CROWN POINT – Members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul are known for not just giving a handout, but a hand up, and the SVDP Gary District Council is grateful that its new headquarters doesn’t require climbing any stairs to reach its clients.
“The best thing about the building itself is not climbing up and down 13 steps with bags of food and other supplies,” said Daniel McKern, a member of the council and the Our Lady of Perpetual Help SVDP Conference in Hammond for more than 40 years. “The best thing about St. Vincent de Paul is seeing people’s lives changed just by the small things we do.”
Fifty years of SVDP work in the OLPH conference was celebrated at the new joint OLPH/Gary District Council headquarters on Sept. 22 as Bishop Robert J. McClory visited to bless and tour the leased building at 2714 169th St. during a Sunday afternoon open house.
“Thank the Lord for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and may the light of his mercy shine upon all of us,” said the bishop in blessing with holy water every room of the building – from the sign out front to the 23-year-old transport truck in the back parking lot that was recently donated by the SVDP conference at Holy Spirit in Winfield.
“We now have a blessed home, and that is something special,” said SVDP Gary District Council president Mike Martinelli, of Highland, a member of the St. Thomas More SVDP Conference in Munster. “This building allows us to serve our neighbors in a better way, to offer training for Vincentians and to help people with immediate needs. We also want to help our clients get a better life.”
The SVPD moved into its new building, a former hospice care office, a year ago and has been getting settled in. “We have a meeting/training room, an office, a communications room for volunteers answering the phone, a kitchen, a food pantry and a household goods/toiletries pantry, two bathrooms (one of which is handicapped accessible), two utility closets and two linen closets,” said SVDP district vice president Diane McKern, the former longtime district president who operated out of one second-floor room in the former school building at OLPH.
Highland resident Mary Gutierrez, an OLPH conference Vincentian, offered building tours to open house guests. “With the kitchen we can prepare food for our training sessions, and the best thing about the building is that it offers a healthy environment, is bright and spacious, and the stairs are gone!” she gushed.
One of those taking a tour, Tracy Rogers collaborates with SVDP as a leader of the food pantry and pet pantry at St. Ann in Gary. “Everything is so well organized now, and so peaceful,” she said of the SVDP’s new home.
Another visitor was LaShawn Jones-Taylor, of Gary, program manager for community outreach at Catholic Charities Diocese of Gary. “We work closely with SVDP, processing all of its client applications, so I was curious to see the new building,” she said. “There are no more stairs, and they are right on a main street where clients can see exactly where they are.”
Deborah Tuttle, of Hammond, attended and taught at OLPH school, so she is “familiar with the work of SVDP. It’s wonderful that it’s becoming more noticeable, and I think having their own building will make a big difference in their work. They make themselves so available to help answer needs – with a place to stay, by paying utility bills, by supplying food, etc. I have never heard anything negative about SVDP.”
Mary Taylor, of Highland, joined the SVDP conference at OLPH two years ago after she retired as a home care nurse. “I still felt a need to help out and do something for God,” she said of her volunteer work, which includes “answering the phones on Mondays, filling and delivering bags of food. Now we have more space to expand our programs. I’m trained to show people how to take blood pressure readings, and I hope we can do that here.”
Vincentian Phyllis Steiner, of Highland, a parishioner at St. James the Less, has participated in the SVDP Walk for the Poor for all 17 years she has been with the ministry, raising more than $40,000 in pledges, including $3,220 in the Sept. 21 fundraiser at Lemon Lake County Park outside Crown Point. “It has never rained on us in 17 years,” she said of the event. “It’s never easy to ask people for money, so it’s great to get so much support. I think we had about 125 people walking this year, including our team of 16.”
Deacon Albert Burgos of OLPH, ordained just last summer, said he was “honored to be here. The joy that it brings to see people coming together for such a good cause is a blessing. God is great!”
Caption: Bishop Robert J. McClory offers a blessing at the new Society of St. Vincent de Paul Gary District Council headquarters in Hammond on Sept. 22. Despite a light rainfall, the bishop gamely added some holy water at the gathering with the help of (from left) Deacon Albert Burgos, SVDP member Dan McKern, the bishop and SVDP Gary District Council president Mike Martinelli. (Marlene A. Zloza photo)