By Cathy Sowa

Clay Lions member Don Jarvis has led quite a life during his 90 plus years.  He still is such an active nonagenarian that younger folk may have difficulty keeping up with him.

He has been a blacksmith, a Captain, and a US Navy Pilot on an aircraft carrier (where he was shot down, injured his shoulder, and was rescued from the ocean by an Air Force pilot). He has flown spy planes, attended presidential briefings, and been a flight instructor. He has won an amateur car race, ran a Clay County water public service district, and orchestrated a way to substitute the collateral for its debt so that it could combine with another public service district.  He has served as president of the Cattlemen’s Association (raised Black Angus) and was a yearly fixture at the State Fair. He has also served as a construction contract manager for public projects.

Don still attends Lions Club meetings and District Governor Cabinet Meetings, not to mention District and State Conventions.  He is a Trustee for the Clay Lions Scholarship Fund.  He is also trying to start other Lions Leo Clubs. He serves on the local Conservation District Board and keeps up with the Legislature. He is President of the Clay County Parks and Recreation. He spends many hours each year getting the pool ready for the public, and just personally bought playground equipment for the park. He is a beekeeper, landlord, and cuts his own hay (a “one man operation”).  He washes the undercarriage of his truck by parking in a creek.

But with all that he has done, and still does, the one thing that stands out is his commitment to making sure that children have good vision for school. In the last couple years as Lions Zone 7 Chairman, he ensured that the Lions, together with the school nurses, screened all the students eyes in Clay and Braxton counties (pre-K, elementary, middle, and high schools). In fact, all of the Zone 7 clubs (Burnsville, Clay, Flatwoods-Heaters, Gassaway and Sutton) helped screen the Braxton High School students last March, and Lion Don was there with a coffee cup in his hand.  Lion Don has purchased two PlusOptix mobile eye screeners for the Clay Lions Club through the West Virginia Lions Sight Foundation.  Each costs about $6,000.  Those machines can tell whether a person needs to see an optometrist, and it is great for pre-school youngsters who may have difficulty with normal eye-screening charts.

Don’s interest in children eye screening began with his own children.  Even though he has (and still has) excellent eye sight (he was a navy pilot), the school called him and his wife to take their children to an optometrist. And was Don surprised when his daughter told him what she could see when she got her eyeglasses!

Don and his wife, Keyota (Lion’s Vice District Governor) live on a farm in Maysel.  But they are often criss-crossing our state for Lions and other reasons.