Located in Oxnard, California, the Oxnard Noontimers Lions Club is celebrating its 52nd year. We meet at Noon every Friday at the Oxnard Residence Inn by Marriott by the River Ridge Golf Course.
Lion Irv Tucker died Saturday, April 19, at his cabin at Lake Nacimiento. Lion Irv has been our City of Hope coordinator for nearly all of his 50 years in the club. He joined the Noontimers in May of 1957 and has been a cheerful, dependable and loyal contributer to Lions activities for all that time. The Noontimers bought him a plaque in the Rose Garden of the City of Hope this past February to honor his 50 years of service to the City of Hope. Our president, Lion Toby Scott, was asked to talk about Lion Irv's contributions at this past Lions Appreciation Day at the City of Hope in front of about 600 Lions from all over the state.
Lion Irv will be remembered as a quiet, gentle man who worked diligently in the background never calling attention to himself, but smoothly getting things done. He was an important cornerstone of the Oxnard Noontimer Lions Club and will be greatly missed. Please send your prayers to Lion Irv and the entire Tucker family.
If you know of anyone in the Oxnard area who needs help with vision or hearing issues, please contact us. If you know of someone in another area, be sure to contact the local Lions club for assistance. The Lions have been helping the vision and hearing impaired since Helen Keller spoke at our International Convention in 1925.
Lions help out in other areas, too. After the tsunami struck south Asia in 2004 the Lions community responded immediately. If Lions International were classified as a nation, we would have been the fifth most generous provider of aid on earth. We were actually more effective than that, as all of the aid was coordinated with local Lions clubs. We built homes where Lions bought the material and most of the labor was donated by local Lions. Had we paid for labor, of course, the money wouldn't have gone as far.
Our Honorary Noontimer, Father Eugen Nkardzedze, continues his work in the bush in Mfumte, Cameroon. We have sent one huge cargo container of stuff for his church, but the crooks in Nigeria hit him with so much in taxes and bribes that we won't do that again. It cost more to get it into Cameroon than we spent on it. Considering that it contained a new ATV, camcorder, laptop computer and other stuff, that's no small bribe. We do, however, continue to send smaller care packages and money. If you are looking for a dedicated, hard-working priest who is setting up schools, digging wells, bringing basic health care and building his church, you can't do better than send checks or supplies to Father Eugen.
We will be working hard over the next several months to provide support to Father Eugen for his project to build a school, enlarge the capacity of the wells and improve sanitation in the village where he toils. This will greatly improve the lives of several thousand villagers and some more in the outlying areas. It's going to be tough to beat this project on the basis of dollars spent versus improving the quality of life for people. We have the hand-carved plaque on the front of our podium, which we use at every meeting, to remind us of the need the people of Mfumte have and the gratefulness they feel for our support. Money sent to the address below will be well-spent on very grateful people. Alternatively, you can send it to the Noontimers earmarked for aid to Mfumte and we'll include it with our next offering.
We have been in contact with the Lions Club of Padukka, Sri Lanka, and our board has approved twinning our club with them so we can begin person-to-person aid through their club. Because all Noontimers are volunteers as are the members of the Padukka Lions, so all donations go 100% to the recipients. This is the most effective way to get aid to those in need.
Our District, Lions 4-A3, had a fund-raiser to create a glasses recycling center at Avenal State Prison. We plan on collecting glasses donations, sending them to Avenal for cleaning, repair and identification of prescription and then forward them to our twin club for distribution to the vision impaired in Sri Lanka. We also have some tentative plans to provide wheel chairs to the Padukka Lions, although we haven't yet found a cost-effective way of getting them there. Anyone with ideas, please use the Announcement and Information link on the bottom of every page on this site and let us know.
Donations from the public are certainly welcome for our local sight-preservation efforts, Father Eugen in the Cameroon or for the people of Sri Lanka through the Padukka Lions.
| Date | Event | Location | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 6 | Installation of New Officers | Marriott, Residence Inn | 5:30 PM |
| June 27 | Lunch at Rescue Mission | 234 E. 6th St, Oxnard (map) | Noon |
| July 1 | Start of New Lions Year | All Year |