The weather got unseasonably hot, followed by temperatures in the 50’s and rain and clouds. However, our typical activities continued, as many were indoors. We have welcomed back most of the “snow birds” and are looking forward to seeing them at activities, meetings, and dinner. We would also like to have potential new members come to a meeting or ask a Club member what we do and why one should join a service organization.

Camp Pride: The long anticipated bathroom renovation of our adopted bunkhouse is due to be completed the middle of June. Sally and Dawn painted doors and trim in May and several members will be hanging the curtains, cleaning the windows, floors, and mattresses (doing the spring cleaning) towards the end of June.

White Cane Day Collecting for the Blind: On May 23, five Lions and four Boy Scouts and one Cub Scout, collected $1,250. We couldn’t have done it without the help of the Scouts (and as soon as I have a photo, I will post it here). And we thank all of the area residents and visitors who donated money.

Sutherland Park: The Moultonborough Lions have once again adopted the upper section of Sutherland Park to keep beautiful, weed-free, and watered. The Lions special ordered the American Chestnut tree (which was resistant to Chestnut Blight) the first year the Club sponsored the garden. And we are happy to report that this year, the tree is looking healthy and blooming.

Scholarships: The Club awarded $10,000 in scholarships and a $500 Book Scholarship, honoring Joe and Pat Keegan for all their service to the Club and the Community. They were announced at ceremonies in the three schools where students from the communities we serve will be graduating. From Inter-Lakes:  Egan Towle and Sara Harris.  From Kingswood:  David McWhirter and Abigail Fournier (who received the Keegan scholarship); and from Moultonborough Academy:  Elise Steward, Abigail Bryant and Olivia Tatro (pictured below with Mike and Kate Lancor who presented the scholarships at the Scholarship Night).

Dinner Meetings (the third Monday of the month): At May’s dinner meeting we learned more about each jindividual Lion’s early life which was a lot of fun as we don’t often get to know one another outside of service activities. June’s dinner meeting we will hear from Master Beekeeper, Athena. Hoping to post a photo here after the dinner on the 19th of June. Sounds like a most interesting topic!

Lion of the Year: Marilyn Indelicato was a most deserving recipient of our Club’s Lion of the Year Award. Marilyn joined the club in September of 2019 and has been one of our most active members — in the last two years alone, she put in almost 340 service hours. Many will have seen her just about every Tuesday night working at Bingo (selling sheets or working behind the scene. She was active at the state level and involved herself in so many of our service activities from Camp Pride to selling raffle tickets and helping with the mailings. Marilyn epitomizes the heart, soul, and energy of a Lion.

Books to Schools: On June 6, Lions Peter and Kathy Allen distributed books to each of the 102 students at Tuftonboro Central School.

Coming up: Fourth of July barbecue and raffle sales in front of Heath’s.

The month of April has been both warmer, colder, and wetter than it typically has and not all of our Club “snowbirds” have returned. But we continue to be active with the members who are here.

On Friday, April 21, Mark Cotrupi worked with two groups of students who are members of the Moultonborough Academy National Honor Society to clean up along the roads in Sandwich, NH.

We had four night of Bingo this month and the number of participants is slowly increasing. And we appreciate those regular players who show up week after week, month after month.

Three members were at the Meet the Candidates Night on April 16 to help and serve coffee to a “packed house”. Only two people wanted coffee and we may need to rethink that now that the evening is no longer in February.

The speaker at our dinner meeting was Jim Nute of The Mayhew Program who treated us to an informative presentation and slide show of the Mayhew experience for all the boys and young men it serves — more that 2,300 have gone through the summer and year-round programing tuition free since it opened. We were proud to donate money to help with this worthwhile and helping organization.

The snow is starting to melt as in the ice on all the lakes and activities are beginning to pick up. By the end of next month most of our “snowbirds” will have returned from warmer climates and we will be able to be more activie.

BOOKS IN THE SCHOOLS: On March 10, three Moultonborough Lions went to Moultonborough Central School and Sandwich Central School to distribute a book to each child in both schools. 223 books were given out at MSC and 92 in Sandwich. As always it is such a pleasure to see the joy in the student’s eyes as they IMMEDIATELY open the books to start reading — or, in the case of the older students, read the recap of the book on the fly leaf or back cover.

The kindergarten students were so excited about their books, that four of them got paper cuts and went to see the nurse.

VISION SCREENING: On March 15, Mark screened 30 students at Russell Elementary School in Rumney.

We had to cancel Bingo once for snow and we had our last meeting via zoom. Starting April 3 we will be meeting in person for the business meeting and the dinner meeting will be April 17. Our speaker will be Jim Nute from Camp Mayhew.

I forgot to mention that in December, Mark with assistance from the Inter-Lakes Elementary School nurse and some parents, screened 170 students. Nine students were referred to check in with their eye doctors. Vision screening is so important to catch any vision problems as early as possible. And with this screener we can screen students as young as three months old. Before children may even know that they are having difficulty seeing, difficulties in six major areas can be detected. In January, the Club screened 144 students at Plymouth Elementary school.

Because many of our members choose to escape the snow during the winter months, we have been having our business and board meetings via Zoom. But BINGO is still happening every Tuesday, with ticket sales starting at 4:30 and the games beginning at 6:30. I went a few weeks ago and was lucky enough to be a winner — you could, too.

We seemed to get most of our winter snow in one week in January, then had a bitter cold weekend with record low temperatures being set at the top of Mount Washington and pond hockey players not able to skate on Lake Winnipesaukee, but did manage to play on Lake Waukewan in frostbite conditions. And the Ice Fishing Derby went ahead, despite some open areas and areas of weak ice, without all the usual houses and vehicles on the Lake.

We are always looking to have new people who want to serve their community check the Moultonborough Lions Club out — no matter what the weather. Check out these web pages and see if you would like to attend a meeting or talk with a present member.

The raffle is over and the winning ticket was drawn at one pm at the Moultonborough Central School Holiday Fair by Tess, an elementary student.

The winner of the $5,000 prize was John K. from Candia, NH. We met him and presented him with a check at our December dinner meeting.

Eight Moultonborough Lions personalized around 275 Christmas cards to be distributed to the nursing home residents of Golden View, Forest View, and Mountain View.

All month we are collecting children’s scarves, mittens, gloves, and hats which will then be distributed for use by children who have forgotten, lost, or don’t have these items.

We gave checks to organizations in the four towns we service (Moultonborough, Center Harbor, Sandwich, and Tuftonboro) to help with Christmas presents, clothes, or whatever needs each town has at this time of year. The total amount of the checks was $2,500.

One of the Lion platforms is childhood cancer. This month we selected $500 worth items on CHAD’s wish list for its patients. The items were ordered on the Playopolis site and delivered directly to them at Dartmouth Hitchcock.

Our dinner meeting is set for December 19 and will be our last dinner meeting until April. With iffy weather and many of our members moving to warmer climes for the winter, we decided to just do one meeting — our business and board meeting for January, February, and March.

Lions ring the bell for the Salvation Army. Three Lions and four friends collected $1,030.80 to donate. They have been doing this for years, and this year it is wonderful how much was collected in six hours on one day!

The weather decided to get more fall-like and got us thinking about the holidays ahead.

On Monday, the 7th we did our before-the-snow-comes roadside clean up along the Center Harbor section of Route 25 and picked up 27 bags of trash. Fortunately, the morning we did this was one of the last warm days.

At the business meeting we voted to purchase $500 of items on the CHad wish list. We ordered sensory items, mainly for infants and toddlers which were on the list provided by Playopolis. The children should be receiving them soon.

Two members were given honors during both the October dinner meeting and the November business meeting:

and the Lion of the Year Award to Karen Baron

At our dinner meeting, we were very pleased to have Scout Master Ben Fullerton and three Boy Scouts from the troop we sponsor. They spoke about how Covid affected scouting and how the Cub Scouts now has girls as members. We also learned that our Scout troop has members from all the areas our club services. We are hoping to see some more Eagle Scouts in the next coupe of years.

Our major fundraiser, the raffle for a $5,000 prize is drawing to a close. Lions have put in well over 100 hours folding letters, stamping envelopes, stapling tickets, and putting on postage for ALMOST 6,000 letters. We had to have two different dates for assembling all the parts and the last batch went out on November 14. If you haven’t received your tickets in the mail yet, come to the Moultonborough Central School Holiday Fair on Saturday, December 3 to purchase them either outside the school or inside. The winning tickets will be selected at 1pm!

Bingo numbers were up during this month and we continue to keep up the upper section of Sutherland Park (although due to quite a bit of rain this month we didn’t have to water quite as often.

We took in almost $700 in raffle sales in front of E.M. Heath’s on Saturday, September 17 and are thankful to all the people who purchased them. Good luck to all who will have tickets by the end of November on winning that $5,000 prize.

At our dinner meeting, our speaker was Deb Hoadley, Director of the Moultonborough Public Library. She was both enthusiastic and informative telling us about all the activities hosted by the library and all the opportunities there are for us to learn, craft, discuss, and enjoy.

We also celebrated the 90th birthdays of two of our very active Lion Club members, John and Joe.

As the leaves begin to change color and the turkeys and squirrels make it difficult to navigate the road, the Moultonborough Lions have an active schedule of events.

We will be doing several school vision screenings this month (we did Moultonborough Academy, grades 6-12, on September 17 and screened 199 students and staff). So far we have been to Gilmanton (and screened 174 students), Sandwich (and screened (64 students), and Holderness (screened 142 students) for the individual student scan for five different vision problems. If a student shows a visual irregularity, he/she is given (or mailed by the school nurse) a paper with the results to take to an eye doctor. We will be in Gilford on the 28th of the month.

We also provided free vision screening at the Sandwich Fair on October 8, 9, and 10 from 10 am to 4 pm. Our white shed is located against the fence opposite the road with all the food venders and on the way to the rides. You can’t miss us. Stop on by; it takes less than a minute to have yourself or any member of your family screened.

We will have one more live sale date of raffle tickets in front of EM Heaths on Saturday, October 8 from 9:30 – 2:30. Stop on by on your way to or from the Fair. At the end of the month, we will be mailing out a letter and tickets to people who have not had a chance to purchase them earlier. The last chance to buy tickets for the $5,000 prize will be at the Holiday Fair at the Moultonborough Central School on Saturday, December 4 before the 1:00 drawing of the winner.

And thanks to two members, our adopted spot, Sutherland Park, is all set for the season.

August certainly started with a bang — literally — we have had thunderstorms both loud and somewhat destructive. And then there is the heat — the ending two weeks of the “dog days of summer.

Speaking of days and dogs… while we did have our first raffle sales on the Fourth of July, we followed that up with one of five selling dates in front of E.M. Heath’s. On July 23, we not only sold tickets, we also dog sat for a very nice dog while her owner went in and shopped. After all, our motto is, “We Serve!”

We will be selling raffle tickets on two dates in August: Sunday, August 14 and Saturday, August 27. Stop by while you are shopping and purchase your chance to win $5,000 and help out the communities we serve.

We have also place some yellow signs around town with an important message:

Hopefully, you have seen them as you are driving about the area.

District 44H (to which the Moultonborough Lions belong) is having its meeting at Camp Pride. In addition to bringing eyeglasses (We really appreciate all the donations of no longer needed eyeglasses in the baskets placed around the communities we serve), we will be collecting boxes of cereal which we will bring to the meeting and which will be donated to the food bank.

We are almost at the end of watering and weeding at Sutherland Park. September will see the purchase of some mums to bring in the autumn season.

At our August dinner meeting, the principal of Sandwich Central School, Jeremy Hillger, spoke to us about the effects of Covid on students and learning both locally and globally. He also thanked the Club for our continual purchase over the years of individual books for all the students.

The new Lion’s Year started with a band both literally and figuratively. After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, Moultonborough hosted its Fourth of July parade and the Moultonborough Lions Club hosed the event, serving hot dogs, steak burgers, pasta salad, potato salad, coleslaw, chips, watermelon and drinks to a little over 200 people — both parade participants and spectators. We also used wooden utensils and biodegradable plates.

At our July 18 dinner meeting we hosted 4 of our scholarship recipients. This year we gave seven scholarships, totaling $11,000.

We will have our first raffle ticket sales in front of EM Heath’s for a $5,000 prize on Saturday, July 23.