Lions Past District Governor Don Freel provided context for Keller’s speech. “Our organization was only eight years old. Lions members were still finding their way in this new concept of a men's club that served persons in need. Miss Keller was in her mid-40s when she and Anne Sullivan Macy were invited to make this address to the Lions at this 1925 event. That's 100 years ago,” he said.
Freel also sketched out Keller’s biography. Having been born as a “farm kid” in Tuscumbia, Alabama as, Keller was struck at age two by a fever that robbed her of her hearing and sight. She was examined by Alexander Graham Bell, who was an expert on hearing as well as an inventor. Bell’s son-in-law was director of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, where Keller enrolled in 1888 after being tutored by recent Perkins graduate Anne Sullivan to speak, learn a system for deciphering communication by hand-touch and to read braille.
Keller’s progress was fast. She would attend private schools in Massachusetts and then graduate from Radcliffe College in 1904. She and Sullivan then embarked on a lecture tour in which Keller spoke about her life overcoming her challenges. "She had a bit of a quirk," Freel said. "Unable to ride a horse or take a buggy ride, she spent a lot of time writing and she began writing articles about blindness for women's magazines.”
Keller wrote books, too, most notably her autobiography The Story of My Life (1903) on which the play by William Gibson, The Miracle Worker (1959), is based. As her writing career won public attention, she and Sullivan embarked on a world lecture tour starting in 1913, that lasted twelve years. As Freel said of Keller’s address to the Lions in Iowa, “It was during this tour, of course, and we just saw that Miss Keller made her plea to the Lions to become knights and develop a method for preventing blindness.”
Freel spoke of two other instrumental people who grew up, in Freel’s phrase as “farm kids,” Roy Franklin Kumpe, whose contribution to the Arkansas Lions Club included founding the World Services for the Blind school in Little Rock, to train the visually impaired in gainful skills. Born in Pulaski County in 1910, his blindness was brought on by scar tissue from a case of trachoma he had at age eight. He took his degree from University of Arkansas law school in 1938.
“In 1936 while he was studying law, Congress passed the Randolph Sheppard act, . . . [which]was an act which created a federal blind enterprise program,” Freel said. “This program gave blind individuals an opportunity to make a living. Now, remember, we're talking about the 1930s, when this country is in a depression. This program gave a blind person a priority in owning and operating a vending stand, if it was located inside a federal building, anywhere in the country.”
Kumpe came to the Lions Club after it became clear a facility was needed to help train the many veterans who sustained visual injuries during their service in World War II.
“In 1947 Roy approached the Little Rock Lions Club, and he wanted to know if they would help him by purchasing an estate. It was a large house and couple of out buildings on a full block way out in far west Little Rock and the cost was $10,000. He claimed his need for this site so it could be a training center for blind persons hoping to make a living. Little Rock Lions Club paid for the property. They paid the $10,000 for the property at 2811 Fair Park,” Freel said.
When the Little Rock Lions called on other Lions Clubs in Arkansas for help in addressing the costs of the project, they answered the call. The Hope Lions Club was founded about this time.
Last, Freel spoke about another “farm kid” in James Earl Carter, who was born in 1924 in central Georgia. After a career with the Navy as a nuclear engineer on a submarine, Carter returned to his native place, joining the Plains, Georgia Lions Club.
“He retained that membership for over 70 years,” Freel said. “He filled a variety of leadership positions in the Lions organization. He was a zone chairman. He was a district governor. He was chairman of the Council of governors. On more than one occasion, Lion Carter was heard to say, ‘Lions changed my life.’ Surely by now you've figured it out.”
After Carter’s term as president, he and his wife Roslyn founded the Carter Center, which worked with the Lions Club International Foundation. “Since 1994, LCIF has supported the Carter Center in fighting diseases like trachoma and river blindness, primarily in Africa and South America. … There have been 500 million doses of medication provided to prevent river blindness. There have been thousands of surgical procedures administered to restore sight to patients,” Freel said.
“There's a great big double handful of kids out there, farm kids from the South. And it would really please me to think that a generation from now there would be somebody making a presentation to the Lions Club of Hope, telling you about the wonders to prevent blindness that have been put together by this kid,” Freel said in conclusion.
Later in the meeting Hope Lions Club president Steve Atchley revealed that the Lions had raised $10,726 through its recent Fish Fry at Hempstead Hall and the baked good auction. The funds will be donated to Charitable Christian Medical Clinic, which provides health care services to those with low income from its location on 114 South Main Street.
