and this club, to support that effort.
If each lion is Lionism, nearly one and a-half million strong, made a personal
donation to Sight First II, it would go a long way towards achieving its goal
of raising $150 million dollars. I challenge this new club to consider holding a special fund-raiser to support the
campaign. Perhaps it can manage what many clubs are doing over the three-years
of the campaign—giving $350 dollars this year, $350 next year, and $300 dollars
in the third year, and thereby being able to name a Melvin Jones Fellow—the
first in this club. What better way to honor a member as the club’s “Lion of
the Year”? Or perhaps even, the club
might manage to contribute $1000 in 2006 and name a member as a Melvin Jones
Fellow. I might suggest that would be an excellent way for the club to honor
its “founding president” who has worked so hard and so well to make this, your
first full year in Lionism, such a success.
As lions, we are truly aided with a new sense of
vision; to see the world in ways we never could have done without that special
vision provided by Lionism. The “Vision of Lionism” is a blessing for which we
remain eternally grateful. Let each and every one of us renew our dedication to
that vision and to those efforts. Thank you for the privilege of sharing these
thoughts.
The following is a presentation called A Renewed of Lionism.
The following is a presentation called A Renewed of Lionism.
