Even today, two years later, Eboni Nash is still a little surprised by what happened.
“I didn’t know any of those people,” says Nash, a freshman at the University of Iowa studying to become a concert violinist. “It was amazing to me, and it still is, for those people to put so much faith in me.”
Nash was a junior at Lake Highlands High School, studying violin with Sho Mei Pelletier of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, but she faced a major obstacle: Nash’s violin was old and worn out, and an old and worn out instrument is of as little use to a violinist as a broken bat is to a baseball player. And her mother didn’t have the $1,500 it would cost to buy Nash a quality, second-hand violin.
And then the Lake Highlands Exchange Club stepped in. Nash had discussed her plight with a teacher, who mentioned it to several Exchange Club members. A few phone calls later, and the club arranged to not only pay for part of the purchase, but for other groups to chip in as well.
“That was quite a chunk of change,” Nash says, “and I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. What they did was quite nice.”
In that, she is not alone. Hundreds – if not thousands – of Lake Highlands residents have received that sort of spur-of-the-moment help from the Exchange Club during the past 40 years. Single mothers receive checks for groceries. Out-of-work fathers receive a hand making health insurance payments. Needy students receive seed money for school trips.
Which is just the beginning of the story. Thousands more have benefited from the club’s regular activities – its college scholarships; its student, teacher, and police and fire recognition programs; and its support for the EXCAP child abuse prevention agency.
“We would not be here without the vision and passion of the Exchange Club.” says Margaret Patterson, the EXCAP executive director. “It’s that simple. The support of the Lake Highlands club has just been astonishing.”
“About the only thing they don’t do is publicize their work. They prefer to put efforts into the program, and let their actions speak for themselves.”
Just a bunch of guys / Talk to Exchange Club president Jerry Allen, and it’s easy to see what Patterson is talking about. Allen mentions a project or good deed or someone the club has helped, and then waves his hand, and says: “You don’t need to write about that. That’s just something we did.”
But they do it over and over, and have done so since 1961. That’s when a group of Lake Highlands residents started the chapter. Exchange, founded in 1911 in Detroit, is a service organization similar to the Lions, Kiwanis, and Optimists, and its 1,000 clubs and 33,000 members in the United States promote Americanism, community service, youth activities and child abuse prevention. It was a natural fit for the Lake Highlands community.
It’s a real grass roots kind of organization, and I think that’s what appeals to so many people,” says John Irvin, a long-time Lake Highlands resident who has been a member for 12 years and was the president in 1993-94.
“It’s an excellent way to keep in touch with what’s going on, with the schools and city politics. And when you join, you get engaged, and you want to be a part of it.”
Since 1961, the club and its members have won national awards, been elected to district and national offices, and served in a variety of capacities in the organization. Ray Hill, a past Lake Highlands president, is vice president of the National Exchange Club Foundation. Rick Christy, another former LH president, was named Texas District Exchangite of the Year in 2001. And Mike Oglesby, who was LH president in 2000-2001, was named a national distinguished president of the year last summer.
The 160 members pay $120 a quarter to belong, and meet for breakfast every Friday morning at the nights of Columbas Hall, where they hear speakers discuss current events, Americanism, and community news. They are a cross-section of the neighborhood. Irvin is executive director of operations at Channel 8. Allen is president of First Mercantile Bank. Amy Adams-Porter is principal at White Rock North school. There are accountants, lawyers, dentists, executives and politicians.
Many also have deep roots in our neighborhood and understand that Exchange is more to Lake Highlands than just another service organization that does good deeds. Allen, a 1968 Lake Highlands High School graduate, was an Exchange Club Youth of the Month when he was in high school. When Bob Iden, who graduated from the high school in 1970, returned to become principal in 1996, one of the first things he wanted to do was to join the Exchange Club.
“It’s definitely something you need to be a part of,” Iden says. “It was a no-brainer to join, because Exchange is so very important. They’ve got an incredible sense of what the community is all about.”
Helping others / That sense of community translates into the group’s programs, both official and those, such as the effort concerning Nash’s violin, that just happen.
“We like to clap for people in our community, so our job is to constantly try to find people to clap for,” Allen says.
The club sponsors a variety of programs to do just that:
- College scholarships. In 2001, the group selected 23 Lake Highlands students to receive more than $50,000, and Allen says the goal this year is to increase.
- Student, teacher, and police and fire recognition programs. The best known are the Youth of the Month and Year programs, but Exchange also honors police officers, firefighters, and what it calls unsung heroes every quarter; gives out annual awards to teachers, yearly citizenship awards for junior high and elementary school students, and recognizes PTA presidents. And if that wasn’t enough, the group started a new student award in 2001 called Character Counts.
- The Lake Highlands Fourth of July Parade and the annual Halloween Carnival.
- Support for the EXCAP child abuse prevention agency. Exchange Clubs Highlands’ members often play key roles. Former member Gerald Dietz played a pivotal role in starting EXCAP, and kept the group’s first set of books by hand.
It’s much more difficult to get a handle on the informal programs, since Allen and the members are so modest about what they do. A couple of times a month, maybe more, someone in the community will come with a request for help. It might be a school principal or counselor, someone from the Woman’s League or Booster Club, a member, or even a neighborhood resident with no connection.
“If we know someone is in need, and we have the financial resources, we’re going to help them,” Allen says. “This isn’t a handout, but a hand up. And we’ll do more, if people let us know about it.”
Raising the money / Even finding those resources has a Lake Highlands flavor. Yes, there are the usual sorts of fundraisers, such as the charity auction – set for March 23 this year – and a highway intersection collection. But the latter (the club calls it a roadblock) includes members from the EXCEL Club, Exchange’s high school youth organization, who do much of the collecting. In fact, the roadblock raised more than $3,000 last year in just over 12 hours.
And then there’s the money donated by members for various causes, be they informal projects or college scholarships. One scholarship is named for Don Lee’s daughter Melinda Ann, who was killed by a drunk driver. Perhaps not surprisingly, many donors remain anonymous, and some have even left the club money in their wills.
All of this may sound a little corny and almost too good to be true. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Bob Breunig, who joined the club in 2000.
“What the Exchange Club does is what makes communities like Lake Highlands great,” says Breunig, the former Cowboys linebacker turned real estate developer who has lived in Lake Highlands since the early 1970s.
“I’ve had a lot of opportunities over the years to participate in national and regional organizations, and none of them are like the Exchange Club. They’re one of the adhesives that hold the community together.”
Jerry Allen smiles when people say things like that. He smiles a lot when the club is part of the conversation.
“I don’t know quite how to say this, but quite frankly, getting publicity for what we do doesn’t mean all that much,” he says. “What matters is seeing so many people that we’ve helped succeed. And when that happens, I’m the lucky one.”
