Bingo game helps Lions Club and community

About 70 people turned out to the Boys and Girls Club in Hill City for a bingo event benefiting the Lions Club.

The Lions Club is a non-profit service organization dedicated to helping the community via various programs.

“The Lions Club has been around in Hill City for a long time,” said member Jeremy Duprey. “We look to serve the community in ways that we can.”

Duprey explained that the local chapter is part of the International Lions Club, which, according to its website, has over “48,000 Lions Clubs around the world.”

Duprey explains one of the missions of the club is “providing people with glasses or helping with eyecare...that’s a huge part of Lions Club International.”

Duprey shares that the Lions also has boxes at the grocery store and the senior center where people can donate their old glasses and hearing aids to be repurposed.

“The local club purchases an eye appointment and a set of glasses in Rapid City that they donate to needy individuals as well,” he said.

The organization also will go into the Hill City School District to find students who may benefit from an eye screening.

“The state has actually purchased these machines that can do quick eye screenings,” Duprey said. “So annually we go to the school and do eye screenings for all the students at the elementary school. …If that machine picks up anything then we make a reference that we give to the kids and their families and the nurse at the school and say ‘this person might want to get a check up.’”

Locally there are 24 members in the club, which meets once a month at the senior center at 5:30 p.m. Before the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting would include food and a speaker from the community.

This is the first time the local chapter has had a bingo fundraiser. Organizer Stefanie Doaty explains the group tries, “to do a couple of fundraisers a year. But because of COVID last year we weren’t able to do a lot of the fundraisers we normally do. So we’re looking for something a little bit different and we thought ‘ why not bingo?’”

Doaty started planning the bingo in October. The Boys and Girls club donated the space and over 15 local brick and mortar and at home businesses donated door prizes and prize baskets. Donations of food which included chili, sloppy joes, chips and drinks were all donated. People brought desserts.

“I’m extremely happy with the turnout,” Doaty said. “It was a lot more people than I expected with the weather. Honestly I was nervous with the weather. And I am very happy.”

Doaty understands the importance of events like these.

“It gets the community together,” she said. “It’s something fun to do for the community. With it winter time a lot of things are closed down and this gives everybody a place to go to have fun.”

Hill City mayor Kathy Skorzewski agrees how important events like these are.

“All the people and faces — the thing I love about this is that even though the event is happening in Hill City our friends from Keystone cancelled their bingo to come up here and support us,” she said. “We reciprocate and do the same. We’re just one big hills family.”

She also sees how important groups like the Lions Club are.

Keystone Town Board president Lynette Gohsman echoes the same sentiment.

“It’s just very important to have our small communities get together and donate and do fundraising for different groups,” she said. “We have had several Hill City people come over and support our Keystone bingo. We’re two small communities. We have to work together.”

Gohsman also sees a huge current need for fundraising for non-profit groups.

“Last year we couldn’t do hardly any fundraisers due to COVID,” she added.

Twenty games of bingo were played in total with prize baskets that included clothing, pampering, cleaning supplies and a grand prize weekend getaway. In addition, bingo lovers had a chance to win door prizes or buy 50/50 raffle tickets, raising money for a good cause.

“The community we have always needs to move forward,” said Duprey. “And we do that together and we look for opportunities to serve one another and those that are visiting and those that maybe we don’t know so well and those we do. We just find those opportunities to serve. We’re always seeking to see how we can help.”