Gatesville Lions Club names 2026-27 leaders, welcomes new member, hears elder law talk

A new elder-law lesson at the Gatesville Lions Club laid out the documents Coryell County families should have in place before a health crisis or incapacity, as members also approved their 2026-2027 leadership slate and welcomed Richard Thomas.

The club met Wednesday, April 15, at the Junction on Route 36 at noon, where members unanimously voted Shawnee Miller as president, Brad Hunt as first vice president, Joyce Talbott as second vice president, Eric Moffett as membership director, Annette Cole as secretary, Zach Miller as treasurer, Greg Couture as lion tamer and song leader, and Britt Clay as tail twister. The club also inducted Thomas, a sign that the group continues to recruit even as it lines up next year’s officers and directors.

After the business portion, attorney Elisa Rainey spoke on elder law with a focus on estate planning, a topic that carries immediate weight for families trying to avoid confusion when aging, illness or sudden incapacity changes who can make decisions. Rainey is a board-certified elder-law and estate-planning attorney with more than 20 years of experience and serves as an adjunct professor at Baylor Law, where she teaches the school’s elder law class.

Rainey’s talk centered on five tools that matter most in Texas: a will, a durable power of attorney for financial matters, a medical power of attorney, a HIPAA authorization and a directive to physicians. Texas law treats those documents separately, and state guidance says a durable power of attorney should be signed before incapacity, because once a person can no longer execute it, families may be forced into a guardianship proceeding instead.

That distinction, between planning in advance and waiting until a crisis, can shape whether adult children are forced into court or can step in cleanly to handle bills, medical records and end-of-life decisions. Texas guidance also separates the directive to physicians and family or surrogates from an out-of-hospital do-not-resuscitate order, a difference that often matters when families are trying to match a document to a specific medical situation.

The meeting also looked ahead to the club’s Mop and Broom Sale, scheduled for Saturday, April 18, in front of Huntington Bank at 905 E. Main St. The fundraiser is one of the practical ways the club keeps its service work moving in Gatesville, alongside the weekly Wednesday meetings at the Junction on Route 36.

The evening also carried a reminder of why local civic organizations matter beyond their own membership rolls. The Gatesville Messenger has said its historical archives were lost in the March 16 fire that destroyed the building block housing the newspaper, leaving moments like the Lions Club’s leadership vote, new member induction and elder-law talk even more valuable as part of the county’s public record.