Johnsburg Lions Club fundraiser fills bar patios, drawing concerns about COVID-19 spread

A Johnsburg Lions Club fundraiser held Saturday drew dozens via golf cart to busy outdoor bar patios in the village, but it also brought criticism from some residents concerned the gatherings would fuel the spread of COVID-19.

The fundraiser, which consisted of a golf cart crawl between six establishments, starting and ending at Sunnyside Tavern, drew fire because photos of the event showed attendees clustered together and few wearing masks.

“This could cause more harm to the community than it’s worth right now,” Johnsburg resident Kate Thompson said.

The photos had been shared on a local Facebook page by McHenry resident Dan Boro, whose business photographed the event.

Boro defended the Johnsburg Lions Club Second Annual Cart Cruise for Charity to critics on Facebook, saying the gatherings took place outside on bar patios, where there is less risk of virus spread than indoors. He also said that people who came together in a group interacted with each other and few others.

“It’s a fine line. I don’t know how you kick people out for doing it and not doing it,” Boro said in an interview, of wearing masks and social distancing at the event. “It’s a positive impact, that far exceeds the few people that were upset. It comes down to a certain point where you stop providing services to the community or you risk doing one of those events.”

He was unsure how much money was raised for the Lions Club by the event. A Facebook post by Sunnyside said there was a $10-per-person donation to the club.

A representative of the Lions Club said he would ask an organizer of the event to be interviewed for this story, but the Northwest Herald received no comment from the organization.

Boro said that in addition to helping the Lions Club, the event boosted the prospects of survival for the six businesses involved. One of them, the bowling alley Raymond’s, has been owned by his wife’s family for years, Boro said, and Saturday might have been the best day of business this year.

Sunnyside Tavern was not open on Monday, according to its Facebook page, and the business did not answer phone calls.

Contact tracing efforts can be complicated by large gatherings in the event there is a confirmed case, McHenry County Department of Health spokesperson Lindsey Salvatelli said.

“While gatherings of 50 people or less are permitted, the recommendation has been and will continue to only be around others when necessary, like picking up prescriptions or buying groceries,” Salvatelli said.

Thompson, who graduated high school in the spring during the pandemic, was among those upset by the photos and that the event had received the support of village leaders like Village President Edwin Hettermann.

“I’m seeing kids a year younger than me not be able to do their student plays, but right now adults are able to go to the bars and hold these giant events,” Thompson said. “If our government leaders are supporting an event like this but then also saying we can’t do things right now, that rubs me the wrong way.”

Hettermann said he was unable to be interviewed Monday because he was busy at work, but said in an email that it raised “several thousand dollars” last year to “assist people in around the Johnsburg community facing challenges with sight, hearing and diabetes.”

“It was thought that social distancing could be better conducted through a smaller event such as the Cart Cruise and still effectively raise much-needed funds for important causes,” Hettermann said in the email. “As the pandemic continues, we have to continue to find ways to do good work helping those in need through new and creative ways.”

Thompson’s mother, Kristen Thompson, said the Lions Club could have taken the approach other nonprofits have and found other ways to raise funds.

“Other nonprofits right now are having trouble fundraising and they’re having to be more creative about how they do it,” she said. “There are a lot of online auctions, a lot of online concerts. They come up with events that are safer by thinking outside the box. I don’t think the Lions Club’s only option was to throw this this weekend.”

Kate Thompson said that when she drove by the bowling alley there was more social distancing being practiced there than she saw later in the day at the final stop on the golf cart crawl.

The scenes Boro captured on Saturday of people gathering outdoors at the bars are “no different than what I experience being a boater at businesses on the Chain O’ Lakes every other weekend” in recent weeks, Boro said.

“Participants could have done a better job [social distancing] to be honest with you,” he said. “For a lot of those places, that was a lifeline injection of blood into the business. I’m a little more aggressive about responding to things than I should be, but we have to come together and figure out how to how to make people feel good or we’re just going to have major long-term [economic] effects from this thing.”