Bard enjoys decades of volunteerism

by Logan Gruber

operations@thenewsleaders.com

Bill Bard has done an amazing amount of volunteering during the past nearly 60 years, and it has taken him on some pretty interesting adventures.

Bard, 80, and his wife Dawn have been married a little more than 60 years and have lived in Sauk Rapids for 22 of those years.

Bard served in the Army from 1953-55, when he married Dawn. They are both originally from Duluth.

He has served the Lions Club since 1968, in multiple positions and in multiple cities as he traveled for work as a manager for Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., now known as AT&T. The Bard’s lived in Brainerd, Grand Marais, St. Cloud, Silver Bay and Fargo at various times in their marriage for his work, and in every city he worked with the Lions.

“Up at Grand Marais, the Lions were the service club which most businessmen in the town were in,” Bard said in a Newsleader interview. “Since joining, I learned the Lions are a real great organization for serving communities, at the state level and internationally . . . One person can only do so much, but if you get a whole bunch of people together you can do so much more.”

At one point, Bard was the Lions council-chairman for the entire state, and was inducted as district governor while on a trip to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

In 2006, Bard was asked by the Lions if he was interested in forming a diabetes committee, similar to the work the Lions do with hearing and sight issues. In 2008, he was able to turn the committee into a corporation, which is now the Minnesota Lions Diabetes Foundation.

“The foundation works with the University of Minnesota to do research and rehabilitation of diabetes functions,” Bard said. “It’s a great pleasure to see the money we raise support these types of functions.”

He is currently the Sauk Rapids Riverside Lions Club secretary and the executive secretary of the Minnesota Lions Diabetes Foundation.

Bard says while growth has been a problem for services clubs like the Lions in the past few years, Sauk Rapids is lucky to have three separate clubs operating: The Sauk Rapids Riverside Lions Club, the Sauk Rapids Lions Club and the Tinville Lions Club.

“The three groups primarily sponsor their own activities, requested by local people,” Bard said. “The clubs are not in competition with each other; we each have certain goals and objectives.”

Besides the Lions, Bard has also been active with the Red Cross for years. He volunteers through the local disaster action team.

“We are responsible for responding to single-family fires, providing support such as housing, food and clothing to people who are displaced,” Bard said.

He worked his way onto the national disaster action team, where he would get called out for different disasters across the United States depending on whether they needed his skill set or not.

His first call on the national team was to Oklahoma City for a tornado. The local chapter of the Red Cross had an emergency response vehicle, or ERV, which can go out to damaged areas and provide hot food for up to a few hundred people. He was a driver.

Later, he was called to Florida for a few hurricanes as well as to New Orleans when Katrina hit, where he supervised multiple ERV units.

“You really feel for those people who are displaced . . . you can’t comprehend it until you see it,” Bard noted.

Bard also volunteers with city government, serving for the past 15 years on the Housing and Redevelopment Authority for Sauk Rapids.

“During my tenure on the HRA we developed our south-side industrial park by Benton Drive and Hwy 10, and the one across Hwy 10 on Industrial Boulevard,” Bard said. “We’ve done a lot of work on the downtown area, taking some of the old buildings out and putting new buildings in, and additional development is coming in.”

Bard said he has seen a lot of change in the city for the better while on the HRA.

He was also appointed to the city council around the time of the negotiations over the new bridge and city hall.

“As far as the bridge was concerned, there was a little bit of indecisiveness between the county and city, and finally the city took a leadership role in getting the new bridge across,” Bard said. “It took a lot of cooperative effort between Stearns and Benton counties and the city. Of course, once the bridge was built, city hall was purchased by Walgreen’s which brought in a good amount of money to put toward the new government center on top of the hill.”

He said it all seemed to work out very nicely, and with the bridge as well as the roadwork which will be taking place on Second Street up to Hwy 10 from downtown, Bard said he believes the east-west corridor will be very nice.

“It’s been my pleasure to serve on some of these projects,” Bard said.

Bard was honored as Sauk Rapids Citizen of the year in 2006.