Fayetteville Lions saving sight for 95 years

Sydney Bailey recalled her best moment as a member of the Fayetteville Lions Club.

But it wasn't meeting her now-husband of two years, Rick.

Several years ago, the Lions Club provided four tablet computers to help enhance the vision of students with disabilities in the Fayetteville School District. Students came to a club meeting to demonstrate their use.

"I'm getting goosebumps now while I'm talking about it," Sydney Bailey said. "We gave four units, knowing they are going to make a difference in the lives of those students."

"Since Lions Clubs International was founded in 1917, Lions have worked on projects designed to prevent blindness, restore eyesight and improve eye health and eye care for hundreds of millions of people worldwide," reads the website of the organization.

The Fayetteville club has been doing the same things locally since 1923. The club celebrated the 95th anniversary of its founding a few weeks ago.

"We provide free vision care screening, free glasses, eye exams. We collect used glasses, clean them and send them overseas with groups going on mission trips," Rick Bailey said.

The club honored Stuart Jones as the Lion of the Year during its weekly meeting June 6. He organized more than 2,500 vision screenings for infants to third-graders during the past year, although he gave much of the credit to his wife.

The club has also purchased eye-screening equipment that has been used in area schools and clinics.

"You don't know what impact you have," Jones said. Ten percent of the children screened are referred to eye care specialists, he said.

"Some, when we picked up on it in time, we saved their vision, prevented blindness," said Dr. Morriss Henry, a retired Fayetteville ophthalmologist, who also is a member of the Lions.

Damaged vision can lead to a lack of development -- especially educational development. "Education is the key to everything," Sydney Bailey said. "It can even prevent poverty."

Rick Bailey recalled a grandfather the club helped. They gave the family money for gas to drive to Memphis for surgery at the University of Tennessee Hamilton Eye Institute.

"After surgery, when he first came home, he said that was the first time he'd ever been able to see his grandchildren," Rick Bailey said. "He died three months later."

Diabetes can damage small blood vessels in the eye, causing vision loss. The Lions also are involved in raising awareness, and the local club can offer supplies for treatment of diabetes in emergency situations, Rick Bailey said.

"It gives me a sense of accomplishment to give something back to the community," said Mike Scribner of the club. "The biggest majority of the cases are 4- to 5-year-olds. Helping their livelihood is time and money well spent."

Money the club raises through the public -- through fundraisers, donations and grants -- is "100 percent spent for charity work," Rick Bailey said. "The administrative costs of the club come from members."

Those fundraisers include an online auction, the people's choice barbecue awards at Bikes, Blues & BBQ, and displaying American flags -- sponsored by area businesses -- around the Fayetteville square and other locations for patriotic holidays, observances and election day.

Henry, also a retired state senator, has been a member of the Fayetteville Lions Club for 55 years. He joined in January 1962, "because I was interested in sight conservation."

Henry explained, that as a senator, he sponsored the legislation to get the organ donor option on the state's drivers licenses. And when other lawmakers later wanted it eliminated, "I called all the Lions Clubs in the state to tell them what they wanted to do."

Henry supported the Arkansas Lions Eye Bank and Lab at the Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock and talked to Lions Clubs on its behalf. The eye bank harvests corneas and other parts of the eye at death and provides them to those in need to restore vision.

"I have been intent on helping other people, and the Lions were very strong in that," Henry said.

TOWN'S LEADERS

The Fayetteville Lions Club was chartered in May 1923 with 25 founding members and has been active continuously since that time, reads a club history written by Thad Rowden for the organization's 65th anniversary in 1987.

The Fort Smith Lions Club sponsored the Fayetteville Club for its inception, and it in turn sponsored clubs in Huntsville, Rogers, Springdale, Prairie Grove, Greenland, Elkins, a Fayetteville evening club, Bentonville, Decatur and Farmington.

"Perhaps the most ambitious program this Lions Club has ever undertaken was in 1931 when the club started a long-range project on construction and improvement of the city's and the schools' Harmon Playfield," Rowden wrote.

The club built the original fieldhouse, with dressing rooms and showers, and sodded the field at Fayetteville High School's football field. The club borrowed money from local banks, with notes signed by club presidents and secretaries, and repaid the loans over the years with money from the club's fundraising projects.

In 1947, the club spend $3,900 to enlarge the building.

"This is ample evidence of the club's longtime involvement in youth and educational programs," Rowden wrote, continuing with a list of other projects for the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, foreign exchange students, the Salvation Army, Boys and Girls State, the Richardson Center, Sherman Lollar Baseball, the Little Rock Medical Center and more.

Ruth Cohoon has become the club historian. She also was the first woman to join the club in 1987. "I didn't know it was a big deal at the time," she said.

As the first women's athletic director at the University of Arkansas, Cohoon was asked to speak to the club on women's athletics. Then she was asked to join.

"And I didn't have any reason not to," she said. "And it was serving others, doing something helpful for the community."

Cohoon joined the ranks of many other Fayetteville leaders serving the community through the Lions Club. The charter members included Frank Root, the Fayetteville schools superintendent; the manager of the telephone company; several auto dealers; and the sheriff.

NAN Our Town on 07/05/2018