Meetings

Please visit our new website at www.hillcrestlions.com

St. Patrick's Day Parade

One of our club projects is to participate in the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in San Diego, CA.  For 2012, we were joined by the National City Host and the National City College Campus Lions clubs.  

Thanks to their float and our band, we won an award for the Best Service Float. We have won this award several times in the past and again continue to impress the judges.

 

Flag History Lessons

Another annual project is to provide a "flag history" lesson to selected 4th grade classrooms.  Some of the lesson includes the following:

[4/2/13 Program:  For as long as I have been a member, our club has been giving  presentations on U.S. flag protocol and history to the five elementary schools in the 92103 area.  Fred Marsh and I will give the club a look at our presentation and we promise you will learn something new and interesting.  Bill Cowing]

As best I can recall, since I became a member, our club has been giving a presentation on the U.S. Flag to the fourth graders in the five elementary schools in the 92103 area code, Alice Birney, U.S. Grant, Florence, Francis Parker and St. Vincent.  Fred Wilson first ran the program and Lee Dresser took over when Fred could no longer do it.  For the last several years I have been assisting Lee and he now has handed the reins over to me.  Fred Marsh is my cohort.  Today Fred and I presented the program to the Club.  Here are a few tidbits.   Two important facts of flag protocol are that the flag should be displayed with the star field to the left of the observer and when displayed adjacent to a stage the flag should be on the audience’s left.  On June 14, 1777, Congress approved the first flag design.  The resolution specified that the flag would have 7 red stripes and 6 white stripes with a field of 13 white stars on a blue field.  The arrangement of the stars was not specified.  Although the Betsy Ross flag is believed by many to be the first official flag, the predominant evidence is that a flag with horizontal rows of 3, 2, 3, 2 and 3 stars designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a Congressman, was the official first flag.  The journals of the Continental Congress support this (although Congress refused to pay his bill).  All subsequent flag designs have been selected by the President and approved by Congress on July 4th.  The stars on the flag represent the states in the order they ratified the Constitution or joined the Union starting with Delaware in the upper left corner and going horizontally across to Hawaii at the bottom right.  A curious factoid is that the flag did not always have only 13 stripes.  After Vermont, 1791, and Kentucky, 1792 were admitted, a new flag was approved in 1795 with two additional stripes.  This is the flag that flew over Fort McHenry in the war of 1812 and the Ft McHenry flag hangs in the Smithsonian Institute.  It is THE Star Spangled Banner in the poem written by Francis Scott Key, the poem that became the National Anthem in 1931 set to an old English tune.  When five more states were admitted in 1818 the flag reverted to 13 stripes.  California is the 31st star.  Including the original 13 star flag, we have had 27 different flags as states were added and, in fact, there are two 51 star designs on the shelf.   Each student receives a small flag and a pamphlet about the flag.  

 
Lions Clubs International News
Connect with Us Online
Twitter