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Parkersburg Lions Club holds Easter egg hunt for visually impaired children

Photo by Wayne Towner John Armiger, right, a member of the Parkersburg Lions Club, holds a beeping egg so 9-year-old Lillian Winland, left, of St. Marys, can find him while wearing a blindfold Sunday at City Park in Parkersburg.

PARKERSBURG — In this holiday season featuring hundreds of children looking for colorful eggs, a small group of children at City Park hunted in a different way on Sunday afternoon — using their ears instead of their eyes.

Parkersburg Lions Club President Joe Tranquill said about eight children participated in the club’s annual Easter Egg Hunt for Visually Impaired Children at the park.

For several years, the local Lions Club has been holding the annual Easter Egg hunt near the Veterans Memorial Plaza at City Park. The Lions Club works with people with sight impairments and provides glasses and eye exams for a lot of people.

Tranquill said Sunday’s event used special eggs which put out beeping sounds. To help the children with sight issues with the egg hunt, Lions members stood in a large circle and set up stations. Each station a volunteer with candy-filled eggs and one of the beeping “eggs.” Children with sight who participated in the hunt were blindfolded to put them on an equal footing with anyone without sight.

With help from a parent or family member, the children followed the noises to each station to receive candy.

Jason Strauss, of Vienna, was at Sunday’s event with his daughter, Aubrey, 8, for the first time and he thought it was a good thing to do which both thought was fun. He also likes the efforts of the Lions Club to raise awareness about sight issues.

“I think it’s excellent since I’m partially visually impaired as well,” Strauss said, adding they hope to come back in the future.

The local club learned about how to do the special hunt from the Bridgeport Lions Club in Bridgeport, W.Va., which has been offering such a program for a number of years. The baskets, the plastic eggs and the candy put in them were all donated by the Parkersburg Lions Club.

Lions Club International has been involved in helping the blind since 1925, when Helen Keller challenged the organization to become “Knights of the Blind” in the crusade against darkness. Helping people with visual impairments has been one of the club’s primary focuses of service since that time.

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