What’s In a Name?
Club Names Go Far Beyond Breakfast, Noon and Evening
by Jay Copp

Most names of Lions clubs are straightforward and make perfect sense. The Winona Noon Lions Club in Minnesota draws most of its members from Winona, a picturesque town located on the bluffs of the Mississippi River. The club meets—you guessed it—at noon on Mondays.

But other names are more intriguing.

What to make of the San Jose Scales of Justice Lions Club in California? It turns out that the founding members in 1997 were all members of law enforcement—police officers, lawyers, probations officers and judges. That criteria held for a while. Then members decided it was better to maintain membership than to be too much of a stickler about a member’s background.

So prospective members now are held to a less strict standard. “Some of the questions you might be asked are, ‘Have you ever had a parking ticket? Ever gotten a jury summons? If all else fails, ever seen a police officer?’ ” says Mary Kelly, club president Kelly herself is guilty as charged, so to speak. She’s an accountant. The club still trades off its name. Its newsletter is called “The Rap Sheet.”

Club names reveal a lot about the club. Or sometimes they actually say little about it as it’s currently constituted. But there’s always a story behind the name.

Club names often are rooted in the identity of members. Any Lion who has been to an international convention probably remembers the Bozeman Sweet Pea Lions from Montana. The name is memorable, as is their bright pink Lions’ vest with the Sweet Pea logo, a cluster of sweet pea flowers.

The club is all-women, in case you can’t guess. “When we began gathering to form the club in 2004, we knew we needed a name that would reflect our feminine nature,” says Sarah Barutha, club president.

You might think the Garden City Bronc Busters Lions Club in Kansas is all-men. Riding a bronco traditionally has been a man’s job. But the club is mixed, appropriately so because the club name relates to a local community college. The sports teams at Garden City Community College are known as the Bronc Busters. Several Lions were affiliated with the college when the club was chartered in 1974.

Some current Lions are connected with the college as well including Kathleen Covington, who oversees a dormitory, and her husband, William, the club president who is a retired philosophy teacher. They may be Bronc Busters, both as Lions and members of the college community, but they don’t bust any broncos. “Heck, no, we’re a bunch of old geezers,” says William. “But maybe a few in their younger days did.”

If one of the purposes of a name is to draw attention, some clubs succeed brilliantly: the Dighton Dandilions in Massachusetts, the Alexander Golden Brothers in Minnesota and the Toronto Hummingbirds. Where do those names come from? You’d have to ask them.

Then there are club names that are pastoral or peaceful in nature and almost make you want to join on the spot: the Lauderdale by the Sea Lions in Florida, the Seattle Queen Anne Magnolia Lions in Washington and the Murphy Cherokee County Mountain Lions in North Carolina.
Other names are daring. The Edmonton Jolly Fellows in Canada seem to be just asking for it. What happens if they man a booth at a festival and don’t smile 24-7?

Some club names are completely logical. The Kitchener Oktoberfest Lions Club in Ontario, Canada, was chartered in 1970, one year after the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest began. Club members knew the festival would be a big deal and knew the club would be involved with it. They were right on both counts. The largest Bavarian festival in North America, the Oktoberfest draws 700,000 people over nine days. The Kitchener Lions run one of the 20 fest halls.

The beer flows at the festival. And the proceeds pour in. The club is able to generously fund surgical equipment for an eye hospital and support a school of optometry and leader dogs. The club pays due homage to its German-related identity by wearing a special gray-green, Bavarian-style Lions’ vest, says Robert Clements, past club president.

Ethnic identity comes up frequently in club names: the New York Cuban Club, the Orlando Hispanic Club in Florida and the Atlanta Chinese American Club in Georgia. Sometimes the racial or ethnic background is subtler. The Mesa Dreamcatchers Lions Club in Arizona pays tribute to the Native American heritage of the Southwest. A dream catcher is a hoop-like handmade object traditionally made of willow and placed above the bed of a child. “It catches the bad dreams and lets the good ones go through,” explains Douglas Iseman, whose, wife, Malai, is club president.

“We don’t have any full-blooded [Native Americans] in the club but we do have some who are a quarter,” says Douglas.

The club makes dreams come true for families in Mexico by collecting and sending hospital beds, wheelchairs and x-ray machines for those in need.

Club names often indicate a favorite pastime of members. The charter members of the Houston Astrodome Sports Lions Club in Texas played sports or worked for sports-related companies. The club even met in the Astrodome for a while before moving across the street. Local sports stars and coaches attended as guest speakers and regaled the members with locker room tales. As time passed, the Astrodome connection faded and today the club is called the Houston Sports Club. The club still works with professional sports teams on fund-raisers.

Minnesota has 10,000 lakes but just one club named the Dilworth Loco Ladies Lions Club. Dilworth was once a railroad hub and the high school football team was called the Dilworth Locomotives. The club may change its name and may invite men to join. But, for now, they still proudly call attention to their town’s history and their gender.

Perhaps because self-reliance and rugged individualism prove valuable on its frozen, isolated tundra, Alaska has a relatively large number of clubs with unusual names. Among them are Anchorage Captain Cook, Ballyhoo, Boondox, Fairbanks Curling Club, Fairbanks Snowmobile Fun and Interior Baseball. Proving that Lionism is indeed worldwide, from east and west and from pole to pole, there is even the North Pole Lions Club.

The Fairbanks Motorcycle Racing Lions Club was chartered in 1995 by a group of motorcycle racing enthusiasts. Jerry Lymburner, son of charter member Burt, is a pro rider. Each year, around late April or May, Lions pump off the track the remaining piles of melting snow and racing season is on until September when winter begins encroaching.

Motorcycle racing is quite popular in Fairbanks and the club counts as many as 150 members. The club uses its revenues from the track to sponsor local sports teams and other good causes, says Derek Broderick, club president.

Some Lions live in towns with such a clear-cut identity that the choice of names becomes almost a given. When Lions in Willow Creek, California, walk or drive through their small town, they see the Big Foot Motel, Big Foot Lumber, Bigfoot Museum and hordes of tourists hoping to see the notorious big hairy monster. Willow Creek is the Bigfoot capital of the world, and so the Bigfoot Lions Club came to be in 1976.

The fascination with the ape-like creature began years earlier in the 1950s when a logger rushed into Willow Creek with the plaster cast of a giant footprint he said he discovered. Willow Creek stages an annual Bigfoot carnival and parade, and the Lions there, not one to miss out on large crowds, put on a car show. “We get everybody here, from guys from Pennsylvania who come with their wives and say they are fulfilling a lifelong dream to Russian scholars. Jane Goodall is supposed to be coming. It goes from the absurd to the very scholarly,” says Steve Paine, club secretary.

Paine knows Al Hodgson, a media darling who hurries to the scene of reported Bigfoot sightings and makes plaster casts of the beast’s tracks. But ask Paine if he believes in Bigfoot and his answer is firm: “No, certainly not. But Al is a friend and a talented guy. He’s a true believer. You just can’t say no to his face.”

Lions meet regularly in Tusayan, Arizona, but there is no escaping that nearby huge hole in the earth formed by erosion millions of years ago. So the Grand Canyon Lions Club is their name. Most members live and work close to the rim. One works at a gift shop less than 150 feet from the south rim and another toils at a hotel right on the rim. The Grand Canyon is part of their everyday lives. “All of us [Lions] see and walk the trail next to the edge most every week and some daily,” says Lion Anthony Oaks.

The area is an unusual place to live, work and serve, says Oaks. Millions of tourists travel here annually. Herds of deer, elk and Big Horn sheep roam the countryside. Mountain lions also stalk the landscape. Sometimes, Oaks said, he deliberately reminds himself how lucky he is. “From time to time I just stand at the edge and absorb the grandeur that is our ‘backyard,’ ” he says

The club’s service is grand. At Christmas, members distributed toys and food baskets. The 22-member club also supports sight and hearing services, leader dogs, camps and scholarships.
Clubs often sport names that recall the past. The Carson City Maverick Lions Club in Nevada suggests the Old West and an even-keeled, dapper TV cowboy. The Pony Express Lions Club in northern California also conjures up the past. California Lions seems to be particularly proud of their frontier days. The Mother Lode Lions Club in northern California refers, of course, to the gold discovered in 1848.

Some club names are not what they seem. The North Little Rock JFK Lions Club in Arkansas would seem to be a tip of the hat to the 35th president of the United States. But, no, many Lions in the club, chartered just last year, work on John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

Native sons are a common choice for club names. Claremore, Oklahoma, was a stomping ground for humorist Will Rogers and the town has a museum dedicated to the folksy cowboy. The name of the local Lions club? Yep, the Claremore Will Rogers Lions Club.

Other clubs pay tribute to well-known Lions. The Plains J L Wroblewski Mt. Laure Lions Club in Pennsylvania is named after Pennsylvanian Joseph L. Wroblewski, former international president in 1985-86 and a current board committee appointee. Likewise, the Chicago Tae-Sup Lions Club is named after Dr. Tae-Sup Lee, international president in 2003-2004 and chairperson of Campaign SightFirst II.

The list of interesting club names goes on and on. The Gardner Pride Riders Lions Club in Kansas has members who ride motorcycles. The Kansas City World Outreach Lions Club in Missouri consists of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who make medical missions to the Philippines. The Independence School Nurses Lions Club, also in Missouri, is exactly what its name indicates. Within the big umbrella of Lions clubs are myriad personal interests and service aims, and club names reflect that stunning diversity.