Plainfield's Lions Club

I was invited in the fall of 1946 to join the Plainfield Lions Club. At that time its membership came from all three Plainfields and was one of the oldest Lions clubs in NJ dating back to 1921. Unlike Rotary and Kiwanis who met for lunch, the Lions’ thirty active members met weekly on Wednesday night for dinner in the Park Hotel. As a community Service club it was mainly involved in the Boy Scouts and aiding the blind.

In the twenties, a lawyer, Harvey Rothberg donated a wooded area on the side of first Watchung Mountains near Scotch Plains for the Scouts to have a local campsite. The club had dug a pond as a swimming pool and had built several shelters and a dinning/meeting hall on the site. The Lions would have an annual picnic and also a steak cookout at the site.

The club’s major fund raiser during the war years and for several years afterwards was a semi-annual waste paper drive. During the war this was a patriotic activity. Merchant members supplied the trucks and all the club members collected and loaded the waste paper. There was a great deal of camaraderie involved in these enterprises. We were tired but had a great time.

When it became unprofitable to collect old newspapers, the club had to seek other fund raising ventures. For a few years the club sponsored an annual AAU amateur boxing tournament in the roller rink building on the corner of East Fourth St. and Watchung Avenue. This building, which was near the old large gas storage tank, has since been torn down. The site was replaced by the extension of Fourth Street and a police station.

Much to my relief the boxing sponsorship was abandoned after three or four years. As expected from me as a member of the club, I had volunteered my services as ringside physician, but was never happy with the possible risks.

The club’s next major fund raiser was an annual car raffle. One of the members was a co-owner of the Studebaker agency, and provided the car at cost. Although Studebaker was never one of the most popular cars we were able to raise great deal of money from these raffles.

Over the years the clubs other fund raising activities included an annual fruit cake sale, light bulb sales, an Easter Seal solicitation to support the Regional Lions Clubs' "blind" projects including Camp Marcella for the blind, and a mobile for eye testing vehicle. Besides Lions major focus on Boy Scouts, and the prevention of blindness, the local club also provided an annual albeit small scholarship for a graduating high school student.

In 1960-61 I was club president. By that time we had reached a membership of about 140. Both South Plainfield and North Plainfield had formed separate clubs. When North Plainfield club was first formed in the early fifties, we had sincere discussion among ourselves of terminating our affiliation with Lions and joining another national service organization. Plainfield already had active Rotary and Kiwanis clubs.

The only other national services clubs to affiliate with were the Optimists and the Ruritarians. The first was too small and had little prestige, and the other was obviously an organization aimed at rural areas and would not be acceptable. Therefore we swallowed our anger at the national’s money oriented policy to created new clubs in the domain of existing clubs, and remained Lions. Each of the other Plainfields' clubs had distinct personalities and were in their own right great organizations. However, I never could have been as comfortable if a member of either of the other two.

The year that I was president was financially the most successful year in the club’s history. That success was not due to my expertise but rather due to the extremely dedicated and capable board members who were my committee chairmen. Besides the small money raisers, instead of the yearly car raffle, we held two. I felt like every week I was begging the members to sell this or that. Fortunately no one objected

We were forced to have the two major drives because the incoming president was a Methodist minister who was vehemently against gambling which in his view included raffles. He could not condone drinking alcohol beverages and would not even attend our executive committee meetings if we held them in our customary nook in the bar.

Incidentally, many years latter that minister began to lose his eyesight and decided to leave the ministry. He became executive director of the Presbyterian nursing home near Atlantic City. No longer a Methodist minister, He began to enjoy his evening cocktail.

One of the highlights of my years Presidency was a visit by Eleanor Roosevelt to our club while she was in town. She only stayed but a moment and was very gracious.

Plainfield Lions Club from its inception made no religious distinction. Rotary and Kiwanis did not admit Jewish members until the 50s. However both had Afro-American members long before the Lions.

When I and another physician sponsored a black surgeon for membership in the 80s there were more then the two needed blackball votes. At that meeting I and an other former president, an educator who had very firm social opinions, told the club that we found racism unacceptable and were immediately tending our resignation unless the club would reconsider the vote. To our relief there was an immediate re voting and he was elected a member without a dissenting vote. . That doctor is still a member of the club and has served more than once as president.

The Plainfield Lions club is still in existence to this day. However although I became a life member, after 50 years I am no longer affiliated. In recent years the club has dwindled to about 20 members. The Club meets biweekly in an out of town restaurant, since there is no adequate facility in Plainfield. I left the club after one member had become overbearingly obnoxious in his behavior toward the other members. To compensate for his life failures, he decided that Lionism was a religion to be followed blindly and the” fellowship be damned”. This fanaticism was not rare phenomena, but one I also had observed in past members.