Pastor Ed Wheatley was the public face and frequent volunteer for the Wyoming Lions Club.
For a small group of people, the Wyoming Lions Club does a lot for its community. It was easier to accomplish the club’s goals, however, when one of its members was Pastor Ed Wheatley, a whirlwind of a man who had his fingers in seemingly every kind of community outreach imaginable.
After Club President Wheatley died May 6 after a heart attack, however, the club’s remaining members are asking fellow community residents for help filling his inimitable shoes.
“We’re going to need several people to replace him,” said Catherine Zerwas, the club’s treasurer. “He was the heart and soul of the club.”
The Wyoming Lions Club has been around for approximately four decades, and Wheatley was a member for more than three of them. The group’s members often number fewer than 10 people, but Wheatley (along with his wife, Joanne) helped make up for low membership with a boundless energy and enthusiasm, throwing himself into virtually every undertaking where the club was involved.
“He knew where to get donations,” Zerwas said. “He knew where to go to get people.”
Past President Barbara Grams worked on many events with Wheatley over the years, but one of her favorites was the club’s annual Christmas event, which is held in early December each year. As part of the event, local kids are invited to see Santa and are given gifts from his workshop. Extra gifts are distributed throughout the community to those in need who were unable to attend the event.
Grams has been the chairman of the Christmas event, and Wheatley was her point person when she ran into resource problems.
“I’d say, ‘Pastor Ed, I’m not finding enough coloring books,’ or, ‘I’m not finding enough in the budget for (a certain kind of gift),’” she said. Wheatley was always able to come through in the clutch, producing toys and items to hand out to children that he had found for a low price.
He also interacted with the children at the event directly.
“We have multiple fire trucks come out on the morning of the event, and we have a Santa in every fire truck,” Grams said. “Pastor Ed would be the Santa that children would be in line to see. His booming voice would be welcoming them in.”
She chuckled at the thought, sharing a sentiment that Zerwas also mentioned: “He never needed a microphone.”
Wheatley, who served as the senior pastor for many years as St. John’s Lutheran Church in Stacy, extended his natural ease in the limelight to Lions events all throughout the year. He operated, stored, transported and ran the bingo board at each bingo session the club would hold, and during the club’s annual Roger and Teresa Bosman Spring Fling dinner for area seniors, he would host the evening’s production of “Let’s Make A Really Big Bargain” – a humorous game show so named for its similarity to but legally non-actionable distinction from a popular deal-making television program.
“He would do that with such gusto and there would be so much humor, and the seniors would come up to me in town and say you’re going to do this again, right, when is it going to be?” Grams said.
Wheatley was also a key fundraiser for the club’s scholarship that awarded students for their outstanding community service, and Grams and Zerwas said he was involved in many other facets of the group’s work – including upcoming projects like a partnership with the Wyoming Fire Department to clean up Liberty Park.
“We don’t want those things to fall by the wayside,” Zerwas said.
With that in mind, the club is asking people who value the contributions the club makes to the community to help out, perhaps by becoming members or by volunteering time or resources for some of the club’s events. Zerwas said that any contribution would be valued, from a person with a truck who could help move equipment to an individual with a penchant for the spotlight who could take over Wheatley’s emcee duties. Grams said partnerships with business leaders are also very important, as no one in the club is quite sure where all of Wheatley’s bargain finds came from.
“Our business community here in Wyoming, they make it possible for us to do what we do,” Grams said, adding that it would be great for the club if those community members could become members officially rather than be silent partners.
Any participation level is welcomed by the group, which meets every fourth Monday at the Cornerstone restaurant (26753 Forest Blvd.). For more information on the club’s needs, call Zerwas at 651-775-6159. The group is also planning on holding an event at a later date in commemoration of Wheatley’s community contributions.
For Grams, a longtime club member herself (her daughter, Bethany, is also involved as the group’s secretary), Wheatley’s absence leaves a hole in her community and family life. Always a joker, Wheatley frequently visited the Grams home to talk club business with Grams and would knock on her door, asking one of her daughters, “Is your mother homely?”
“It’s hard for our family to know that we’re not going to hear that knock again,” Grams said.
However, she and the rest of the club want to continue the good that the Lions have been accomplishing in Wyoming, and she said it’s important to the members to honor Wheatley’s memory by making sure his efforts don’t stop now that he’s gone.
“That would be the last thing he would have wanted,” she said.