By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter
If they don't watch out, one of the next project for Cheney's Knights of Columbus Council will be to remodel their own parish hall at St. Rose of Lima's in order to properly display awards the group has won.
Cheney's own Council No. 9145 has recently received international recognition as a Columbian Award winner for the 2007-08 fraternal year.
Harold Sheeran is the retiring Grand Knight who oversaw the efforts of the group this year and is in his 65th year of membership. “I've been a Knight since February, 1943, in Ohio,” he said.
According to member Jack Martin in Cheney, the St Rose's council is one of some 16,000 such groups nationwide that are part of the Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization.
“If you complete five categories of service projects in a calendar year – which means you have to do 20 service projects – then you qualify for this Columbian award,” spokesman Jack Martin said. The Cheney council, founded in 1985, has won the award a number of times in the past. “We won it the year before,” Martin said. “We're pretty consistent with this one.” The Cheney council has received other awards in the past for membership retention.
Martin explained that the projects are divided evenly between those done for the church, the community, for youth, and five for the fraternity itself.
Projects are varied and include manning the Sprague rest stop along Interstate 90 and providing refreshments for travelers. The group recently constructed a wheelchair ramp for the Newman Center at Eastern Washington University and they routinely provide scholarships for Cheney High School graduates. The council also sponsors a family of the month who are singled out for contributing to the Cheney community.
All of this effort comes from a membership group of about 90. There are about 40 that live in Cheney and 15 or 20 others who are active, according to Martin. Each parish tries to have a Knights group that assists the parish priest. “If he needs projects done, the Knights work on them,” Sheeran said,
Historically the Knights of Columbus had a centralized council. The main Knights of Columbus location ion Spokane in on Boone Ave., near Gonzaga University. “Twenty to 30 years ago, went to parish councils,” Martin said. Most, but not all area Catholic parishes have a KOC Council.
New Grand Knight, Don Richter is working on new projects, Martin said. While still early in the process, one of the areas of emphasis will be to increase the number of scholarships awarded to CHS seniors. The Cheney Knights will also sponsor a priest and novitiate, or a nun in training.
Nationally, the Knights of Columbus provide an estimated 68 million man-hours to projects and $1.6 million in charitable donations. Locally there's no exact figure, but it is estimated to be in the thousands of hours.
And while the Knights are designated as a male service organization, “Women do participate,” Sheeran said. “Women help a lot, especially at the rest stop.”
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected]
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