Dexter woman helping to lead the Ann Arbor Eagles in its mission to serve the community

It’s a historical moment for the Ann Arbor Eagles, as Dexter native Lisa Childress becomes the first female president in that organization’s 90 year history.

The Fraternal Order of Eagles 2154 recently selected Childress to help lead the organization. The club or Aerie is located at 7881 Jackson Road, just west of Baker Road in a small business park.

Not one to look for attention, Childress did connect with The Sun Times News (STN) when we reached out to her because she knows this means a lot to the organization and her family.

Lisa Childress

STN asked her how she feels about being selected as president.

“It’s a bit overwhelming, really!” she said. “My father was the Aerie (the organization’s building) Secretary for 29 years and it’s been very important to my family for a long time. The Ann Arbor Aerie is 90s years old! There is so much to do as we try to rebound from COVID, but I’m ready to dig in and give it my all. I love our members; they’re my family and they’ve shown me care and compassion in my life when I’ve needed it the most. I want to give that back to others: those who are struggling, looking for purpose and friendship, and those who are just looking to have fun in a world that can seem daunting. It feels like a huge responsibility, but I am hoping that I can be a catalyst that reminds us all that we have more in common than we think, and that those in our community can help one another better than anyone else, and that we are a force to be reckoned with when we stand together to get something done.”

The Eagles is an international non-profit organization uniting fraternally in the spirit of liberty, truth, justice, and equality, to make human life more desirable by lessening its ills and promoting peace, prosperity, gladness and hope. The F.O.E. donates more than $10 million a year to local communities, fundraisers, charities and more. As part of its philosophy, the F.O.E. gives back 100 percent of monies raised in the form of grants. Fundraisers are conducted for eight major charities, including kidney, heart, diabetes, cancer and spinal cord injury funds, a children's fund, memorial foundation and the Golden Eagle Fund.

From Dexter, she’s a graduate of the class of ’92, a big part of her life story goes back to a life changing event when she fell and became paralyzed in 2006. She said she was waving at her children as she was leaving their daycare to go to a college class, she slipped on some birdseed and cracked her spine and created a slow spinal fluid leak that resulted in paralysis about a week later.

“I found myself completely disabled and unable to finish my degree. After being in a wheelchair for 10 years, I finally got to the point of being able to walk again with a walker, then a cane, and now, without any assistance at all! I’ve got a pretty severe limp, but hey, that’s just a physical sign of how far I’ve come. From not being able to stand or walk at all, to stomping with authority,” she said with a wink. “There have been other struggles, but the fact that I am walking again made all of those seem fixable.”

She said she’s still disabled and unable to hold a job, so she’s on disability.

“I have always felt guilty about taking money from the system, so I started to look for some way to give back to the community that is helping to support me since my injury,” she said. “Through my fundraising efforts and my attempts to entertain our membership, I feel like I’ve found myself again, and done a lot of emotional healing and even thriving. I am able to give back to my community and it gives me a sense of purpose and direction that I didn’t have before. On the days when my back has made it impossible to do anything physical, I can lay down and work from home on my computer.”

She married her husband Brian in 2005, and they have three amazing children. Their youngest, Bill, still lives with them and is very involved with the Eagles himself. Her mother, Mary McKillen, is her biggest support along with her siblings, Becky, Richie and Eric. Her father passed away in 2010; she said they miss him all the time.

“Being so active in this place has helped me feel his presence every day,” she said of her dad, a longtime Eagles member.

The Eagles’ motto is ‘People helping people’ is important to her and that’s helping guide her moving forward, she said.

“We are a fraternal organization that looks to aid our community in whatever way we’re able,” she said. “We look for people and organizations that we can help through fundraising efforts from our membership, our labor where we can pull it off, and getting the word out about these organizations to our community. This year the Ann Arbor Aerie is focused on local charities (with a couple of national charities being focused on later this year). Our own community needs us now more than ever, and whatever we can provide, however creative we have to get, we’re going to try to pull it off!”

She added, “The organization itself allows us to create a community space for charitable giving, where everyone gets a vote, where friendships made last a lifetime, where purpose can be found when direction seems elusive… helping others helps us!”

STN wrapped up the interview by asking her, anything in particular you want the community to know?

“I… wow, that’s a big question,” she said. “I want people to know that we can work together to do a lot of good. That we can find our way to each other even if we don’t agree on everything. That the connections that COVID robbed us of can be found again, we just have to have the patience to communicate with each other, even when we disagree because I can promise you that we agree on more than we disagree on. Humans need other humans, it’s just a fact. We can help each other, we can be the change we want to see in the world. Kindness, compassion, honesty, forgiveness… they all matter. We can make a difference!”

She ended with, “The Ann Arbor Eagles is committed to public service. We believe in equality, we believe in our community, and we believe that we can all do something that makes a difference and a positive impact.”

To learn more, go to https://a2eagles.com/.