This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Lions’ commitment to serve in their area of Sussex County, which includes Bethany Beach, Ocean View, Millville, Frankford, Clarksville and Dagsboro.

Lions Club International has identified five world causes for Lions Clubs to embrace and to support annually through service projects. The areas of focus include vision, diabetes awareness, hunger relief, childhood cancers and protecting the environment.

Recently, Lord Baltimore Lions Club Environmental Committee Chair Paul Hammond assembled a team to clean the club’s assigned section of Bethany Beach, removing any litter and other identifiable items that hinder the environmental health of the beach.

During this initial beach cleaning for 2021, the two-hour service project produced only four pounds of litter.

Participating Lions Jack Bauer, Jeff Hilovsky, Paul Bolton, Paul Hammond, and Pat and John Monahan collected bottle caps, wrappers, paper cups, cigarette butts, a few plastic bottles and other assorted items that were identified and cataloged in a report to DNREC.


Lord Baltimore Lions President Jack Bauer said, “The Lord Baltimore Lions will plan to clean the assigned section of Bethany Beach about two to three more times through the summer and again into fall 2021.”

The Adopt a Beach Project  was first introduced in 2019 by Lion Steve Straneva, previously Lord Baltimore Lions environmental chair.