our mission

Greetings: Hello from the Sallies Alumni Veterans Committee. The committee consists of

Frank Vavala, Rod Baumert, John Riley, Bill Knightly, Steve Bart, Mickey Devlin, Sam Kalb,

Jack Holloway and me, Jim Burke.

Summer is here! Don’t forget to use sunscreen.

Committee Sit Rep: July 1, 2025 marks the sixth anniversary of our committee’s founding. It

took about five months of work with school leadership to be chartered as a standing committee

of the Alumni Association. One of our founding members was Fr. Bill Keech – may he rest in

peace.

We are grateful for the amazing support of our committee members and the school’s

advancement office in helping us reach all of our founding goals and priorities:

The school created a database to capture information about our alumni vets. The advancement

office maintains this database and its email component. There are now 281 registered alumni

vets in this database, with the list slowly growing every month. A link to register is found on the

Alumni page of the school website.

We communicate with our vets quarterly, including school and alumni news provided by the

advancement office.

We created our own website (thanks to Steve Bart) - salesianumveterans.org - including a wall of

honor where any of our alumni vets can create an entry.

We created a moving PowerPoint presentation (thanks to Bill Knightly) that skims 100 years of

history of our alumni vets (including Oblates) serving and sacrificing for our country. This

presentation is updated periodically as new stories come to us. It can be found on our website.

We created recognition pins.

The advancement office provided us with a trophy case across from the president’s office which

is filled with memorabilia. The advancement office recognizes veterans in its condolence communication to the families of deceased alumni.

The advancement office supports two events for us each year, including our early summer

reception and a mass and reception on Veteran’s Day (please mark your calendar for this year’s

Veteran’s Day event – Tuesday, November 11th ).

Two years ago, we started a veterans scholarship fund in the endowment. We were slowly

building this endowment when our committee member, John Riley, came with an amazing fundraising idea for our fund, which he executed. This event, featuring our alumnus retired Vice

Admiral Tim Szymanski, raised $100,000. The first distribution from our fund was made earlier

this year to help an incoming freshman, the son of two Air Force veterans. We hope to support

two students next year. We are now editing a new outdoor memorial and hope to dedicate the edited version later this

year.

On June 13th , we held our early summer reception. The 14th was both flag day and the Army’s

250 th birthday. Our audience was able to see the fourth version of Bill Knightly’s PowerPoint

presentation, hear a wonderful talk by Denny Skirvin ’65, a combat wounded Vietnam Vet and

published author and a rousing salute to the Army’s birthday from our committee member,

retired General, Frank Vavala.

Sound Off: If you have any ideas to acknowledge or honor our living and deceased alumni vets,

please contact me at jburke1946@aol.com.

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

- Jim Burke ‘64