Servant-Leader

PID Anne Smarsh & Allen Aplass

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” - Robert K. Greenleaf.

Servant-Leaders share power, put the needs of others first and help people develop and perform as highly as possible.

Though the servant-leader term is just about a decade old Lions have been servant-leaders for ten decades. We serve! Always have and always will.

At the Asotin Pancake Feed

The servant leader is the first guy who shows up at your club’s pancake feed at dark thirty to get the grills going and he is likely to be the last guy scrubbing that same grill and shutting down the clubhouse after everyone else has gone.

At the Palouse Lions Club

The servant leader is the person who runs the Boy Scout Troop your club sponsors and has been churning out Eagles for years.

Allen Aplass, the Secretary Treasurer of the Walla Walla Downtown Lions Club is a servant-leader. He has championed and supported young Lions in our club and has always been on hand with his pal Lion Bill Lake to serve where needed.

Allen and Sherilyn

This afternoon Allen invited me and my home club to join him and Bill to scrub veteran’s grave stones at our town’s cemetery.  He has been working this project with Sherilyn Jacobson who is connected with the American Legion. 

Lions Caitlin, Dave and Alex. Lion Crystal is taking the pic!

Four of us showed up for a couple of hours and worked alongside Allen, Bill and Sherilyn caring for 10 grave sites and gravestones of soldiers, airman and sailors who died in the Second World War. Though just a small part of a greater project, I can honestly say I haven’t felt the heart stuff that goes along with service as strong on any other service project this year as I did on this one.  Thank you, Allen.

Ashley Burmaster, 19F’s Lion of the Year, is also a servant leader. Ashley, Secretary of the Selah Valley Lions Club, is a servant leader especially in the sense of sharing power. Although she has coordinated extremely effective projects for her Selah Valley Lions Club, she always acknowledges the leadership of others in her reports. The report she shared with me about their new club project, a Glow Run, is excerpted here - 

 Ashley is on the right!

“Selah Valley Lions Club is very active during Community Days in our small town of Selah. We start off Friday Night and set up the parade route, Mike, Cecil, Ken. This usually takes a couple hours. The next morning each of our members woke up and arrived at the Parade Staging location by 7 am. Tammy dispersed us out on the Parade route and we started to stage the Selah Community Days Parade. Lion Garry Johnson and Lion Bill Shepard both came to help. At 10am the parade went on without any problems. Ken and Cecil sold Raffle tickets for our 50/50 raffle and Ashley was in the Parade with all the members children supporting the Lions. The parade finished about 11:30am and Ashley went straight back to the pool and met up with Lauren to start checking people in for the Glow Run that was going to start at 8pm. Check-in was held at the Selah Pool from Noon to 7:59pm. Run started promptly at 8pm. We had 304 people register for our Glow Run. 287 people actually ran in the fun run. Our club brought in $7274.23 for this fun run. $2791.88 went to purchase Glow Sticks and shirts for the runners. Our club donated $448.14 to Yakima Veterans Association, $250 to the Local Young Life Group to help send them to summer camp, $125 to Ellensburg Youth Center summer trips program for students who can't afford to go on trips, $250 scholarship is being given out to Margaret Rees on May 30th. The remaining $3408.22 is being dispersed throughout the community through our projects. Lion Cecil also brought in a $200 donation from a co-worker. Thank you Club for all your work. Way to go us...”

Watching young people grow in their service is good for the heart, too.

You Guys Are Great!