May 15, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Our guests today were Phil Lamoreaux and Stephanie Crawford.
Tony opened with his famous NH trivia: “Where did these NH places get their names?” edition.
The 50/50 was won by George, who donated added half to the club and half to Tom’s tip.
Bill: won the chance to draw in the card game and he pulled the ace of spades. The amount will be calculated…it should be approximately $100…and Ken will write him a check.
New Business:
Today is the deadline for Citizen of the Year nominations. The Board will vote to choose a Citizen of the Year at the next board meeting on Friday morning at 7 am.
This weekend will be Circle Cleanup from 10-2 both days. The Historical Society will be having its anniversary event on Saturday from 11-2.
Ken noted that we will have two town wide meetings to gather input on our upcoming grant. The first will be held at 6 pm on June 13th at the Senior Center. The second will be held at 10 am on Saturday June 15th at the high school library.
Denise introduced our speaker, Stephanie Crawford. She is a member of the Centennial Lions Club, speaking in lieu of the Lion Club president who had a death in the family last night. She is a cosmetologist who owns a day spa in Canaan and also works for Spectrum.
Stephanie is from Groton, and she opened her business in Canaan in 2015. She joined the Lions club that same year. Her goal was to have a community center where Groton residents of all ages could gather. She was charter president of her club; she left in 2020 for personal reasons but rejoined this year. They have the same July-June calendar that we do, as well as a similar structure with districts and zones. The organization serves 5 local towns.
The Lions do a number of fundraising and service projects. They have 16 members, of which. 7 come to meetings. They meet at the Common Man Inn on the 2nd Wednesday of the month for dinner and on the 4th Wednesday they have a business meeting.
She started the “jail and bail, “ in which citizens are arrested and they have to sit in jail and call friends and neighbors for bail. The Lions do blood drives in Wentworth. They give a percentage of money raised to their district and some goes into the community directly. The rest (80%) goes into a fire fund to give to people who have been burned out.
Service to the blind and hearing-impaired is also an important Lions project. They do sight screening in the schools to help get early detection of eye problems in children. They own their the screening machine and they have 7 screeners. If a child needs glasses or a hearing aid, the family can apply to the Lions Club for funding.
The Lions also provide Christmas and Thanksgiving meals to the Bridge House and they give gift cards to the residents at the holidays.Two families cook the turkeys and the rest of the members cook the side dishes. The event is the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Lions clubs used to have a “tail twister” (a plastic lion) where people would give money for cursing or other infractions. Now they just collect the money. In addition, if a club member steals an item like a gavel from another club, they get invited to come back to speak to the club from which it was stolen. To gain new members, they invite citizens to attend a meeting or event and if it seems like a good fit, they will talk to the person about applying for membership.
Happy dollars were shared by Denise, Mike, Braden (who is buying his first house), and Tony.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary