Lakewood Lore

Teens provide Key to performance

Although retirees are often associated with the performance of volunteer work in the community, there are many teen-agers amongst our foremost ministering angels.

Thirty-six of them belong to Key Club at Lakewood High School. This youth organization is an affiliate of the Lakewood Kiwanis Club.

The Key Clubbers have closed out the 1996-97 school term with a record-breaking total of 448 service hours.

Among their beneficent accomplishment chalked up since May of last year are:

• Helping veterans' posts place flags on the graves of fallen victims for Memorial Day.
• Delivering food baskets to needy local families in connection with an annual Lakewood Jaycees program.
• Cookie and card making for U.S. Armed Forces stationed in war-ravished Bosnia.
• Distributing literature plus collecting funds in conjunction with an international Kiwanis campaign to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders besetting Third World countries.
• Donation-can solicitations at entrances to local supermarkets and other businesses for the Kiwanis-sponsored "Coats for Kids" drive to benefit underprivileged families.
• Participating in the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation's "Walk for the Cure" to promote awareness of the disease and raise research monies.
• Teaming with Habit for humanity to help build various homes in inner-city Cleveland.
• Through cooperation with a local nursing home, helping to brighten the days of the residents by visiting, chatting and playing games with them.
• Serving in a Kiwanis-initiated "Shadow Day" program, during which school senior students, to get a better grasp of occupations they wish to pursue, are taken in tow for a day by adults who already have made careers in the particular fields of endeavor.
• Assisting children up to 12 years of age to buy inexpensive gifts at a nearby Twigbee Shop for their families for Christmas.
• Helping stage a Halloween outdoor "haunted forest" adventure for youngsters and their families, with money obtained going to children's charities.

In addition, the club raised a record high $4,786 with special fund-raisers of its own origin during the past year. These included garage sale, car wash, candle sale to teachers and parents, carnation and rose sales in the community on Valentine's and Sweetest days, and candy sales before and after school to fellow students and teachers.

At annual school homecoming festivities, Key Clubbers served as guides, directing parents though halls to classrooms. To prepare for the event, they polished 80 years of school trophies and cleaned trophy cases.

Finally, in a program aimed at promoting patriotism and the furthering of American ideals, they gave U.S. and Ohio flags to replace torn and faded ones in front of the school.

"The Key Clubbers have been one of the most impressive and dedicated groups we have ever had," said Timothy Hinshaw, special education department facilitator, who has been the club's faculty adviser since its inception in 1978.

"The amount of energy they have expanded has been phenomenal, and they have a lot of fortitude, engaging in projects many adult organizations would have shied away from."

Hinshaw, a native Lakewoodite and 1969 Lakewood High graduate, is assisted at the school by two co-advisers to the club - Stephanie Potts and Michelle McClellan. The club itself is a high school affiliate of the Lakewood Kiwanis Club.

Much of the credit for the club's commendable performance during the past year goes to its five officers, all graduating seniors. They include Ryan Demro, president; Matthew Bennett, vice president; Allison Ellenberger, second vice president; Jasmine Ford, secretary; and Ryan Salo, treasurer.

At the last convention of Ohio District Key Clubs, Ford was awarded first place in the flag twirling competition; Demro won second place in the speech contest; and the club's scrapbook entry, which Bennett was in charge of preparing, took third place.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post May 29, 1997. Reprinted with permission.

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