St. Johns Lions
The St Johns Lions Club would like to thank everyone who supported and contributed to the club’s annual White Cane sale on April 27-28 and May 5-6.
Gene Buckley, a member of the St Johns Lions Club, is legally blind worked at this year’s White Cane sale.
Funds from this annual fund raiser are used to support the Lions Club vision programs that provide eye exams and glasses to needy youngsters and adults in our community. It also supports a new “free of charge” Preventive Eye Examinations for Kids (PEEK) program for young children from toddler to 5 years of age. This new 21st century technology can detect a vision problems in its early stages by using an instrument to photograph the inside of the eyes. If a problem is noted, the parents are referred to a vision specialist for further evaluation and or treatment.
The White Cane is a national symbol for the public to recognize that the individual using it is blind. The idea for the white cane came from George Bonham who was the president of the Peoria, Illinois Lions club in1930. He had witnessed a blind person trying to cross a busy street tapping his black cane, with drivers oblivious to the fact that the man was blind. Mr Bonham’s answer to the problem was to paint the cane white with a red band at the tip so that others could easily identify that the person was blind.
His Lions club addressed this problem and the potential solution to their city council who then passed an ordinance giving a person with a white cane the right of way when crossing a street. The Lions International convention in 1931 passed a resolution supporting the actions of the Peoria Lions club and their City council. They encouraged Lions clubs throughout the United States to sponsor the implementation of such a program in their community and state. By 1956, every state in the United States had passed White Cane Safety laws.
At the 1925 Lions International convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, Helen Keller who was born deaf, blind and mute and her long time companion and spokesperson Anne Sullivan-Macey, gave an eloquent speech that forever changed the major goal of Lions.
Through Anne Sullivan-Macey, Helen Keller spoke these eloquent and long remembered words, “Will you as Lions help me hasten the day when there will be no preventable blindness: no little deaf blind children untaught; no blind man or woman unaided? I appeal to you Lions, you who have your sight , your hearing, you who are strong and brave and kind. Will you not constitute yourselves as “Knights of the Blind” in the crusade against darkness. I thank you.”
From that date forward Lions clubs throughout the world have focused on programs to help people with vision problems and needs.