By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
The Crestline Lions in the Pines Club has been actively recruiting members and actively doing service projects. A couple of weeks ago, they had a big food drive and distribution through Hearts & Lives, which helped more than 35 families that same day.
The Lions also donated an additional $240 dollars, which they used to purchase food vouchers for Goodwin’s Market and for Grocery Outlet and gave them to Hearts & Lives counselors Diana Garcia and Lindsey Martinez to distribute to worthy families.
At Hearts & Lives, a resource center on Lake Drive in Crestline, they offer counseling for behavioral problems, serving the entire mountaintop area from Cedarpines Park to Big Bear. Through their resource center, they are now offering IEHP (Inland Empire Health Plan) members mental health counseling and parenting skills classes. By strengthening families through these classes taught by certified health specialists, they believe the entire community will be better with motivated residents who also will have strong, mentally healthy children who will contribute positively to those around them. They believe that having a positive childhood helps to create strong, mentally healthy adults.
Through their recent membership drive, the Lions Club has inducted several new members. The Crestline Lions Club received a trophy from the district for the largest number of new members in the last quarter. They were surprised when they received the trophy as their membership drive was for them to grow and share being a Lion with others, not to achieve recognition.
This is the first time they have received this honor. Some of their new members include Lions Linda Oswalt, Stan Oswalt, Robert Ippolito and Susan Oh, all of whom were sponsored into the club by Lion Catherine Johnson and Lion Libby Hayes. They are optimistic about the future of the club with these new members and are confident there are many ways these additional members can benefit the mountain communities even more.
The Hearts & Lives counselors Diana Garcia and Lindsey Martinez accepted a check from Crestline Lion Bonnie Hawes.
The Crestline Lions had planned to judge their district speech competition on Saturday, March 8 at the Leisure Shores Community Center, with the winners from that contest advancing to compete at the regional competition. However, because of the snowstorm and for everyone’s safety, they relocated the competition’s location.
The club members are now collecting aluminum can pull-tabs and have encouraged students from Valley of Enchantment Elementary School to collect soda pull-tabs and bring them into their classroom as a contest. This is a fundraiser for the Ronald McDonald House, which houses families of sick children who are being treated at the Loma Linda University Medical Center. The classroom that brings in the most aluminum tabs for the Ronald McDonald House will receive an ice cream party from the Lions Club. The pull-tabs will then be recycled into hypodermic needles.
When the Lions Club realized that the Mountain History Museum had suddenly found itself in a tight situation when it discovered that all 12 of the six-foot-tall windows across the front of their building had suffered such severe damage during Snowmeggedon that they all needed to be replaced, the Lions Club wanted to help. This damage was only realized when the museum’s board decided to replace the faded vinyl photos that had been placed on them many years ago. It was those vinyl graphics that had kept the museum from flooding in 2023 by holding the broken glass together, although they were unaware of that at the time.
Since the museum is free, run as a community benefit, they were shocked at the damage and the initial estimate to replace the glass in the windows. The Crestline Lions Club donated $500 toward the repairs. The damage has required the museum to be closed this winter. Past Lions President Catherine Johnson and her husband, Raymond, added another $100 toward the expensive repairs to help get the museum reopened. The museum had to remove all the displays across the entire front of the museum to get to the broken windows and must replace all those historical displays before reopening. The museum does hope to reopen Memorial Day weekend.
The Crestline Lions Club meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month at Leisure Shores Community Center on the east shore of Lake Gregory. For more information on how to become a member of the Crestline Lions Club, contact Past President Catherine Johnson by email at cj1949@yahoo.com.
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