Group on track for victims
They may be better known for their annual fish fry, but local Lions
club members exercised their grilling skills Saturday to feed hungry
model-train enthusiasts and raise money for victims of Hurricane
Katrina.
The Costa Mesa-Newport Harbor Lions served up hot dogs,
hamburgers, chips and sodas while the Orange County Model Engineers
carted parents and kids around Fairview Park on tiny trains.
Helping with hurricane relief means a lot to Hank Hornsveld, a
Lions club member and one of the founders of the Orange County Model
Engineers. He was living in Holland in 1951, when a dike broke and
flooded the town, so he offered his help as a radio operator.
He saw many people saved, but others drowned, and the situation in
New Orleans, “reminds me of everything,” Hornsveld said while taking
a break from running the trains.
American rescue operations took too long to get underway, he said,
and he was deeply critical of the nursing home operators who chose
not to evacuate residents who subsequently drowned.
But he praised public efforts to help hurricane victims.
“I have grandkids at school. Every school is working on it to get
something together to send over there,” he said.
Eleven-year-old Vincent Williams wasn’t waiting for a school
project to help out. The grandson of a Lion, Williams was chopping
tomatoes to put on the burgers Saturday, and he often pitches in at
the fish fry, he said.
For people living in hurricane-ravaged areas, things must be
“terrible -- they have nothing left of their homes,” Williams said.
“It’s not fun for them.”
The Lions raised an estimated $750 to $800 Saturday and expected
to do as well today. Costa Mesa Lions club treasurer Raul Jara said
the fundraiser was “excellent, our best in a long time.”
But for most of the kids at Fairview Park on Saturday, the main
attraction was the trains. The rides were free, so the line was often
long. And for some, one ride wasn’t enough.
“They’ve been on it already and they’re telling me they want to go
on it again,” said Kevin Hanlon of Huntington Beach, who brought his
son Joshua and daughter Julia.
That’s a familiar story to Hornsveld, because the model engineers
give free train rides at Fairview Park one weekend a month.
“Those kids, they cry if they have to get off,” he said.
Free train rides will continue today at from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.,
and the Costa Mesa and Newport Harbor Lions will sell hamburgers and
hot dogs to benefit hurricane victims from about 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The trains and cook-out are at the Goat Hill Junction train station
at Fairview Park across from Estancia High School.
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