The Augusta Lions Club will celebrate 100 years of serving the Augusta area at its 29th annual golf tournament. The tournament will be held at the Forest Hills Golf Club on October 20.
Lions Club International was formed by Melvin Jones in Chicago in 1917 and the Augusta chapter opened its doors in July of 1922. It did not take long for the Lions Club to become an international organization and spread across the globe. The organization has a current membership roster of 1.4 million members worldwide.
According to Augusta Lions Club Treasurer Jim Redmond, Jones formed the club with the intention of giving professional men an outlet for both fraternity and community service. At first, the club had a very broad mission. The official mission statement reads “to improve health and well-being, strengthen communities, and support those in need through humanitarian services and grants that impact lives globally, and encourage peace and international understanding.”
While women would not be admitted as members until 1987, women have had a long association with the club. Luminaries such as Amelia Earhart were given honorary memberships and it would be Helen Keller that would help the clubs leaders really define the groups mission and make it a worldwide organization.
In 1925, Keller, the famous advocate for the blind and deaf attended a Lions Club International convention and issued a challenge that the group become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness” and that has been the primary focus of the group ever since.
The Lions Club locally holds recycling drives for used eyeglasses and hearing aids, provides eyeglasses to underprivileged children and supports the international club’s leader dog school that is operated out of Rochester Mo.
However, the lion’s share of the money raised by the Augusta Lions Club from its golf tournaments and other charity fundraising drives stays in the local community. The main benefactor of the local funding is the Culver Vision Discovery Institute, a part of the Georgia Health Sciences Foundation at Augusta University.
The institute is a leading research facility which specializes in research on diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, and corneal disruption.
Redmond says he joined the Augusta Lions Club in 1981 when he accepted a position at a local bank. At the time, his employer and many others at the time required those in high level positions to be a member of some community civic organization and he chose the Lions Club because the meetings were convenient for his schedule. However, Redmond says he quickly grew to love the organization and has now been a member for more than 40 years.
Membership in civic clubs across the nation has dramatically declined in the past two decades, but the Lions Club has soldiered on and Redmond says that is primarily because the group has defined mission that is still in demand and the club has always been more of a service organization than just a club.
“Also, some groups limit the number of members of a certain profession, like only allowing a certain number of CPA’s or attorneys, we invite everyone from all walks of life to join us,” Redmond said.
