The Healy Valley Lions Club was first sponsored by the Nenana Lions Club led by Jack Coghill and Art Schmuck in 1968.  They convinced Berle Mercer to have a Lions club in Healy.  Berle was successful in getting enough people interested in forming a club, and the Healy Valley Lions Club was inaugurated the first week of December in 1968 in the Healy Hotel located in “Brown Town" (a local nickname for the Healy Fork railroad stop).  Many dignitaries from Anderson, Nenana, Fairbanks, and North Pole attended.

Around 1970 the HVLC worked to start a Lions Club in Cantwell.  When everything was ready for the big day, many of the Lions who attended the HVLC inauguration returned to Healy to join us for the big event.  The road from Healy to Cantwell was not completed at the time, so we talked to the Alaska Railroad to see if they would let us have a train for the important event.  And they did!

When the HVLC was established 1968, in the beginning, women weren’t allowed to participate as full members.  Many local women were already volunteering alongside their male family members, when in the mid-1980's the Lions Club International decided women were eligible for membership.  Our women volunteers were sponsored and officially joined the club.

The pin for the HVLC was designed by Alaskan wildlife artist Bill Berry.  Bill had recently designed a map of Alaska depicting where flora and fauna were found in Alaska.  Dall sheep were in great abundance in the Healy area in the twenties and thirties, so Bill thought it appropriate to have a Dall sheep represent the HVLC.  The HVLC was instrumental in the forming of the Tri-Valley Fire Department and so the Lion’s pin design was used for the TVVFD’s logo also.

When the school first started at its present location, it didn’t have a name, so the HVLC decided to run a contest where people would submit a name for the school.  The school kids would look at the submitted names and pick one.  The winning name "Tri-Valley" was submitted by Barbara Macfarlane.  Debbi Macfarlane-Clayton clarified that when her mother chose the name Tri-Valley, she wanted to encompass the three areas of school kids coming from the mining community, the railroad community and the homestead settler community who all lived in our one central valley. 

It is a popular theory that the name represented the three river valleys in the area; however this is only true to the extent that the residents lived in the Suntrana/Usibelli mining camps along the Healy River, the Ferry/Stampede/Mercer Ranch homesteads near Dry Creek, and in the railroad town of Healy Fork along the Nenana River.  The name "Tri-Valley" is about connecting three groups of people in one school rather than geographic terms.  A $25 savings bond was awarded to Barb Macfarlane for submitting the winning name, and she donated her prize money back to the school to start the first Lions Club scholarship fund.

The present maintenance building at the school was originally a pole barn at Vitro Coal Mine, but owned by Usibelli Coal Mine.  The HVLC was given the barn by UCM to be dismantled and moved by the Lions and taken to its present site to be reconstructed and used for the school’s first gym and multi-function room.  The first Christmas play for the new school was performed there.

The club also helped to build the local Community Center and the pavilion at Otto Lake.  Annually the club hosts a Fourth of July picnic, helps with the school lunch program, and publishes the Healy Visitor Guide pamphlet.  Every school year the club donates graduation plaques to Tri-Valley School, listing names of graduates. It also provides two annual $500 scholarships to graduating seniors, started by Barb Macfarlane when the school was established.

Some of the club's earlier fundraisers included the Easter morning pancake breakfast and movie nights at the Healy rec room.  The club has two accounts — an administrative account for membership dues and a community  account for fundraising.  One hundred percent of money raised for the community account goes back to the community in the form of various service projects.

~History Submitted by Lion Bill Nordmark
  Edited by Lion Vanessa Stone