About Us
2024-2025 Club Officers
President: Alan Boissonneault
Treasurer: Joe Typrowicz
Membership Chair: Ron Wieners
Bulletin: Jim Cardaropoli
Agawam Lion's Club History
The Agawam Lions were chartered in 1944, with 85 charter members. Early in its history, the club held meetings at the Charles Leonard House, then at the Agawam Congregational Church. In the 1960's, club membership swelled to 250 members, including many WWII and Korean War Veterans.
During this entire period, the club ran and sponsored dozens of fund raising events to benefit town organizations, school activities and regional and national groups. The Chicken Bar-B-Que at the Big E started in 1961 with a tent, tables and chairs, a kitchen area and a home refigerator. Five years later, in 1966, a cinder block building was erected including a fire pit, walk-in refrigerator, kitchen, storage areas, dining area and restrooms. The Agawam Lions Chicken Bar-B-Que became a fixture every fall at the Big E and became the club's largest fund raising initiative. By 2010, over the previous 40 years, the club donated over $467,000 to the Massachusetts Eye Research Foundation.
Historically, the club has had hundreds of members, many of whom distinguished themselves as recipients of a variety of impressive awards such as the Melvin Jones Award (in memory of the founder of the Lions), International Lions Sight Award, Lions Life Awards and district governors, state officers and many past presidents. The club is one of the top three in the state in fund raising for a club of its size. For many years, it was number one in its group.
Despite a fire in the pit area during the Big E run in 1986, the club was back in business in short order and to this day is one of the few surviving not-for-profits operating successfully every fall.
Over the years, the Agawam Lions Club has held hundreds of fund raising events of every description from small barbecues to the most complex: the Big E restaurant operation.
The funds raised over the years (over $1,000,000) have gone to literally hundreds of groups, projects, charities, individuals, schools and countless civic projects. A small sample of our funds recipients include Shriners Hospital, the American Heart Associations, Willie Ross School for the Deaf, local Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and the YMCA. The club maintains a scholarship fund for college-bound high school seniors and a separate Sight and Hearing Fund.
The Agawam Lions are governed by a board of directors, elected annually, operating under by-laws and maintains close relationships with Lions district, regional and state entities. We are one of 46,000 Lions Clubs world-wide totaling 1,350,000 members, in over 200 countries.
What we do
Ready to help locally and worldwide: Whenever a Lions club gets together, problems get smaller, and communities get better. That's because we help where help is needed--in our own communities and around the world--with unmatched integrity and energy.
World's largest service club organization: Our 46,000 clubs and 1.35 million men and women members make us the world's largest service club organization. We're also the most effective. Our members do whatever is needed to help their local communities. Everywhere we work, we make friends. With children who need eyeglasses, with seniors who don't have enough to eat and with people we may never meet.
Membership is through invitation by your local Lions Club: To learn more or to be considered for membership in the Agawam Lions Club, please contact our membership director or club secretary via our contact page. If you know one of our Agawam Lions Club members, talk with him or her about our club and the privileges and responsibilities of becoming a Lion.
LIONS OBJECTIVES:
• To Create and foster a spirit of understanding among the peoples of the world.
• To Promote the principles of good government and good citizenship.
• To Take an active interest in the civic, cultural, social and moral welfare of the community.
• To Unite the clubs in the bonds of friendship, good fellowship and mutual understanding.
• To Provide a forum for the open discussion of all matters of public interest; provided however that partisan politics and sectarian religion shall not be debated by club members.
• Encourage service-minded people to serve their community without personal financial reward, and to encourage efficiency and promote high ethical standards in commerce, industry, professions, public works and private endeavors.
LIONS CODE OF ETHICS:
• To Show my faith in the worthiness of my vocation by industrious application to the end that I may merit a reputation for quality of service.
• To Seek success and to demand all fair renumeration or profit as my just due, but to accept no profit or success at the price of my own self-respect lost because of unfair advantage taken or because of questionable acts on my part.
• To Remember that in building up my business it is not necessary to tear down another's; to be loyal to my clients or customers and true to myself.
• Whenever a doubt arises as to the right or ethics of my position or action towards others, to resolve such doubt against myself.
• To Hold friendship as an end and not a means. To hold that true friendship exists not on account of the service performed by one another, but that true friendship demands nothing but accepts service in the spirit in which it is given.
• Always to bear in mind my obligations as a citizen to my nation, my state, and my community, as to give them my unswerving loyalty in word, act, and deed. To give them freely of my time, labor and means.
• To Aid others by giving my sympathy to those in distress, my aid to the weak, and my substance to the needy.
• To Be Careful with my criticism and liberal with my praise; to build up and not destroy.