Two events boost St. Patrick’s Center
By RYAN CORMIER
The News Journal
Sure, St. Patrick's Day means parades, plenty of beer and dancing leprechauns -- especially if you attend events across Wilmington, including Saturday's 35th annual St. Patrick's Day parade.
But for the 17th year in a row, the Irish holiday will also mean raising funds through a Tuesday night dinner and a St. Patrick's Day breakfast, with all the money going to the St. Patrick's Center, which is housed next door to St. Patrick's Church, on King Street.
Since 1971, the center has provided food, clothing, transportation and other essential services to the needy. It has been led for the past 28 years by William Kooser, who has announced his retirement from the center effective this June.
Lawyers, politicians and business people from the area make up the 76-person St. Patrick's Day Society, which hosts the Irish Stew Dinner and Communion Breakfast, which raises about $115,000 each year, making up about a third of the center's operating budget, says Michael McDermott, a lawyer and committee member for both the St. Patrick's Day Society and the St. Patrick's Center.
At those events, you can see political rivals having a drink together and opposing attorneys sharing laughs -- all while raising the money the center needs to serve hundreds of the needy on the city's East Side.
"It's irreverently funny -- it's a howl," McDermott says of the dinner, which features "The Three Mikes" -- attorney Michael Kelly, former Wilmington city councilman Michael Hare and New Castle County Sheriff Michael Walsh -- as the night's featured entertainment, cracking jokes along with the master of ceremony,St. Patrick's Day Society co-chairman Joseph Farley Sr.
"It's also a night where business gets done," he says. "You'll see John Carney and Gov. Jack Markell sipping a beer together with no press around or anything. It's where old friends catch up and there's a lot of politics going on as well."
The next morning, before the breakfast, the group gathers for a Mass at St. Patrick's Church, where the state's highest ranking politicians are the ones passing the basket for contributions, with the idea being that it's hard not to give when, say, then Sen. Joe Biden or Gov. Jack Markell is looking you in the eye with the basket in front of your face.
"The joke always was, 'Is this going to your campaign or going to the church?'" says Kooser, who doubts Vice President Biden will be able to attend this year, although his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, is expected.
The group then parades down King Street to the site of the breakfast, the Doubletree Hotel, where everyone eats before breaking up, with most of the crowd heading into the city's Trolley Square area for an afternoon of drinks and celebration in neighborhood pubs.
Not everyone at the breakfast is Irish, but "they are that morning," McDermott jokes.
Instead of relying solely on businesses and banks or the state for funding and sponsorships, the diverse, all-volunteer St. Patrick's Day Society is the center's biggest ally. Whether it's a plumbing or electrical problem, Kooser can call on society members whose businesses do that type of work -- and normally at no charge for the center.
"It insulates us in a down economy," McDermott says.
This year's event is extra special since it will be the last with Kooser, 68, as head of St. Patrick's Center, although he will continue as organizer for the annual fundraising dinner and breakfast. (Two years ago, he was in a car accident and is still struggling from related injuries.)
Kooser, a self-described scavenger who squeezes all he can out of the center's limited budget through a network of donors, says he'll miss working at the center, which has received nearly $1.5 million from the St. Patrick's Day Society since 1994.
"There's not a bad day," he says. "It's a real tough job, but I enjoy doing this. The best part is the appreciation. They really appreciate it."
And there is still plenty of need, especially in these hard economic times. Services at the center have jumped 26 percent in January 2010 compared to the previous January, according to the center. Last year, more than 34,000 meals were served, more than 563,000 pounds of food was distributed, and clothing was given to nearly 1,800 people.
The center focuses solely on those essential services.
"We don't do the frilly stuff," says Kooser. "We do transportation and nutrition. These people are starving and they depend on us. We don't do piano lessons and arts and crafts and stuff. We stripped it down to what these people need."
McDermott says the St. Patrick's Center committee is working on finding a replacement for Kooser, who has headed day-to-day operations for nearly three decades, touching an untold number of lives.
"He's the rock. When I speak to others involved with the society and the center, we just kind of look at each other and say, 'What are we supposed to do now?'" he says. "It's a career and life that should be celebrated. What he has been able to do in this small building -- it's a godly mission. It's serving others who are undeserved in every sense of the word."
Contact Ryan Cormier at 324-2863
or rcormier@delawareonline.com.
Read his pop culture blog at
www.delawareonline.com/pulpculture.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
No comments:
Post a Comment