As a young man growing up, something my parents have instilled in me and my brother and my sisters is that we have to remember our past to preserve our future. And I think that’s a good time to do that right now.
Over the last year, year and a half, it’s been a tough year for everybody. We put in a lot of effort to make sure our families were secure and safe and healthy. We didn’t have an opportunity to meet. We didn’t have the opportunity to go to church. I felt that. I missed all of you.
We need to remember the past so that we can preserve the future. I thought that what a better way to express myself than to talk about our council and talk about where we’ve been and what we’ve done.
If you look over here, you can see our charter from the Supreme Council. On there there’s a list of 68 names and a salutation, it was given to us as we started off. It was October 24th, 1994. That’s about 27 years ago. Our first Grand Knight, we had a meeting, a fellow came to our church and spoke at every Mass, and at the time we had four Masses, and he gave us the charge to start a council here at St. Michael. His name was Jerry Vale, who became our first District Deputy. We met the next day in St. Anne’s Hall, which is now where the Dominican Sisters are housed. He told us what the Knights were all about. And he asked for someone to step up and be the first Grand Knight. And a guy by the name of Bob Foster who raised his hand and said “I’ll do it,” and he did. He went on to be our first Grand Knight, a Fourth Degree Grand Knight, and served us well for the first two years. At that same time we had no idea how to start the council and how to get things running and what to do and what we’re supposed to do. We were blessed to have the guidance of a guy named Donn Kinietz. He was our first financial secretary. And Don really gave us the impetus and gort our legs under us to get us going. He made this podium, which we’ve all used at one time or another. He just showed up at one of our meetings and here it is, 27 years later. We don’t think about those things sometimes, but it’s been here since day one. Our first lecturer was a guy by the name Gene Gabalski, another lifetime member. Gene always gave some quips and witty things, and served for a long time. And he did an admirable job.
We’ve evolved as a council. And one day we decided to do a fish fry. That was a monumental step as far as the growth of our council. The first week in 1998 we did a fish fry and served 460 meals on the first night. And we thought it was amazing. And you know where we’re at right now. Part of the reason we started it was to have a sense of community for the parish but also to reaise some money for some good causes. And conservatively I’ve ran some numbers from over the years, and estimate that we’ve netted about $16,000 every year in revenue, about $370,000 since we’ve started the fish fry.
Shortly after the fish fry we also decided that we wanted to build a memorial to the unborn, which we all see. It’s a design that we all are proud of, and the parish community is as well. We came up with a design under the tutelage of Leo Kutney and Kevin Barlage whom many of you know. We did it all ourselves. We had many people talking to us about what to do and how to do it, but we did it all ourselves, which has made it that much more gratifying. When we were making the memorial, we had to clear trees out. This jewel box that we see, every time we walk in here and hang our jewels in it. It was made by Sir Knight Leo Kutney, you may not have noticed but on the front there’s an etching that has our logo and our council number. The wood itself was partially made from a sycamore tree that was cut down up by the memorial. The rest is oak wood that was donated by brother Knight Mike Weisenberger. And one of the most interesting things is that we sent it off to Denali, Alaska, where Sir Knight Kutney’s brother, who is also a Sir Knight, is a woodworker. He etched the front of it and sent it back. The cross, the corpus, the stone… was also made for us and was handled by Herman Menudi, who has also since passed away. The cross was handmade by Cy Cotrell and his two sons.
These things we see every day, and we don’t think about them, but I thought it was important to mention that they are important. We take them for granted sometimes. We need to remember these things so we preserve the future.
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