No Good Deeds Should Go Unnoticed

Way back in my younger days, one of my least favorite reporting assignments was covering the occasional luncheon meeting at any of the service clubs. We showed up only when they had a newsworthy guest speaker, but I thought of it as hazard duty because before Mr. Speaker finished his chicken and asparagus and took to the microphone, there was the matter of sitting through the meeting.

I quickly realized I was not service-club material.

For starters, I wasn’t the kind of guy given to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public, which club members insisted on doing before anything else happened. To me, it smacked of being in fourth grade again. Then there was the “God Bless America” group sing and the prayer from the guy who sold insurance during the week. And then the group “Howdy, neighbor!” when someone introduced a friend they’d brought.

Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, Optimists. They all seemed the same: cornball jokes by guys who thought they were hilarious. Big round of guffaws when “Good ol’ Sam” or “Good ol’ Harley,” on one pretext or another, had to cough up a buck from his wallet to put in the kitty. Heaven help you if your name had been in the paper since the last meeting -- for being promoted at your company or being mentioned at a social event. That might well warrant a five-spot. Followed, of course, by huge laughs.

I now connect the dots from those days of yesteryear to 2004 to demonstrate what a dope I am.

It happened after coming upon a one-paragraph item in the newspaper about a Huntington Beach Kiwanis Club that took 50 underprivileged children to Wal-Mart to buy them some warm clothes. Each kid tagged along with his own Kiwanian and was given up to $100. The story said the club had been doing this for 18 years.

So while I and nameless others in society either chide the clubs for their antics or ignore them altogether, all they’re doing is putting clothes on kids’ backs. And feeding them. And giving them scholarships. And throwing dances for the disabled. And providing eyeglasses to visually impaired. And donating to hospitals. And sponsoring high school volunteerism clubs.

I compiled that partial list, which touches on all the better-known service clubs, from a quick scan of past articles and the Internet. The point is that, both in Orange County and across the country, they do stuff like that all the time. If it gets any attention at all, it’ll be like the one-paragraph item I read this week.

The money generally comes from members’ pockets and fundraisers during the year. One month it’ll be a pancake breakfast, another month a golf tournament or a candy sale.

As penance, I telephoned one of the Kiwanians involved with the Wal-Mart trip. He’s longtime member Frank Disparte, an 80-year-old retiree who says the program had its roots in a project by a now-deceased member who handed out necessities -- like diapers and bread -- to kids from the poor side of town.

I allude to the bad jokes at club meetings. “I tell the bad jokes,” Disparte says, laughing.

Disparte talks about the $3,500 the club gives in scholarships -- something other clubs also do. And the Kiwanis-sponsored program through which high school kids do housework and yardwork for senior citizens.

“We get a lot out of it,” Disparte says. “There’s satisfaction in helping people who are less fortunate. It gives me an excuse for living.”

Like I said ... Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, Optimists. They’re all the same. They give time and money to help people.

That entitles them to all the cornball jokes they can tell.

So who’s been out to lunch all these years? Me or the service-club guys?

Don’t all raise your hands at once.