“Charitable” is one word that some students can look up in their new dictionaries, after the local Elks Lodge decided to donate them to some third-grade classes in Pottawattamie County.

Dennis Clark with the Council Bluffs Elks Lodge No. 531 said the idea came from a state convention in April.

“They talked about the Davenport (Elks Lodge) delivering between 700 to 800 dictionaries to the kids in their area,” he said. “We thought this would be a neat idea.”

The goal, Clark said, was to get a dictionary to every third-grader in the Council Bluffs, St. Albert and Tri-Center Districts and at the Iowa School for the Deaf.

That meant a lot of dictionaries would need to be delivered - 912 books total, Clark said.

The Elks Lodge had talked to Lewis Central School officials, but Larry Hutchinson had recently delivered dictionaries to all the second-graders in the school district in April.

Larry’s late wife, Nancy, died Feb. 11, and taught at E.A. Kreft Primary, where the dictionaries were handed out.

On Thursday, the dictionaries were given away to all the Washington and Crescent third-graders at Washington Elementary.

“It’s neat. It’s cool that the students were able to get these,” said Washington Principal Jason Plourde.

Clark hopes to have all the dictionaries distributed by the Labor Day weekend.

This won’t be the last such donation drive, however. Clark said the Elks Lodge is beginning to look ahead to next year, and hopes to eventually work with Larry Hutchinson with distributing dictionaries to the Lewis Central District.

“We’re just glad to be able to do something like this for the kids,” Clark said.