Kiwanis Club to Serve Pancakes and History

Members of the Kiwanis Club of San Fernando were looking for a way to celebrate the organization’s 75th anniversary this month.

They considered, of course, the old standby--the anniversary dinner.

But planners nixed that. “Let’s not do the traditional 75-year dinner where we just invite the members and slap each other on the back,” said Gregory Kory, a member and past president of the organization.

So someone suggested a weekend-long event to showcase the club’s varied historical artifacts.

“Our fear with doing that is nobody might come and we’ve got all this memorabilia lying around,” Kory said.

With the dinner a yawner and a weekend too long, club members decided on something akin to a compromise--a public celebration with food and artifacts--an anniversary pancake breakfast.

It will be from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday at the senior center at Recreation Park.

The San Fernando Kiwanis Club started as the local chapter of the international, nonprofit, nonreligious and apolitical service organization in 1923.

“We’ll have historical exhibits with notebooks or scrapbooks from all the years of the club,” said John Laing, a club member.

By midday Wednesday, the Kiwanis had sold about 250 tickets to the breakfast, Kory said. He said he hopes the event will draw 300 to 500 people.

Tickets are $3 and can be purchased at the door. Recreation Park is at 208 Park Ave. For information, call (818) 365-1185.