A Sunbury Lions Christmas Story

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Christ­mas has come and gone, but it’s never too late to share a true Christ­mas story, espe­cially if that Christ­mas story orig­i­nates close to home.

We are all famil­iar with the Sun­bury Lions Club’s Annual Christ­mas Trees Sale on Sun­bury Square to raise funds for Big Wal­nut Friends Who Share.

We’re also aware of the Lions’ honor sys­tem. All the trees are tagged and if Lions mem­bers are not avail­able when you have time to pick up a Christ­mas tree just take the tree you want and pay for it at nearby mer­chants, they will for­ward the money to the Lions.

This year, there was a new twist to the honor sys­tem, and it also illus­trates the fun­da­men­tal hon­esty of folks liv­ing in the Big Wal­nut community.

We’ll let Lion Dan Shaw take over from here and share the Lions Christ­mas story.

“One after­noon before Christ­mas I was sell­ing trees,” Shaw said. “What else would I be doing, being a Sun­bury Lion and it being close to Christ­mas, when this lady came up to me with a $30 tree tag in her hand. There was noth­ing unusual about that, except it was last year’s tag.

“I’ll let her tell the rest of the story: ‘I picked up a tree last year – 2011 — and nobody was around and I never got around to pay­ing for it, so I just saved this tag in my pocket. Now I want to pay for last year’s tree and buy another one.’

“She had saved that tag for a year and then paid her just debts,” Shaw said. “If that isn’t a real Christ­mas Story I don’t know what is.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 2 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.