Medlin & Medlin, PA
Attorney at Law
(704) 786-8173
Concord, NC 

HELEN KELLER ISSUES THE CHALLENGE, “BECOME THE KNIGHTS OF THE BLIND IN THE CRUSADE AGAINST DARKNESS”

Over six million people in the United State are blind or visually impaired. Helen Keller issued the challenge. We answered two ways. FIRST, eye banks to restore vision and, SECOND, research into blindness prevention and cure.

Locally, Steve Medlin participated in the Concord Lions Club.  Steve and his Lions Club raised money from 1983 until 1993 with the following projects intended to meet the challenge.

· Several times a year, we put out hundreds of American flags before dawn all through Concord and collected them at the end of the day. It is a lot of fun to put a flag pole in a sidewalk hole full of ice. In the winter, we used chisels, hammers and screwdrivers. One man even brought a blow torch to melt ice. Still, the flags went up several times a year and the display looked great.

· Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Lions displayed American flags for 30 consecutive days. It was a tribute to those who lost lives at the hands of terrorists.

· We also sold brooms door to door for four days at the end of April every year. We became the greatest salesmen on earth, selling brooms to people in houses with no hard floors. When someone bought a broom, we always asked them to buy a few more brooms to give away through the year.

· Finally, we did barbeques; pork, beef, but my favorite was buffalo barbeque. Barbeques were twice a year and the most fun shift was watching the cooking pit from 2:00 A.M. to 4:00 A.M. The jokes were great and yes, we did snitch some barbeque from the long row of pits. The community turned out in huge number. Nobody ever heard of buffalo barbeque before. We made tons of money, shipped it straight out to the blind and visually impaired and felt great at the end.

· We also worked helping other groups such as the Salvation Army with its bell ringing and money collection every December.

· Organ transplant and research - Lions Clubs established Lions Medical Eye Bank and Research Centers throughout the nation and the world. The organizations have restored the sight of thousands of individuals all around the globe. Lions Clubs have long championed eye banks as a key to restoring sight to the blind and nearly blind. At the 1925 Lions club International Convention, Helen Keller challenged the crowd to be the Knights of the Blind in the crusade against darkness. Since that pivotal moment in history, Lions have founded eye banks around the globe and established many successful initiatives with the goal of eradicating blindness.

Lions International is a service organization founded in 1917, which today has over 46,000 local clubs and almost one and one-half million members in over 200 countries around the world.