The Lordsburg Foundation: Don’t Dodge This Service Opportunity

Community service gives Lordsburg Foundation member Gary Bean reason to smile.

If you don’t have a lot of time but still want to make a difference in your community, you need to show up at noon on any first Thursday of the month at Round Table Pizza in La Verne, where members of the Lordsburg Foundation regularly meet.

Although members represent a range of professions and businesses, the 501c3 club isn’t so much a business networking organization as it is a service club.

“We’re strictly about serving the community,” said Gary Bean, the organization’s president from its founding in 2006 to 2011. He is also the facilities director at McKinley’s Boys Home in San Dimas.

Many in the Lordsburg Foundation are former members of the La Verne/San Dimas Kiwanis club before it disbanded because too many of the club’s funds were leaving the community to pay for international dues.

The club’s No. 1 mission is helping families in need, including Pomona-based Inland Valley Hope Partners, which has been feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless since 1968. Lordsburg Foundation members donate turkeys to needy families for Thanksgivings and provide presents to disadvantaged children in the community at Christmas time.

Its members are also dedicated to helping military families in need. Here in La Verne, the group actively supports and sponsors the military flag program and construction of the Veterans’ Memorial that will be dedicated in November.

“We have received a lot of nice letters from our service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan thanking our members for the care packages we’ve sent them.

Yearly membership dues are only $50 a year. Meanwhile, it raises most of its funds by selling tickets to the yearly “Concert Under the Stars” sponsored by Herb Hafif Foundation.

“We certainly look forward to growing our organization and welcoming new members,” Bean said. “If we can get more of our friends and neighbors to just donate a fraction of their time or money, we can make a real difference in our community.”

For more information, please contact Gary Bean at dodgerbean@hotmail.com. He could use a few “up” calls until his Dodgers return to their winning ways.