Eugene Lions Club dinner raises funds for vision, hearing aid

A plate of spaghetti and a round of auction bids at St. Thomas Church turned into direct help for Lane County neighbors who need vision and hearing care but cannot afford it on their own. The Eugene Downtown Lions Club said every dollar raised goes back into the community, supporting eye exams, eyeglasses, hearing aids, scholarships and other local needs.

The annual spring dinner and auction, held Thursday evening, May 1, kept a long-running Eugene tradition alive while raising money for residents in ZIP codes 97401, 97403, 97404, 97405, 97408 and 97440. Guests ate dinner, then bid on donated items that ranged from local packages to a trip to Hawaii, with the proceeds helping fund a specific aid pipeline for people who need basic services to see and hear more clearly.

That pipeline runs through the club’s Sight and Hearing Committee, which handles requests for qualified residents. Assistance is available for eye exams, eyeglasses and hearing aids, and requests can be made by calling 541-735-5959. For families on tight budgets, those services can make the difference between managing work, school and daily tasks or going without care.

The Eugene Downtown Lions Club said it was chartered in 1924 and now has 63 members, making it one of the largest Lions clubs in Oregon. The club meets at the Eugene Mission on the first and third Wednesday of each month at noon, a routine that reflects how deeply rooted the group remains in local civic life nearly a century after it began.

The local club’s work is part of a larger network. The Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation has served Oregon and Northern California since 1959, working with Lions clubs to screen, treat, save and restore sight and hearing. The foundation’s LEAP eyeglass program began in 2015 with grant funding to address limited vision-care resources for eligible adults, and the organization says it manages one of only 18 Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centers worldwide, collecting more than 100,000 pairs of eyeglasses a year. Its ROAR hearing aid assistance program helps adults who cannot afford the full cost of hearing aids.

Former club president Jim Origliosso has described the dinner as both a social tradition and a spring ritual for the club, but the bigger effect is practical: money raised in a dining hall in Eugene helps neighbors get the glasses, exams and hearing support they might otherwise miss.