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Members of the West Point Lions Club took a look back at the legacy that’s been created by their club in the nearly 90 years the club has been active and supported a number of worthy causes in the community. 

The club now meets during the noon hour on Wednesday in the fellowship hall of the West Point Presbyterian Church. The church pastor, Rev. Gerry Ledbetter, is a long-time member of the club.

Two tables inside the fellowship hall were filled with memorabilia of past club activities and club member Eddie Lanier read from a history of the club that had been written by former member George Zachry in the 1970s.

The history notes that the club was founded on April 1, 1936. It was sponsored by the LaGrange Lions Club and Lions International representative J. Barrett Napier was the organizing official.

The club’s first meeting took place inside the Lanett Athletic Hall (now commonly called the old gym). Jett M. Potts was the first club president, and R. Shaefer Heard was one of its vice presidents. 

The club quickly grew in its first decade of service. Since it took in members who lived across the state line in Alabama it was known in its first years as the Valley Lions Club.

Membership swelled from 50 in its first few years to 120 in the early 1940s. 

Lots of prominent people came to speak at the club meetings. One of them was Dr. George Washington Carver, who was an internationally known scientist from Tuskegee Institute when he came to speak to the club in the late 1930s. It was such a notable event that radio station WSB in Atlanta broadcast it live from the General Tyler Hotel in downtown West Point. The office of SouthState Bank is in that location today.

A problem arose in the club’s rapid growth. At the time, Lions International frowned on clubs having members from two states. A new Lions Club was organized on the Alabama side and the West Point club was made up mostly of West Point residents. A few from nearby Lanett stayed on.

In its first decade, the club met at the General Tyler. It later moved the meeting site to Shawmut Cafeteria and eventually to the Whitley Clubhouse on the north end of West Point.

With Shaefer Heard being an excellent recruiter, the club reached a membership of 1,419 local men at one point. Heard went on to organize seven new Lions Clubs in Georgia when he served as its district governor. Another member of the club, Hiram Myhand, also served as district governor for a two-year period in the 1950s. In appreciation for what the Lions Club had done, a school in Guatemala was named for Mr. Myhand.

When Heard was the club president in 1938-39, the state chapter named it the best club in Georgia. The West Point club won a total of six statewide awards when he was the president. Heard used his position as club president to advocate for a dam on the Chattahoochee River above West Point. From the 1930s through the 1950s he often had speakers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Savannah and Mobile come to speak on the feasibility of doing this.

This became a reality following a damaging flood in the local area in 1961. The federal Flood Control Act of 1962 authorized a flood control project on the Chattahoochee above West Point. A dam and 25,000-acre lake became a reality in 1975. This coming June, the West Point Project will celebrate its 50th year of protecting downstream areas from flooding, providing ample recreation opportunities and hydroelectric power. Appropriately enough, its most visited park is named in memory of R. Shaefer Heard, the West Point Lions Club member who did so much volunteer work to make West Point Dam and Lake a reality.

Lions Clubs are famous for their help to those who suffer from vision loss. This dates to a speech made at their international convention in Chicago by famed activist Helen Keller, who urged them to be “Knights for the Blind.” That took place in the 1920s. Since that time, Lions Clubs International has been involved in sight conservation work. Members of local Lions Clubs have been raising money for years through mop and broom sales and other activities. They also provide eyeglasses for limited income people who need them.

In the first year the West Point club did a broom sale they raised over $2,000, an impressive number in the 1930s. The fundraiser helped them purchase an iron lung, which was much needed in those days because of polio, something even the president was dealing with.

That iron lung purchased by the West Point Lions Club was used in a number of hospitals in the two-state area.

“The club screens thousands of children in the schools each year and has bought many pairs of glasses for boys and girls,” reads Mr. Zachry’s historical account.

“We have had a long history in our community,” said Eddie Lanier. “I would love to see us have more members than we do today, but we will do the best we can with what we’ve got.”