In the wake of storms that left three children dead and wreaked havoc through the area of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, on Friday, July 3, the Riverside Lions Club is accepting donations that will help the Lake Geneva community recover.

“We had two disasters, if you will, that took place on that day. One was the boating tragedy, and the second was the storm that went through,” said Bill Kingsley, the president of the Lake Geneva Lions Club. “The storm created a tremendous amount of damage, not only on Geneva Lake but also on Como Lake and some of the surrounding areas.”

Matthew Stinebrink, another member of the Lake Geneva Lions Club, spearheaded efforts after receiving a donation from a friend in Kenosha County. As the owner of Stinebrink’s Piggly Wiggly, a local grocery store, he worked with the owners of Papa’s Blue Spruce Resort, a restaurant and bar, to have each issue $50 gift cards that residents in need can use toward restocking their refrigerators and pantries.

“The biggest area of need is the Lake Como community. That’s where I live too, and it just got devastated. Trees smashing through living rooms, smashing through bathrooms, going through people’s windows. Some people had to evacuate their homes and stay elsewhere,” Stinebrink told the Landmark. “A lot of people lost everything they had in their fridge and freezer.”

Stinebrink said the community has benefitted from an anonymous donor who saw posts about the initiatives online and bought $2,500 worth of $50 gift cards to have them available to people in need to stock back up on food.

“It ended up being a really awesome thing, that a lot of people came together,” he said.

While recovery efforts have been underway in the ensuing weeks, with local Jaycees and other volunteers working to clean up the debris, Stinebrink and Kingsley said more donations will only help area residents get back on their feet.

That’s where the Riverside Lions Club comes in. Alex Gallegos, longtime member and former president of the club, as well as a village trustee, told the Landmark he heard about the storms through social media on July 3.

“I started reaching out to some of my friends who live up there and have businesses up there to see what they could tell me. Some were without power. Some have pictures of some of the destruction that happened [near] Delavan [Lake] and other areas,” he said. “One of our former Lions here put us in touch with the Lions Club up there.”

Now, the Riverside Lions Club is accepting monetary donations to send north to Lake Geneva. Gallegos said interested residents of Riverside or any of the surrounding communities can drop off checks at Riverside Foods or provide funds directly to members of the Lions Club, who will make sure it gets where it needs to.

“If you know a Lion, go to a Lion, and we’ll get those funds,” he said. “Lions have a motto: ‘Where there’s a Lion, there’s a need.’ When we see that people are in need, we step up to help. Many of our own residents vacation up there or have friends up there. It’s quite local.”

In the meantime, Kingsley and Stinebrink said the Lake Geneva Lions Club is working to put together an emergency fund for the next time danger strikes so they can act more proactively than reactively, but they said all donations will go toward staunching the immediate needs of the community.

“We’re not going to clean this thing up here in the next few days. There’s going to be a lingering, no pun intended, wake effect from this type of storm,” Kingsley said. “We really appreciate not only all the concerns but all the contributions from the hardworking people down in the Brookfield-Riverside area and the community that are supporting the work that we’re doing up here. Every little bit helps; it really does.”

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