Club History

Our Beginnings

During the Fall of 1970, Charlie Bau began talking about the need for a service club in North Fond du Lac. Tony Leon from the Fond du Lac Evening Optimist Club came out to North Fond du Lac to meet with us in January of 1971. A meeting was held with three people at Dunton's (now known as The Freight House). The meetings continued throughout the winter months. These meetings culminated into the North Fond du Lac Optimist Club. We chartered with 55 Members at Bernward Hall (on the old Hwy 175) on April 13, 1971. Our sponsoring club was the Fond du Lac's Evening Optimist Club.

Our Purpose

We are a service club serving the North Fond du Lac area. We strive to serve the whole of the community, but especially the youth. Our first project began on June 6, 1971. We moved the playground equipment from the Presentation Parish playground to Le Mieux Park. We continue to be involved with many projects at this Park, including building a shelter, installing 2 basketball courts, horseshoe courts, a volleyball court and also picnic tables, grills and a granite walking path.

We then turned our attention to a wooded farmland plot, which after more than 10 years and more than 4000 man-hours has turned into a beautiful park known as the Optimist Park located west of Westwood Ave here in North Fond du Lac.

Our first youth project was the Tri Star Basketball contest held in February of 1971. We continue to hold this contest yearly. We sponsor the Easter Egg Hunt, provide funds for the Boys Baseball, Girls Softball, Soccer, Boys Football and Wresting Program. We sponsor the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts. In addition if some other need is identified, in most cases we will undertake that too.

Ways We Fund Our Projects

We have two major fundraisers that allow us to continue supporting our various commitments, namely Pancake Day and our annual Golf Outing.

 The first Pancake Day was held on November 6. 1971 at Presentation Church Gym.  We sold 1200 tickets and served 800 people.  Our menu has basically stayed the same, all you can eat pancakes, sausages, applesauce, and homemade cupcakes or muffins. String cheese was added along the way.  We also added a super raffle to the day which has become very popular.  On Pancake Day 2010 we served about 1700 people and we sold about 2300 tickets and have had similar numbers since.  The event was cancelled due to Covid restriction for one year and then was moved to Friendship Learning Center the following year.  It has become as much of a community event as a fundraiser.  It is held on the second Saturday of November.

Our second major fundraiser has become our annual Optimist Golf Outing, which was started to help make up for our shortfall in fundraising due to the loss of Pancake Day during the Covid restrictions.   It has been a big hit so it has been continued and has allowed us to expand our support of youth projects.

We also have an annual North Fond du Lac Student Scholarship 50/50 raffle to help support our annual scholarship awards to graduating high schools students that either live in the North Fond du Lac school district or attend North Fond du Lac Horace Mann High School.

Meetings

The club meets every Thursday night at Marghaels.  Our meetings start at 6:30 pm.  A board meeting is also held prior to the first Thursday meeting of the month.  At the meetings we have many programs from community groups and leaders.  These programs have been popular with our members.