Reminder: Membership Meetings
This is a reminder that if you would like to be involved in our Council’s decision-making or have ideas that might be beneficial to our mission, to attend our upcoming Membership Meeting on Tuesday evening, July 8th at 7:00 PM at the St. Peter’s Residence House in Suquamish. Our following meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 12th.
We will discuss events and activities for the upcoming months and would value your input and suggestions as we move forward. Thanks to everyone for all your support.
Our Officers
Congratulations to our newly elected Brother Knights who will take on the leadership of our Council during the 2025-2026 Fraternal Year, beginning on July 1st:
Chaplain – Father Albert Arulappan
Grand Knight – Mark Maruda
Deputy Grand Knight – Vacant
Chancellor – Brian Tucker
Advocate – John Rebar
Recorder – David Graves
Financial Secretary – Larry Devlin
Treasurer – Roy Behling
Warden – Leo Beer
Inside Guard- Allen Beck
Outside Guard – Vacant
Trustee 3 Year – David Meier
Trustee 2 Year – John Wahlfors
Trustee 1 Year – Alan Arnesen
Lecturer- Gary Fahey
If you would like to serve in one of the vacant positions, please notify Grand Knight Mark Maruda or Financial Secretary Larry Devlin
Installation of Officers
Our District Deputy, Walt Borgardt has arranged for our Installation of Officers on July 19th at 12:30 PM at Holy Trinity in Bremerton in conjunction with Council 12251, 1379, and 11789. All officers should make every attempt to attend and please wear your Green Shirts!
St. Olaf’s Work Party
Fr. Mark has asked our Council to assist in some long-overdue housekeeping at St. Olaf’s during the week of July 14th. He arranged for dumpsters to be delivered on Monday, July 14th. Under Grand Knight Mark Maruda’s leadership, we will meet at St. Olaf’s at 9 AM on Tuesday, July 15th to begin to clear out significant accumulations of paper and books that are no longer useful to the parish. Please, if you have some availability on July 15th, please join us and help make short work of this project in service to our Parish. If we don’t finish on the 15th, we’ll work throughout the week to get it wrapped up so stay tuned for email updates.
Knights of Columbus Council 8297 Dinner
Thank you to the many members and their families who joined us on Friday, June 20th, for our Mexican Fiesta at St. Olaf’s Hall. If you weren’t there, you missed a fantastic evening filled with friendship and lively conversation, all thanks to the hard work of our Grand Knight-elect, Mark Maruda, and Brother Raul Deluna and his crew.
A special shoutout to Brothers David Lasser, Mark Maruda, Larry Devlin and others who helped in the kitchen and served our members. Your efforts made the night truly memorable!
Star Council
We have received unofficial word that our Council will be recognized as a 4-Star Council in the coming weeks. Congratulations to all who made this possible! Stay tuned for the official announcement.
Membership
Please extend a warm welcome to our Council’s newest Brother Knights, who started our new fraternal year off with a bang! We are already at 50% of our membership goal because of their desire to be part of what we do and to avail themselves of our fraternal benefits:
Tom Daley
Jim Bayer
German Blanco
Virtus Training through the Archdiocese of Seattle
Our Knights of Columbus Council 8297 at St. Olaf’s who are either being or likely to be a volunteer for Knights of Columbus activities in and around St. Olaf’s or St. Cecilia’s, that might involve vulnerable children or adults, necessitates that you get a background check and complete Virtus training through the Archdiocese of Seattle. So, with that, please create an account at https://virtusonline.org/virtus/ and go through the process of obtaining the certifications. This is in addition to any SAFE training and certifications through Knights of Columbus via Praesidium. They are two separate but similar programs that do not interface with one another so we have to do both. Thanks for attending to this as soon as you can so that we can remain compliant with Archdiocesan requirements.
KC HELP
Our Brother Knight volunteers work tirelessly every day to assist people in need of specialized equipment as they deal with the physical effects of aging or recovery from surgeries or accidents. It’s difficult to adequately express the immense gratitude that we see day in and day out and to imagine how these people might have dealt with their difficult circumstances had KC HELP not been available to assist them. If this is something you would like to be involved in, please contact us at 360-981-3179 to join our other Brother Knights in this essential work.
In the last 12 Months KC HELP has provided 4,833 items to 2,567 people totaling $1,440,855 in value, $1,839,650 when including hours and mileage.
Inception to date, KC HELP has provided 13,855 items to 7,423 people totaling $4,155,920 in value, $4,758,354 when including hours and mileage.
Our Council has been an exceptional supporter of KC HELP, not only through the volunteer work of several of our members, but through financial support. The Council recently donated $3,000 and our Assembly 2433 donated $1,000 toward the KC HELP Capital Campaign to acquire the new building at 939 North Callow in Bremerton that we closed on May 16th. Thanks to everyone who made this possible! Now, the real work begins to pay off the remaining debt!
We had a great team effort in our participation in the Bainbridge Island 4th of July Parade.
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Birthdays for July!
Happy Birthday to all of these Brother Knights!
Brian Tucker 1st
Douglas Hallock 2nd
Gary Fahey 5th
David Graves 6th
Oscar Hurtado 6th
David Bayer 7th
Mark David 12th
Hendrikus Roest 14th
Leo Beer 18th
Will Ogilvie 26th
Good of the Order
Pray for the health of all our Council’s Brother Knights as our members’ age demographic continues to increase. Specific prayer recipients are our Parish Family Priests Fr Mark Kiszelewski and Fr Albert Arulappan.
Dr. Bob Earhart’s funeral was held on Saturday, June 21st at 11 AM at St. Cecilia’s. Dr. Bob was Council 12551’s long-serving Financial Secretary and dedicated Brother Knight.. One of those guys we all know and admire who literally served right up to the end.
Prayers for the health and well-being of Brother Knights PSD Kim Washburn, Tony DeCarlo, Gary Fahey, Jim Kellog, David Lasser, Storm and Caroleen Smole, and Bob Tomas. Prayers for Bill (Moriner), Jim Rebar, Tony Jones’ wife, Nora Bell, Joe Bell’s wife, Steve Reichley’s son and daughter, Ellen Strickland, Mary Therese Bartlett, Leigh Bartlett, Julie Beer, Leo Beer’s sister Theresa, Roy Behling’s wife Karen and daughter’s health, Lynn Day’s wife Linda, Larry Devlin’s sister-in-law, Anne Wahlfors, Steve Murray, Nancy Rogers, Theresa Spiess, Henry and Cindy Huetter, and our service men (particularly council members) and service women and our many KC HELP clients. Pray to successfully retire the debt on property for KC HELP. We also keep Gabby McCracken in our prayers as she fulfills her FOCUS mission during the year. Also, we are praying for Jim Kellogg of Council 6706 and a KC HELP volunteer who continues to recover from his second stroke.
Handy Council-Related Links
If you would like a handy set of Council-related links that you can add to your phone’s home page, try this: bit.ly/m/8297