Leos raise funds for Lions Club

On Monday evening, the Leos Club of Copperas Cove hosted at White Cane Day bake sale and obstacle course contest.

 

Members of the Lions Club as well as the Leos donated bake goods and held a silent auction for a cheesecake made by Larry Letzer’s mother. The cheesecake alone went for a top bid of $40, with the three-hour event raising $241.

 

Serena Etienne, a freshman at Copperas Cove High School, is a Leos member, now in her second year at the club. She and her fellow Leos helped flag down customers and also participated in the blindfold challenge, which involved crossing part of the parking lot, scaling the one step to the building’s porch, then walking to the Copperas Cove Leader-Press newsstand to pull out a paper.

 

“I love how we get to have fun, while we work on projects for people,” Etienne said. She enjoyed not only Monday’s White Cane Day event, but also the book drive the club held toward the end of the last school year.

 

Lions Club member Linda Lapierre was also on hand to help sell the baked goods. In her eighth year with the Club, she became aware of Lions and what they did when her daughter, a type 1 diabetic, attended the Texas Lions Club camp for kids disabled in Kerrville. Lapierre is a former director of the Leos. Monday’s fundraiser was the first for the club. It costs the Lions $2,000 per student, but nothing to the families of students, Lapierre Said.

 

“We’ve not raised funds, we’ve been doing service projects, now with the fundraiser, we can start to do more,” Lapierre said.

 

David Morris, advisor of the Leos Club weighed in about the kids raising money for the cause.

 

“We’re a young club, so we’re just starting out to raise funds to do things to be active in the community. This is a great way to introduce them to community service along with raising funds and giving back to the cause that is near and dear to the Lions Club heart.”

 

Morris said other organizations’ representatives stopped by to support the Leos, including Clarence Enochs, president of the Morning Exchange Club, along with Wendy Sledd, the public information officer for CCISD as well as the Rabbit Fest Pageant director.

 

The mission of White Cane Day is to educate the world about blindness and how the blind and visually impaired can live and work independently while giving back to their communities, to celebrate the abilities and successes achieved by blind people in a sighted world and to honor the many contributions being made by the blind and visually impaired.

 

About eight students make up the Leos’ membership currently, and the group is looking for more students to join. The club is open to students age 12 and up. The group holds meetings the third Sunday of every month from 3 p.m. until 4 p.m. at Waffle Cone.