A local chapter of the Lion’s Club made a donation to help all people have the opportunity to read.

The Crozet Lion’s Club presented representatives from the new Crozet Library and Jefferson-Madison Regional Library system with checks totaling $12,000.

The group held a pancake dinner, received a grant from the Lions of Virginia Foundation, and members personally donated money to make the sum.

The club gave the money to the library’s visually impaired section for such purchases as large print books and audio books.

“We wanted to create a section of the library especially for people with visual impairments,” said Rebecca White, Vice President of the Crozet Lion’s Club.

The special mission of the Lions Club International is to serve people with sight and hearing challenges. White said this mission fit the donation.

“Part of our core mission is to support people with visual impairments. And so, when the Crozet Library became a reality, we thought what a great match it would be to raise funds earmarked for the large print section of the Crozet Library,” said White.

Crozet branch President Karl Pomeroy spoke, along with John Halliday, the JMRL Library Director, and Bill Schrader, the chairman of Friends of the JMRL Library Fundraising Committee.

“Everybody up front holding the big check was excited and then everybody in the club was excited to be a part of this,” said White.

CANTON —The Canton Charge’s Alex Jensen is the NBA Development League’s Dennis Johnson Coach of the Year.

UNIONTOWN, Ohio—Hankook Tire Co. Ltd. was a relatively small tire manufacturer in 1992 when it decided to open its first overseas research and development center in Akron.

That proved to be an important step for the ambitious tire maker. Even back then, it had its sights set on climbing the tire rankings globally. Though it had a long way to go, it figured that a research center located in a key area of America eventually would help it gain ground on U.S. soil. It was right.

The Akron R&D center, now located in Uniontown and the only one the firm operates in North America, has proven to be a key driving force in helping to expand Wayne, N.J.-based Hankook Tire America Inc. and its South Korean parent over the last 21 years.

It also plays a pivotal role within the company’s R&D global network.

Hankook was much, much smaller in 1992, but was growing, said Thomas Kenny, the company’s new vice president of technology and head of the Hankook Akron Technical Center. The company had one factory when he joined the firm in 1994. It has added six since then.

Long-time industry veteran Ray Labutta was in charge of the center when it opened. He spearheaded the move from small quarters to a much larger facility that Hankook built in 1996 in Uniontown, located on the outskirts of Akron. Labutta recently retired after serving for 20 years in the post Kenny now holds.

Before taking over his present position, Kenny spent 14 years in the center’s tire development sector and four years as manager of tire development and engineering.

He said Hankook showed great foresight in 1992 when it added the center. He pointed out that the firm needed a presence in North America to build its business outward.

It is one of several major moves the company made in the last 20 years that has vaulted it from the back to the front of the pack.

“We’re a critical part of Hankook,” Kenny said. “The company has been growing by about 15-20 percent a year and wants to be in the top five by 2020.” Hankook had global sales in 1992 of $759 million and posted 2012 sales of $6.26 billion, with an estimated $1.4 billion of that coming from North America.

He came on board two years before the center was moved to the sprawling 48,000-sq.-ft. Uniontown facility. “We had 15 people working for us then. Today we have 40.”

The center primarily handles tire development for the North American market. The majority of that work focuses on original equipment fitments in the U.S., Kenny said. “We also have research and test departments and a fully functioning lab that develops compounds for use in this market as well.”

Hankook earmarks about 5 percent of its annual sales toward R&D, “so there is a large commitment,” he said. “Our center in Akron plays a key role in several areas for the company and is vital for the support of our OE customers and the development of new technologies for the future.”

Byeong Jin Lee, who in January was named president of Hankook Tire America Corp., agreed, calling the Akron Technical Center “one of our company’s most valuable resources.”

Kenny, who has more than 30 years experience in the tire industry, is responsible for overseeing the general operation of the facility. His primary responsibility is to facilitate effective communications between the center and the other Hankook technical centers in other parts of the world.

Because many programs are not global, he said, it is critical that all branches of the company operate effectively between the various centers, including headquarters, R&D and manufacturing.

At the Akron technical facility, “it’s important to have the right people doing the right jobs with the right tools,” Kenny said. “It’s the difference between sitting on the couch and yelling at the coach … and being the coach.”

Hankook operates three other R&D centers: a primary operation in Daejon, South Korea, and regional sites in Germany and China.

The company is building another R&D center in South Korea that is twice the size of the present operation in the country.

It plans to maintain some research operations at the current center.

Because the new R&D site “is still many months away from completion, it is not possible to say exactly what will stay at the current facility and what will be relocated,” according to Kenny.

Hankook built the Uniontown building with growth in mind, he said.

It uses advanced engineering concepts and new compounding technologies to develop products aimed at U.S. driving conditions and plays a key role in accumulating new technologies that meet international standards for Hankook’s R&D network, he said.

It also does some research on OE products for overseas markets, Kenny said.

The center handles a good deal of testing and research on a variety of projects and products. “Though we test vehicles and tires, our only focus is tires,” he said.

An auto maker works closely with the facility’s staff to come up with the proper tire for a vehicle, Kenny said.

In-house software is used to design the tire, and engineers at the center come up with a prototype that is built at one of Hankook’s production factories or—much less often—at its pilot manufacturing plant at the main R&D center in South Korea, he said.

The information is sent to the firm’s South Korean technical center, and tires are manufactured and shipped back to the Akron site for inspection and testing. It can take a few development cycles to come up with the right tire.

Lion Magazine April 2013

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Visiting the Bearspaw Lions Club on April 6, CLER sorted through approximately 35,000 sets of eyeglasses, finding around 5,000 usable pairs, which will eventually find a new home somewhere in the world where residents do not have access to such benefits.

“We sent everything from grocery-store eyeglasses to bifocals,” said Darryl Rawleigh, operations director for CLER.

Collecting used sets of eyeglasses from throughout Canada, CLER cleans and restores the pairs it can, and then provides them to various charity groups, such as Medical Mercy Canada, that do trips to third-world countries. Accompanied by a qualified optometrist, eyeglasses with the proper prescription are given to those in need.

“It’s a great program,” said Rawleigh, who said they have one million pairs of eyeglasses in storage waiting to be refurbished.

At present, Rawleigh said he is working on providing approximately 3,500 to an organization travelling to Haiti, and another 27,000 to go to Africa. Recently, 5,600 sets of eyewear were sent to a group in White Rock, B.C.

In addition to the jail and Bearspaw Lions Club, CLER uses the Lions Village in Calgary to store and sort through the eyeglasses.

Canadian Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centre partners with United Van Lines, which picks up donations from various optometrist offices and churches and delivers the eyeglasses to Williams Moving and Storage in Calgary, where CLER can then collect them.

Rawleigh said 40 members of the Carstairs and Wild Rose Lions Clubs volunteered to clean and sort eyeglasses in Bearspaw over the weekend.

Eyeglasses are sorted into seven categories: sunglasses, prescription sunglasses, kids, single vision, bifocal and reader glasses.

The Bearspaw Lions Club allows CLER to use the hall free of charge, both for storage and refurbishing.

Every Saturday (excluding the summer months), at one of the three locations, CLER works on getting the eyeglasses ready for use.

Up until September 2012, Spy Hill jail was the only location for the cleaning and sorting process.

Each year, between 150,000 and 200,000 pairs of glasses are shipped to those in need.

“We’re the only Lions centre in Canada that does this,” said Rawleigh of the refurbishing process.

At present, 11 centres in the United States have a similar program. There are also programs in Australia and Italy, run by Lions International.

The state is phasing out its old license plate and offering the new design starting Monday. It’s called “Ohio Pride” and its background features 46 slogans describing the Buckeye State.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Ohio Gov. John Kasich went to the Columbus College of Art and Design to recruit students to help design the new plates.

Ohioans voted on the slogans, which include “America’s Heartland,” “Underground Railroad” and “With God All Things Are Possible.”

The old “Beautiful Ohio” plates will be available for purchase until June 30, or until they run out. Those replaced the “Sunburst” plates over a six-month period in 2010.

A letter was read as a part of the external communication recognizing the memorial day recognition of veterans and expressing disappointment at the lack of recognition of veterans of all wars. It was pointed out that the Memorial Day program was ran by the Uniontown Community Park and not the Lions Club. The letter was signed anonymously so it would be difficult to respond directly to the concerns but the letter will be passed on to the park board.

During the committee reports Lion Mark Troyer reminded the club that the Uniontown Lions Club Festival will be held August 7-10 2013 and that there could be a festival committee meeting on April 24 after the regular meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 7:30.