Helping Clear The Walk Ways At SCVBC

Spearheaded by Lion Al, several Lions made it to the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center (SCVBC) on the morning of Saturday, July 8^th. Official kickoff was at 10:00am, but many of the intrepid “gardeners” were already on site by 9:00am or earlier. When I showed up with my camera and my kitchen gloves at 9:30am, I had a hard time detecting the busy lions – everybody had started at a different end and was covered behind branches or trees, cutting, sawing, and snipping away. Lion Al’s son-in-law Brian was up on a ladder attacking the bigger branches with an electric saw. Brian – bless his heart – also had brought a tent and a giant cooler with water for everyone…. Both badly needed in the rising temperatures.

A few days earlier Lions AL had sent me an email specifying “….most of this work will be very light clippings which will have to be moved across the parking lot to a pile”. There were indeed light clippings, but also 7 inch branches which had to be dragged over to the “pile”.

Lions Don, Charles, Ron, Ray, Al, Jim, and Prez Jeff were doing a formidable job – and Lion Bill, at 91, worked away cutting branches and kneeling down to rip out some weeds – hats off! Brian, however, was the hero of the day – after climbing back up the ladder and taking another set of major branches off the corner tree, he went away and got the chipper, put it up and started to feed those ‘light clippings” through the machine. Some of the major branches had to be sawed in half or more parts before they could go through the shredding process.

Judy Arvidson, the director of the Blind Center, also paid a short visit and thanked everyone personally for their help, especially after she asked for more radical cut backs on some trees that had had a first trimming already.

Lion Mike Martin showed up after noon for extra help. Everything was cleaned up by 3:00pm. What a good deed – along our motto: “We serve!”