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Lion Al at the District 4-C6 Convention – May 3 -7, 2017

This year’s theme was “Pirates of the Pacific”. As in so many years before Lion Al and his wife Barbara volunteered to attend in order to cast the votes for our Cupertino De Anza Lions Club.

The convention was held at “The Historic Santa Maria Inn” in Santa Maria – incidentally that building also celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, like the Lions Clubs International.

Just reading the program for the 4 day event was mind-boggling, a great mixture of official presentations, classes and informational sessions on one hand, and an enjoyable array of fun, games and dinners on the other.

Lion Al reported back that it was “probably one of the best conventions he ever attended’ and he and Barbara greatly enjoyed the camaraderie and fellowship of the district lions. After casting the vote on Saturday morning, he and Barb made their way back to Campbell – all of 210 miles.

PS: Lion Bob Stewart will be the next District Governor.

Contributed by Lion Al

Pull Tabs – An Untold Success Story

Once in a while, but more often than you think, a plastic bag with metal pull tabs from soda and beer cans is silently handed over to our Lion Phil, who has been keeping tabs (no pun intended)  for countless of these bags in the past years. The pull tabs are made from a special metal which recycling companies are keen on buying.

Lion Phil will acrimoniously weigh those pull tabs and sooner or later will hand them over in a huge carton to Lion Ray or Lion Steve who will take them to a Lions cabinet meeting.

There the total weight of tabs will be entered into the district contest and the winning club will get a big round of applause.

But this is not all:

Those pull tabs (or pop tabs, as they are sometimes called) will be donated to the Ronald McDonald house where they are once again consolidated and sold to Advantage Metal, a local recycling company, who – in addition to buying the precious metal – makes additional charitable donations. Last year this program brought in $ 20,000 for the RMD house, according to their website!

Of course we are not the sole contributors to this program, but our collections amounted to 47.4 pounds in 2015 and to 20.4 pounds in 2016.

Let’s be proud of our contribution to this worthwhile cause, spearheaded by Lion Phil and remember to collect pull tabs when you can!

, x

De Anza Lions Love Project Linus

The De Anza Lions Club held our 7th Project Linus Blanketeering event on February 2, 2017. Although there was a small turnout, we certainly had a successful evening! We not only welcomed our own Club members at the Odd Fellows Hall, but visiting community members who saw this event listed on our online calendar met us there, as well. To top that off, Lion Claire invited members of her Brownie Troop to attend and several were able join us. We were happy to say “welcome back” to the San Jose Project Linus (PL) Chapter Coordinator Sharon Lee. Sharon brought a great PowerPoint presentation with her and was able to educate the attendees about PL’s history and its success and to show us several examples of blankets that have been made and donated for the children. Since they were young-uns, Sharon suggested that the Brownies help us by tying knots instead of cutting and tying. And help us they did: whenever someone completed their cutting, they called out to the group that a blanket was ready for tying and those little Brownies would flock to that table and voila the blanket was done in what seemed mere moments!! It was amazing and all who were involved felt the sense of working together as a real team. Everyone found this experience quite rewarding and it made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We began at 6:30 and by 9:00 nearly 50 blankets had been made; our members took many others home to complete. Including the two weeks following the event, we have made and donated 78 blankets!! They will be distributed to local children-in-need at the end of February.

We hope many more of you can come join us at our next Blanketeering party in about six months. Watch this website for updates! For more information about Project Linus, please go to www.projectlinus.org. Thank you for your interest in our community!

Contributed by Lion Leslye Noone

Monta Vista Inducts New LEOs

On Saturday Oct 29th, Lions Kent Vincent and Steve Ratner inducted the new members, directors and officers of the Monta Vista High School Leo Club at Cupertino’s Jollyman Park. The MVHS Leo Club is one of the largest and most active in District 4c6 with around 90 members, including fifteen new members.  Not all members attended the annual LEO bonding event at Jollyman  but this was one of the largest inductions run at this particular event. The LEO president for 2016-2017 is Manav Shah.

Lion Kent talked to a standing-room-only meeting of LEOs at Monta Visa High School a couple of weeks ago …so there are indeed a lot of members this year!

MV LEOs’ mission is to allow students to give back to the community through volunteering, meeting new people, gaining leadership skills, communicating with others, taking on higher roles in the club, and harboring new experiences. (from MVHS Leo Club website)

Contributed by Lion Kent

2016 OMAR’s DREAM RUN – Making dreams come true!

The 4th annual Omar’s Dream Run (5k and 10k) took place on Sunday, Oct 16, 2016 at Hellyer Park in South San Jose. After receiving initial startup help in 2013 by the DeAnza Lions Club, the foundation is firmly on its own feet, but appreciates our club’s financial help, plus provision of extra tables, chairs and tents plus help with registration on the day of the event.

While Lion Al, his wife Barb and Lion Mary manned the registration tables, Lions Eli, John (+ John’s son) and Dagi assisted with the collection, transportation and storing of the requested furniture items. Mind you – the volunteers at Omar’s event were helping, too, when it came to unloading and loading of the tables and chairs into Eli’s truck.

Should I mention that it rained quite heavily? Probably – without it the event might have had a record turnout. However, only a few registered participants preferred to stay in bed, while the vast majority of the 400+ registered runners and walkers were unfazed by the continuous rainfall and completed the course with smiles on their faces.

Lion Claire participated in the 10k run; her daughter Anjali was first in the girls’ 5k.

I arrived a bit too late to get a glimpse of the winners, but caught a lot of people still hovering under the gazebo, celebrating the success of this event.

For more info, go to

http://omarsdreamfoundation.org/about/

Fall Festival at Via West Campus

After the installation of new playground equipment on Aug 31st, which took place with the help of DeAnza Lions under the guidance of Lion Bill, the Camp was ready for their 4th Fall Festival, on Saturday Oct 8th, from11:00am to 3:00pm.

A substantial amount of staff and volunteers were present to man the 20 or so booths and play stations that were set up throughout the camp. Lion Steve and Ellen were in charge of the sno-cone booth, where Lion Steve shredded the ice and Ellen administered the colorful syrup: the choice was either blue raspberry or red cherry flavor or a mixture of both. The serving had to happen quite quickly, as the temperatures rose to a toasty 90F and the ice was melting rapidly. People who dared to don Halloween costumes were probably getting a little hot.

Whiffs of grilled chicken blew over the camp since the early morning – quite a few people were eager to help with the food for adults and kids alike – as the day went on, it got increasingly more difficult to grab a seat in the new BBQ area

.

To cope with the huge influx of visitors, shuttle buses were in action, taking people from a big parking lot at the quarry to the venue and back. Judging by the number of guests it seems that the event was a huge success and the best fall festival so far.

Thanks to Lion Steve and Ellen for representing the DeAnza Lions Club.

Lion Bill – At Ninety he is Going Strong at Via West

Super trooper Lion Bill Reed once again brought us together for a maintenance weekend at Via West Camp in Cupertino. On Friday, 5/27, he drummed up support from 7 fellow DeAnza Lions (Al, Ray, Ron, Don, Steve, Herb, and Mike) to help clean, wash down and prep benches and the BBQ area at the Camp. On Saturday 5/28, it was Lion Bill once again, armed with gallons of paint, spray cans, super-long extension cables and all the required utensils, leading the painting crew of 6 (Lions Steve, Ron, Herb, Ray, and Dagi) – the only thing he forgot was his hat (but he found a solution for that, too – see photos). During the painting session we learnt that this was Lion Bill’s 24th year of organizing and coordinating this event – mind you, he is not standing around, resting – no, he is preparing the paint, stooping over the paint buckets, mixing it with water to create the perfect consistency for the spray paint machines, and then he bends down to spray the very low benches near the BBQ station. Under Lion Bill’s guidance and with support from the fellow lions the assigned areas were painted in record time, so everyone could go home shortly past noon time to his or her family to celebrate Memorial Weekend.

PS: The entire camp was teeming with volunteers who were getting the houses ready for summer camp. One guy unfortunately had left his lunch, a subway sandwich, on one of the picnic tables … when he was ready for a break, after scrubbing the floors of one of the dorms, he found his sandwich torn and ripped into pieces, the best parts gone, the rest scattered on the floor … a resident crow had made a meal of his lunch.

Contributed by Lion Dagi

Flag Days 2016

As in previous years, the DeAnza Flag Team under the leadership of Lion Mort had very successful presentations at 2 local schools during the past school year.

It started with a Flag Presentation for three 3rd grade classes at Kathryn Hughes Elementary School in Santa Clara on Oct 15, 2015, with Lions Mort, Ann, and Walt being involved. Presentations at Sutter Elementary took place on May 17th, 2016. About 75 third graders participated in each event.

On Friday, June 3 a Hot Dog BBQ was hosted at Fairway Glen Park behind Hughes…64 Kiddos joined. Hot Dogs, including veggie ‘dogs’, chips and lemonade were prepared by several Lions….a great opportunity to do more community outreach. The students were excited about the special treat and very well behaved

Thanks to Lions Ron, Phil, Ray, Jenni, Eli and Mort, Steve and Al, accompanied by Ellen and Barbara

Contributed by Lion Mort

We have another Key Award Winner!

Congratulations to Lion Charlie Waters!

Membership Key Awards recognize individual Lions who invite new members. A Lion can earn their first membership key by inviting two new members and may earn up to seventeen keys. Each key is designed to reflect the number of new members a Lion has sponsored.

The officers and directors of Lions Club International joined our club in expressing sincere congratulations to Lion Charlie Waters for demonstrating active commitment to the growth and strength of our association.
Pictures (by Lions Mort and Walt) show Lions Charlie Waters, AM Chair Ray Lancon and Secretary Walt

Cupertino High School student advances to 3rd level Lions student speaker contest

Shankara Srikantan, a junior at Cupertino High School, was awarded first place at the Lions District 4-C6, Zone 1, Student Speaker Contest on 3/14/2016.

Shankara Srikantan was one of 3 high school students participating in the event held at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Office in San Jose. The topic was “Liberty and Justice for All – What Does it Mean to You?”

Zone Level Chair person Aimee Cheung mentioned that this is the 79th year that the Lion’s Student Speaker Contest has been held.

By winning Shankara Srikantan will advance to the Region Level competition. The Region Level contest will be held on April 4th, 2016, at the Santa Clara County Office of Voting. He had previously won the Cupertino De Anza Lions Club contest in February.

Ms. Cheung noted that the winner at each level can advance through Region, District, Area, and the Final contests. This year the final contest will be held in Redding, CA. Its winner, representing Lions Clubs from throughout California, will be awarded accumulated winnings of $21,000 in cash and scholarships.

Lions Club International is the world’s largest service club organization with more than 1.35 million members in more than 200 countries and geographic areas around the world. Since 1917, Lions clubs have aided the blind and visually impaired and made a strong commitment to community service and serving youth throughout the world.

Pictures: All contestants and their support teams, parents and club members; The 3 contestants; Student Speaker winner Shankara Srikantan from Cupertino High School with Lions District 4-C6, Zone 1 Chair, Aimee Cheung;