Grand Knight's Report
Tom Sixsmith
April was a very eventful month with Knights events and within our Catholic Church. The passing of Pope Francis during the Easter holiday was met with great sadness. Pope Francis was a champion of the Knights of Columbus and our mission and often expressed his gratitude for our actions of our charitable work. He also challenged us to be better husbands, fathers and embrace the church and our Catholic faith. Let us all pray for him and the next pope to continue these values and traditions.
With any of the Knights’ events, whether recycling, food events, fundraising or meetings, we always encourage current and new Knights to participate and get involved with your fellow Knights and embrace our pillars of charity, unity and fraternity. This is why we joined the Knights in the first place- to make a difference in our parish and our community. The Palm Sunday car washing fundraiser was one of the best examples of this in recent memory. It was truly inspiring to see all the Knights, their families and youth group working together to make this event such a huge success. It reminded me of the recycle Saturday events we used to do every month with large numbers of Knights and kids getting together and enjoying a barbeque lunch afterwards, Hopefully, we can continue to plan more of these types of events in the future.
I would like to give a special shoutout to John Teeter for his relentless pursuit of addressing the need to move those Knights on our roster that have two or more years of unpaid dues to the affiliates program. Through his efforts and the support of John Blaney, we have been able to move almost 70 members to this program. That means we will no longer have to bear the cost burden of these Knights to Supreme, State and Chapter accounts. The amount of our past due account shrank from >$13,000 to around $6000. THANK YOU Brother John!!
As we wind down our Columbian Year, we look forward to holding our election of officers with the new slate that will be presented at the May meeting. I want to thank and congratulate the nomination committee of Ken Breneman, Dave Atkins, Mike Byrne and Mike Sofka for their hard work. I also want to thank the new candidates and several of the current officers that have volunteered to serve your Council for the next Columbian Year.
We’ll be sending our 9487 delegates to the State Convention later in May and honoring Mothers with roses on Mother’s Day (11th), maybe another Car Wash (possibly on the 17th) and a Blood Drive on 27th. Two non-Council events on May 3rd with the Chapter Poker Tournament and Whiskey and Cigars on May 6th should be a fun night.
Thank you,
WGK Tom
