The Lions Club was presented with a cheque for $2300 by the Rossland Rotary on Feb. 9 to cover roughly half the cost of repairs to a roof at the Lions Campground that was damaged by vandals in March of 2009.
“We had a big brick barbeque pit in the gazebo part that they literally destroyed,” said Jim Albo, a charter member of the Lions who has been involved with the group for three decades. “They had to have gone at it with sledgehammers. Absolutely destroyed it.”
“They took the bricks and threw them up on the cedar shake roof. It broke the shakes in some places and others came off,” he continued.
The hooligans also wrecked a couple picnic tables, including one that had just been donated, and every light in the building and the electric power meter was smashed.
Albo is still mystified by the motivation behind the destruction of property.
“To do what they did to the bbq took a hell of a lot of thought on their part - or not a lot.”
“This is not the first time we’ve had this problem,” he said. “It was just malicious damage for no reason whatsoever.”
“The Rotary Club saw the pictures and read the story,” Albo said, “and kindly offered to assist with the repairs with both money and labour. We didn’t even ask them.”
In the meantime, the Lions’ funds and volunteers have installed a new barbeque and replaced the table, “but the roof was the big thing left,” Albo explained. “We didn’t know how we wanted to replace the roof, so [Rotarian John Sullivan and I] kept on talking back and forth.”
In addition to the damaged roof, the tar and gravel roof above the washrooms started to leak.
“We contracted a person to do that and the Rotary kindly offered to pick up the tab,” Albo said, explaining that the $2300 donation will cover the leaky roof, while the vandalized roof still remains to be fixed this summer with roughly $5000 in Lions funds.
“It was a very generous offer and we appreciate it,” Albo said. “We’re a small club and any help we can get sure helps.”