LINGLE – The Lingle-Fort Laramie Lions Club is no stranger to community service. In the 80 years of existence, reflections of their deep commitment to community are spread throughout the town of Lingle. From the cemeteries to the park bandstand, the Lingle-Fort Laramie Lions Club has stretched above and beyond to give back to a community they love. 

The Lions Club’s mission statement, according to their website is, to empower volunteers to serve their communities, meet humanitarian needs, encourage peace and promote international understanding through Lions clubs. 

According to Bill Carr a 30-year-member of the club, the history of the Lingle-Fort Laramie Lions Club was traditionally a long line of businessmen. 

“Actually, when the Lions Club started it was all businessmen,” Carr explained. “Helen Keller was the one that helped start this and that is where the sight comes in. It was all businessmen and when I joined the club it was practically all businessmen and now, we have very few people that own businesses. It has just kind of faded away.”

According to the website, there are nearly 1.5 million Lions in more than 4,500 clubs in over 200 countries and the Lions Club is the largest service organization in the world.

“We give to a lot of different people. We do eyeglasses. We do eye surgeries. We also give money to the fire department about every third year,” Carr explained. “We give to the Lingle and to the Fort Laramie Fire Department. We usually pick out a project to do. We try to do a project every summer. Sometimes we don’t but sometimes we have a few projects. Some of those can get pretty pricey. Some can get $6,000 to $7,000.”

“We give money to the town, like we did for the community hall,” Carr explained. “We bought the flags for the main street. We used to, but we haven’t gotten a letter from them in a while, give to the booster club.” 

The clubs’ primary areas of service are childhood cancer, diabetes, disaster relief, environment, humanitarian, hunger, vision and youth, according to the website.

“One of the things that we do every year in conjunction with our auction in December, our Christmas auction, we give money to the Lingle-Ft. Laramie FBLA kids. Any of the kids that go to nationals, we give them a donation to each one of them to help pay for their trip out. In return, we ask them to come to our auction and do our serving so our Lions Club members can take part in the auction,” Carr explained.  

“We try to do that because it instills in them, well you’re going to be businesspeople, you know our organization is giving to the communities and whatever so as businesspeople you need to be able to do that,” Carr said. “Coming and serving is a thank you for donations but you need to be able to serve your community.”

“Farm kids and ranch kids have an advantage because they grow up with responsibilities and chores and they just go get it a lot easier,” Carr explained.

For 60 years, the club has produced a birthday calendar for the community. The club collects the birthdays and anniversaries of those interested and builds a 12-month calendar. 

“The first of September we have a meeting, and we will start. We have salesman that go out and we contact the people we sold to last year and see if there are any changes, any deaths, any new birthdays, whatever and then of course we are always asking new people if they want to buy a calendar and get their names put on it.”

“We need new members. We need them really bad,” Carr said. “But trying to get young members to commit, it’s kind of, it’s all one way or the other. It’s by invitation. You have to be invited to join the club usually or somebody comes to us, and we sponsor them. We are standing up for them.” 

Becoming a member isn’t hard at all. 

“You pay dues. Our dues are two different things. They are a total of $85 for the year right now. We don’t get any extra. We have to pay dues to the state and national and then we pay $20 that goes into the Wyoming Lions Club Foundation. That is a pool of money that they use to help any clubs out for any emergencies or any surgeries. That helps them pay for that because clubs can’t handle all of that,” Carr explained. “We want outstanding people. I always tell the people, be particular on who you ask because you want people who want to get involved.”

There is a meeting requirement. 

“That’s tough to do with the younger people, it just is. They don’t really like to come to meetings. A lot of them will do things but they don’t want to come to the meetings where you organize to do things,” Carr explained. “We meet once a month. That is most of the months. We start in September, and we meet once a month. Basically, our requirement for the club we have to do one meeting or event every month. We have a meeting in September, October and November and then in December, we have our auction. In July, we have a picnic and then in August we have Community in the Park and then we start all over again. It kind of gives us a rest.”