“Friendship Tree” Picnic with Hiroshima Lions Club
The ”Friendship Tree” is a beautiful tree that blesses many people with shade while they picnic in the middle of Magic Island. It started as a small tree in 2001, when our four sister clubs from Japan and the Lions Club of Honolulu planted the monkey pod tree on October 26, 2001, a date that matches the 75th Anniversary of the Lions Club of Honolulu’s Charter.
Our own Bill Malone and Donna Tamasese visited our sister club in Hiroshima to help celebrate their 60th Charter Celebration. It was then that Mr. Kubo asked to have a picnic under the tree they planted fourteen years prior.
Here are a couple of comments that were made by our members about this recent picnic event:
“…thanks to the efforts and participation of members like Lions Kin Ching, Gordon Lum and Jack Schweigert, the benches by the tree were freshly painted three days before the picnic and the grassy area was totally cut and cleaned of trash. Although many members were unable to participate due to commitments for the LCI convention (starting the next day), I was most grateful to members Pres. Bill Malone, Gordon Lum, Vickie Kim, Gayle Pai, Mick Laconsay who helped with the coordination of food, drinks, tables, chairs, lei, calming of my nerves and by showing up to play hosts to our visitors. Of course the surprise visit by Lion Mick, Lion Joe Magaldi was most welcome and appreciated especially with Joe’s great picture-taking skills and ability to converse in Japanese too. Interpreters, John (a Japanese language teacher at Damien who Lion Gayle invited to attend) and my personal friends Hiromi and Yuki (fluent native speakers of Japanese) were also most appreciated as they happily participated in the event with us. It takes many hands to make things happen but with Lions there is also many years of love and aloha between the Hiroshima Lions Club and the Lions Club of Honolulu that made this special picnic the warm, wonderful event that it was. Thank you all for contributing and participating with us!
– Lion Donna Tamasese
“…I thought the event with the Lions from Hiroshima was most outstanding. The group was most friendly and more than showed their appreciation to us for hosting the event!!! I think they are true Lions in all respects and the pictures we took of them more than indicated this!!! We should try to visit them in Hiroshima!!! Outstanding event!!!
– Lion Joseph Magaldi, Jr.
