‘ Serving up smiles — and pancakes’

‘ Serving up smiles — and pancakes’

Annual Lions’ pancake breakfast now in 67th year

news@theeveningtimes.com

The Lions Club took over the VFW Hall in West Memphis Tuesday morning and served a mountain of pancakes with a lake of syrup and pile of bacon and sausage. The group flipped flap jacks on five griddles all around the big room.

The doors opened at 6 a.m., and those hungry for breakfast filed in to be filled up for four straight hours.

The Lions Club Brian Petty expected to raise thousands of dollars for the club to help local people with vision problems and assist in research world wide.

“We usually raise eight to ten thousand dollars with the pancakes,” said Petty.

“This is our 67th year.”

The meal tickets sold for five dollars, but every year many people are extra generous.

“Some times when people buy tickets from me they say keep the change or hand me an extra $100 or write a check for $500,” said Petty.

Dr. John Wah, G.W. Sorrells, HVAC man Ron Mc- Corkle, partners Marvin Steele and Jay Guiltner, and City Councilman Wayne Croom were among the recognizable faces at the breakfast during the first hour. Long time dentist now hotel and hardware entrepreneur G.W. Sorrells looks forward to breakfast with the Lions. “This is the one day a year I don’t eat breakfast at the hotel,” said Sorrells. “It’s for a great cause and I really look forward to this.” Croom was loaded with to go boxes all bagged up for his special delivery to the Razorback Concrete office. Dr. Wah took a pan load too. After a delivery, the break room at the

Times was buried in a flap jack avalanche, for a minute. The Lions had lots of helpers cooking and everyone there enjoyed the company and the steaming hot breakfast. Petty said a heap of exciting benefits come from resources and research funded by the breakfast donations. He shared the story of how a pair of West Memphis twins were helped by the club. “When children who can’t see well, they get behind in school because they don’t read well” said Petty. “We helped these twins. Each one needed lenses that cost about $400. They immediately began doing better in school. They eventually graduated from MSCC and went on to ASU.” The Lions is an international

group underwriting

worldwide medical research. Petty was encouraged by results from Australians doing stem cell procedures for those with vision problems due to diabetes.

The West Memphis

Lions are glad to be a part of the progress.

“Four of five people started showing improved vision after 36 hours, the other took two weeks and she was a brittle diabetic,” said Petty. “They took four injections a day behind the eye. Its also showed improvements for those with Alzheimer’s.”

Breakfast is finished, but its not too not to late to help with a donation. Call Brian Petty at (870) 7350477.

By John Rech