Elgin Lions Club celebrates 100 years

In October, the Elgin Lions Club will have been in existence for 100 years.

On Aug. 3, the club will celebrate the anniversary at The Haight in downtown Elgin.

It is one of the oldest clubs in Lions International.

Through the years, the club has helped countless community residents with their vision and other problems.

They have concentrated on helping students, and providing vision aid consumes the majority of the funds that the club collects from the residents of the community.

The funds that are collected are used only for paying for their charitable efforts. During the past few years, the club has donated scholarships to deserving students at both Elgin and Larkin high schools.

The club was organized on Oct. 25, 1921, and chartered by Lions International on Jan. 22, 1922. There were initially 35 members in the club who celebrated the organization at a banquet held in the Wild Rose Inn near St. Charles.

Lions International was in its infancy, and the Elgin Club was one of the first to be organized. The driving force for Lions International was a young insurance agent in Chicago named Melvin Jones. The organization earned the “International” part of its name when a club in Toronto, Canada was formed. Many countries followed that lead, and now Lions International has clubs in 200 countries and 1.4 million members. It is the largest such club in the world.

The founding Elgin Lions Club selected officers; they were, president Walter Rippberger, Secretary B. B. Splihoff, and Treasurer, Albert J. Wilkening. The membership contained many different occupations. There were clothiers, insurance men, painters, jeweler, bankers, undertakers, a physician, postmaster, and an osteopath, etc. The current membership is almost as varied, too.