THE LIONS ROAR REINCARNATED

Edited by Mark Ripplinger

Photos by Don Wood & Mark Ripplinger

January 28, 2008

Lions President Mark Miller

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE (January 28th)

Fellow Lions, I want to thank everyone who was able to bring a guest

to lunch last week and would encourage you to continue to look for new perspective members. I thought Mr. Bell gave us a good program and we should have him back to do part two. We should have some good PR coming up soon, when we announce our donation of $7,500 dollars for the bucket project to our fellow Cedar Falls citizens. That should make it that much easier to ask "do you want to go to lunch today"!

We Serve ……… Mark Miller

TODAY’S MEETING (January 28th)

Cedar Falls City Council Member Frank Darrah will speak to the club about the Landlord Accountability Ordinance.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

February 4 … TBD

February 11 … TBD

BIRTHDAYS ANNIVERSARIES

Cliff Satre – Jan. 30th David & Jan Deaver – Jan. 31st

Rich & Rita Congdon – Feb. 1st

ANNOUNCEMENTS

▪ None

LAST MEETING (January 21st)

Jeff Bell, Iraq Mission Member Quest, was our featured speaker for the member-guest luncheon. Jeff is a teacher at Lincoln School and has been a member of the Iowa National Guard as a Medic since 1992. While not a member of the 133^rd, he was attached to that unit while he was called to duty for 22 months. The first six months were spent in camp Shelby training with 30 other medics. After training, he and the others were deployed to Iraq for the next 18 months. His tour of duty was approximately 10 month longer than anticipated.

Jeff shared numerous photos with the club. Among them included his family, which provided him with the support base needed while he was away. A teacher at heart, he reflected that he changed his clients from student to soldiers. While he loves and misses his work as a medic, he grew to hate hearing the helicopters coming in as that meant additional wounded soldiers coming in for aide. The duty, while difficult from a change aspect, allowed him to adapt to new situations and experiences daily. He learned to make the best of any situation because there were obviously others that had it worse.

Jeff provided photo’s that showed the aide station conditions. For the most part, the buildings were constructed with plywood that would leak when raining and during sand storms. Extreme temperatures from highs in the 30’s during the cool season to highs in the 130’s in the shade and 150 in the sun challenged everyone. Even with these difficulties, Jeff was able to experience some beauty during a rainstorm, twilight and when he would come across some plants. He developed special friendships with his comrades and likened their interactions as those of a family. Some days good, some days bad, but you could always count on them to help when the time came.

DID YOU KNOW

▪ No network footage exists of Super Bowl I. It was taped over, supposedly for a soap opera.

IT'S GREAT TO BE A LION!