NYM Charter member has been serving the area for over 55 years

Contributed photo
Howard Legried was inducted into the Lions MD5M Hall of Fame recently. Pictured above at the induction ceremony include: Front row: Karissa Doyle, Howard Legried, Buzzer Koehler, Gerry Imdieke, Rich Ericksrud and Dave Rud. Back row: Jerry Kokoschke, Bert Nelson, Keith Leiran, Latham Hetland and Ken Becker.

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

Longtime New York Mills Lions Club member, Howard Legried, was recently inducted into the Lions MD5M Hall of Fame in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This comes after being a charter member of the local club, as well as 55 years of hard work during its tenure.

Legried said that it was the fall of 1968 when representatives from the Lions Club came looking for prospective members to create a new Lions Club in the area. He said there had been a club previously, but it had died out shortly before he arrived in NY Mills.

“They had three guys that went around to everybody and told them they need 20 members and that they’re close, they just need one more,” Legried laughed. “That’s probably why so many signed up.”

Those prospective new members held an organizational meeting on November 22, 1968 and elected officers. Legried became the charter president and helped bolster the brand new club which received their charter in March of 1969. The NY Mills Lions treaded water for the first few years, before member Davey Crockett suggested that they reduce their monthly meetings to once a month instead of twice.

“We had four Co-op boards in town, all the churches, civic and commerce, you had so many meetings,” said Legried. “When we went to once a month, that’s when we started growing and kept growing and adding members until we became the biggest club in the 5M9 district and we’ve maintained up around 100 members or over for quite a while.”

Legried pointed to three main reasons for the clubs success over the years, with decreasing and simplifying its monthly meetings as their first move in the right direction.

“Number two, we kept our dues extremely low so that everybody could join,” he said. “We also encourage youth and we get them involved right away, right now, our president, our first vice-president and I think our third are all under 30 years old.

“We have good meals too,” he laughed.

During the past 5 1/2 decades in the Lions Club, Legried has served as Charter President and Board President five times. He also served as the Tale Twister, which he enjoyed deeply.

“My favorite thing was being the Tale Twister,” he said. “We used to find individuals at meetings to do tale twisting, when I got it, I took to asking each table questions. I loved doing it, I still have all the ones I did. My most fun was tale twisting.

“My favorite tale twisting was when I asked each table whether they wanted poetry or history,” he explained. “They all chose history, but my question was the answer for the other, which ever way you turned it out. For example, one question was ‘What war was the book, the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ written about?’ and the answer would be the Crimean War. The other question would be ‘what book was written about the Crimean War?’ So I had fun with them.”

Legried keeps a book of history and highlights of the Lions Club from their 55 years of operation. He said all you need to do to see their efforts is to look around town.

“I enjoyed the projects we worked on—the swimming pool was a major one, building the food shelf was another, all the shelters and the kids playground equipment in the community parks,” he said. “We did it two ways, we did the physical work and we did the fundraising—we helped fund the library and still do, the Cultural Center, different scholarships at the high school, we put money into every sport at the school.”

During the MD5M Multiple Convention in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Saturday, April 20, Legried was inducted into the district hall of fame, joined by 10 of his fellow NY Mills Lions Club members. He said that the credit is due to the Lions Club as a whole rather than him as an individual.

“I credit the award to my team that I worked with on physical projects and money-raising activities,” he said. “We raised the money for the many and various projects our Lions Club funds. The team of course is my fellow New York Mills Lions Club and I give them the credit because I was just working on a team. A lot of awards are awarded to just the individual, but there’s the people that work with them.”