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.