our mission

Greetings: 

Hello from the Sallies Alumni Veteran’s Committee. The committee includes Fr.

Bill Keech, Frank Vavala, Rod Baumert, John Riley, Jason McDowell, Trevor Fulmer, Steve

Bart, Sam Kalb, Mickey Devlin, Joe Rapposelli and me, Jim Burke. We hope you all are well and welcoming spring during this Lenten season.

Committee Sit Rep: 

One of our founding committee members, Father Bill Keech turned 97 last month. With significant help from the school’s Advancement Office, led by John Helmick, Father was celebrated at Mass and brunch with about 125 of his friends and relatives. A late Happy Birthday, Father.

Our committee is now over three years old. We would like to thank school leadership, especially Joe Rapposelli for helping us reach many goals, despite several idle months from the pandemic,

including:

• Becoming a standing committee of the Alumni Association with board representation, effective 7/1/19.
• Creating a registration link on the school’s alumni web page thanks to Joe. We now have over 200 registered vets and have knowledge of at least 65 deceased vets.
• Joe now acknowledges deceased alumni vets in his condolence messages.
• We communicate with you quarterly including school updates submitted by Joe.
• We created a stunning recognition pin which can now be seen at many school events.
• Thanks again to Joe, we have wonderful memorabilia and photos in our own trophy case.
• We placed a brick at the new stadium honoring our vets.
• We began to stage events and have had great presentations from Ray Firmani and Bill Knightly.
• We started a Veterans Day Mass, offered by Fr. Keech, which now has become a regular event.
• For the first time, our vets were honored at a home football game this year, which was scheduled on Veterans Day. We hope this honor continues at a home game every year, close to Veterans Day.
• Thanks to Steve Bart, we now have an independent website, Salesianumveterans.org. This website provides much information about our efforts and also includes a virtual Wall of Honor.
• There is a link to this site on the Sallies website.
• With a meaningful donation from a non-alumnus, Bill McCulley, and thanks to John Helmick, we were able to start a Veterans Scholarship Fund in the school endowment. Many of our committee members have made commitments and donations to this fund as well as other alumni vets.

Veteran's Scholarship Fund:

If you would like to donate to the Veterans Scholarship Fund, please send a check made out to

Salesianum. Write on the check “Veterans Scholarship Fund. I would also include a short note

saying that you want the proceeds of the check deposited into the school endowment and marked

as being part of the Veterans Scholarship Fund. Please mail the check to Salesianum, 1801 N.

Broom St. Wilmington, DE 19802, Attn: John Helmick.

Currently we are focused on determining whether a POW/MIA memorial can be placed on

school grounds honoring our own J.J. Connell. We will work on adding the names of our

deceased brothers to the virtual Wall of Honor. We will again schedule a reception on June 14 th .

We will discuss the possibility of adding a fund raising event for the scholarship fund.

Sound Off: 

If you have any ideas to help acknowledge and honor our alumni vets or improve

our communication, please contact me: Jburke1946@aol.com

Alumni / School News – Contributed by Joe Rapposelli

Thank you all for your service and for you Vietnam vets – a Hearty Welcome Home!

-Jim Burke ‘64