Sussex-Lisbon Area Historical Society, Inc.

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Founded in 1939, the Sussex Lions Club is celebrating its 67th birthday this year.

The club started Lions Daze officially in 1967, but it actually began a few years earlier when it was attached to the then fledgling Sussex Olde Engine Show. The club began to stage its own festival in July 1967�so the 2006 Lions Daze this weekend is the club's 40th.

The co-founders of the Sussex Lions Club were two dynamic men, Sussex Main Street High School principal Winston Brown and the man who is considered the father of the Village of Sussex in 1924 and the Sussex Fire Department in 1922, John P. Kraemer.

Brown began as a teacher at the first to tenth grade Sussex school in 1936, later moved up to the principal's spot and left in 1941.

Kraemer came to Templeton (now east Sussex) right out of the service after World War I, and headed up the family's $62,800 construction of the Mammoth Spring Canning Co., Sussex-Lisbon's principal business and employer.

After the Jan. 30, 1922, fire that destroyed the nine-year-old Main Street School, he led the move to form a fire department as the leader organizer and treasurer of the Sussex-Templeton Advancement Association. The new fire department was originally called Lisbon Fire Co. No. 1 and was so well received that two years later the same group incorporated Sussex as a village.

By 1939 the local area was ripe for a community and charity oriented organization. Dave Kerr, a Hartland banker and Hartland Lions Club member, persuaded Winston Brown (originally from Hartland) that since the Sussex-Lisbon area did not have any community service group, a Lions Club could fill the void.

After some discussion, Kerr and Brown met with Kraemer at the Mammoth Spring Canning Co. office (which was just torn down last month).

Similarly gifted with leadership, the two men recruited 20 charter members from the community, business and professional leaders they knew.

Ten of the original 20 would later become club presidents: Kraemer, Dr. E.C. Van Valin, har�ware store owner George Podolske, church leaders Rev. E.T. Selms and Sussex Methodist Church Pastor Milton Mantz, Henry Yuds from the canning company, meat-market owner Claude Kaderabek, quarry owner Albin Halquist, garage owner Roy Stier, banker Harry Rodgers.

The other 10 were Brown, who later became Waukesha County School superintendent, meat market owner Charles Busse, longtime Village President and County Supervisor Fred Fuchs, Lisbon Telephone Co. owner B.M. Fobes, Walter Hardiman of the Hardiman Oil Co., Malsch furniture store owner Otis Kramer, Sussex Mills owner Alfred Otto, the St. Albin's Episcopal Church pas�tor, the Rev. Charles Parmiter, and Lloyd Weaver of the Sussex-Lisbon founding family and owner of the Brook Hotel (later the old Sussex Place at what is now Clock Square Park in downtown Sussex).

The first meeting of the Sussex Lions Club was on April 18, 1939, in the federally financed WPA-built Sussex Community Hall. Afterwards, the group adjourned to the nearby Brook Hotel bar room.

Over the years the club has met at the Brook Hotel, Krueger's Tap (Killarney's), Paul Relat's Bar (Olde Templeton Inn), Our Villa (Sussex Inn), Sussex Bowl, the Beier Cheese Factory (where Hardee's front lawn is today) and at Marchese's Danceland. It also held meetings at the Sussex Village Park Lions Club pavilion on the top of the hill and at the Quilted Bear in Germantown (which was owned by two Sussex Lions at the time).

Since the closing and imminent destruction of Marchese's, the club has gone back to meet�ing at Sussex Bowl.

The Lions Clubs try to keep their presidents limited to one term of one year each, and that is the way the Sussex Lions Club has operated for all of its 67 years.

The Sussex Lions Club has a spawned several spin-offs, including the Lannon Lions, the Sussex Lioness Club and the youth-based Leos.

The Sussex Lions, which started with just 20 members, now boasts 90 members and is always looking for more.

�Sussex Sun 2007

Sussex Lions Club celebrates 70 years

By Fred H. Keller

Posted: Living Sussex Sun, June 30, 2009

The Sussex Lions Club held its first meeting April 18, 1939, at the old Brook Hotel - a tavern, restaurant and hotel that stood where the village clock stands today in the mini park at the four corners of Main Street, Silver Spring Road and Orchard Drive.

The original 20 members inaugurated the new group with a dinner meeting followed by a late-night party in the Sussex Community Hall gymnasium.

The club grew by about 10 members a decade, numbering in the 30s in the 1940s, then escalating to more than 100 members in the 1980s and early 1990s. The club has declined a bit in numbers recently, but still boasts a membership in the upper 80s, along with its companion Lioness Club, started in 1965, and its junior affiliate, the Hamilton High School Leo Club.

The Sussex Lions Club also sponsored the founding of a Lannon Lions Club, also in 1965.

Back in 1939, the Sussex-Lisbon community needed a new fraternal and civic-minded betterment club to promote the business community. Earlier in its history, the Sussex-Templeton Advancement Association and the Sussex Fire Department had somewhat filled this niche, but they had a narrower focus. Even earlier, the Sussex Ashlar Masonic Lodge had filled a broader role, but now a more modern civic, fraternal and business-oriented club was needed, its founders felt.

At this juncture, two men - Sussex Main Street School principal Winston Brown and Mammoth Spring Canning Co. leader John P. Kraemer - joined forces to found the new Lions Club.

Kraemer was also considered the father of the Sussex Fire Department in 1922, the village incorporation drive in 1924 and the Sussex park system in 1958.

Brown moved to Sussex in the late 1930s and made an instant impact as teacher then principal of the first- through 10th-grade Main Street School.

He also coached the Sussex High School basketball teams. It didn't hurt that Sussex had the best junior high school basketball gym in the tri-county (Waukesha, Dodge, Washington) area - the 1936 WPA-built Sussex Community Hall for $26,000 - back in the Depression. He parlayed this coaching into multileague and tournament championships for Sussex. Now he compounded this popularity by marrying the most-liked woman teacher in the school, Julianne Klatt. Initially, in 1935, he had been just a teacher at Sussex Main Street School, but by 1937 he was the principal of the 10 grades, and would hold that position until July 1941 when he made a big step up to superintendent of Waukesha County schools.

Meanwhile, Kraemer was a longtime Sussex Fire Department member and Sussex Village Board trustee, besides being the big honcho at the main employer in Sussex, the Mammoth Spring Canning Co. While village doctor Erwin Van Valin was the first president of the Sussex Lions, Kraemer would serve as sixth in 1944-45.

One of the boasts of the Sussex Lions Club was that in 70 years never has one person served more than one year as president.

The 20 original members were the Rev. E.T. DeSelms, the Rev. W.D. Millen, Albin Halquist, Charles Busse , B.M. Fobes, Walter Hardiman, Harry Rodgers, Claude Kaderabek, Otis Kramer, Milton Mantz, Alfred Otto, the Rev. Charles Parmiter, George Podolske, Harry Rogers, Roy Stier, Lloyd Weaver, Henry W. Yuds, Kraemer, Brown and Van Valin.

Immediately the Sussex Lions Club became a factor in Sussex and Lisbon, both as an aide to the blind and eye impaired, and various civic improvements that grew as the club matured.

The club didn't have big money-makers for the first 28 years but were a factor in the then much smaller community. Then after tasting the big time for a couple years, aligned with the Old Engine Show, the group struck off by itself as the first Lions Daze was held in the summer of 1967 at the instigation then Lion President Marvin E. Burg Sr. in the "bowl area" of Sussex Village Park.

It was a money-maker from the start, and it got bigger, becoming an annual homecoming for the community of Sussex-Lisbon, Hamilton and Lannon.

The Lions Club did so many small and big things for the communities it's almost impossible to name them all, but their efforts included the lights at the high school football field, scholarships for students, and many buildings in the Sussex Village Park, plus in later years donations to Lisbon parks and both Sussex and Lisbon Fire Departments.

Now the club's latest project is to fund a major press box at the Hamilton Grove Field, to the tune of $50,000.

The communities have also benefited as other organizations have booths in the park during Lions Daze, some often making their most lucrative profit for the year there.

This year Lions Daze is a little earlier than usual, July 10, 11 and 12. The annual parade down Main St will be at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 11. The Sussex-Lisbon Area Historical Society Museum will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. before the parade, and will have on display memorabilia of the Lions Club and previous Lions Daze. Get your chairs in place on the street edge, and then use the wait to visit the museum and see some of the history of the local Lions.